MicrostockGroup

Is this "portfolio" real, or some sort of spam/scam?

http://www.istockphoto.com/search/portfolio/8284148#1d548e5c

Did this guy really get accepted in October, with "isolated on white" shots that aren't, incoherent descriptions, and photos of a spool and a floor?

Does seem odd. The exploding piggy bank and apple splash are not bad images though and I quite like the lighting effect on those little manikin models. His key words and descriptions granted are not what you would expect. He has an odd expression on his profile picture too. Give him a call, his phone number is listed!

What really surprised me was those odd gray shots described as "isolated on white".  IS accepted those?  And I am seriously doubting that the person who did the photos of the spoon and fork is capable of doing the piggybank photo.  Look at the photo of the two mannequins on black; keywords are "Blue, Lighting Equipment, sir, Violence, Toughness, Innocence...".   But other photos have sensible keywords.  I conclude that these photos are not all by the same person.

I found this portfolio while looking at recently approved images. - that "isolated" spoon was approved a few days ago.  

How do you view the IPTC?

Yeah it's a lot of nonsense.  Keywords for the piggy bank: "Pig, Vehicle Part, Smoking, Smoke, Splashing."   Apparently there's a back door at IS, where they take just about anything.  Who knew?

They've been improving the quality of TS, not downgrading it, as Sean Locke will tell you. It would be insane to take sub-standard work into the collection with the aim of not selling it so they can use it to damage another major collection. Dubious as I find many of their decisions, outright insanity still seems implausible.

It's interesting how come we've come, regarding quality of the content. This port (or better said part of it) is considered as utter crap, but if you look at the photos of quite a few, if not most diamonds/black diamonds from the pre 2007 era, if you compare this port with theirs, it looks superb. And that crap indeed sold in huge quantities. I remember the reason for me not joining MS back in 06/07, it was not only because of all the TM hassle (which I thought it was a real hassle, although it's really not), but I couldn't convince myself to shoot such worthless crap, evenly lit, cheesy smiling, fake ppl, that often looked quite idiotic. It was all so cheap looking, something I definitely didn't want to do, I had different plans, to be as good as I can be. Earnings wise it would be better for me to start back then (I'd missed tens of thousands of $), but I don't think I'd be at a level I am today (not that I'm great or anything). OTOH I just might be forced to get better if my new content didn't sell. But some diamonds still manage to do great continuing to sell that same old crap (it's just technically better). But I'm sure no one starting today can make it with such low end content. Unless you really upload 2k of crappy shots/year, then yeah you can make that grand a month, but if that content was any good you'd be making at least a few grand/month. It's a good thing MS changed a lot, especially since the introduction of Vetta. It's now possible to get photos that indeed are good photos accepted and more importantly sell them, hard lighting has become acceptable if done properly, you don't have to evenly lit everything, DOF can be as shallow as you want it to be, you can bump up the contrast etc. You can really be creative and still sell (well not to creative obviously, if you look at most top sellers you can see that).

Well, as a diamond-merchant and the Gerald Ratner of the microstock world, I can assure you that certain kinds of advertising material require shots that will be sneered at by anyone looking for artistic quality.
One reason Vetta is priced the way it is is that it is crap .... at least, as far as most advert designers are concerned. It serves very little purpose because you can't use it as a design element. Therefore, since it has little prospect of attracting buyers, iStock slaps a big price tag on this fab cool arty stock so that the one person in the world who might find a use for it will justify the cost of hosting/shooting it. That may not apply so much to the more recent additions to that collection but it certainly applied to the initial woo-yay-isn't-this-fantastic ingestion of grossly over-filtered stuff.

The thing that got to me about this guy's "portfolio" is the stuff that was recently approved.  The fork and spoon on dirty gray backgrounds, described as "isolated on white".  The mannequin shots with nonsense keywords.   So what the heck is going on here?   

with mine they are

There are only 12 pics and s/he only started uploading in October. That's not so surprising.
I have to say that these are by no means the worst pics I've seen on iStock; and certainly not the worst keyworded, even by people who should know better.

Yeah but my point is that this stuff is being approved NOW.   And I'm not even saying the photos are 'bad' - just that if a photo says "isolated on white", and it isn't even close - well, I found it a bit harder to get things approved, maybe they just didn't like me.  And they have this burdensome CV system that I decided was too much work, but apparently the reality is you can just enter in any nonsense and it sails through.  Who knew?

As much as I came to dislike IS, I thought they had higher standards.   It just seems that this portfolio shows IS in complete disarray, with reviewers that aren't even paying attention, or are clueless.  Or else this guy somehow scammed his way in.

This thread is now locked.  MSG isn't the place to discuss and knock down other's portfolios unless someone specifically wants a critique.

also.. one member was banned for a week for insulting comments and the posts involved in that exchange have been removed from this thread.