MicrostockGroup

Forgive me as I go a little off topic but this is a Nat. Geo story.  About 20 years ago, during the age of transparencies, a friend was commissioned to go shoot tigers in India for a Nat. Geo assignment.  As you know, you can not just pop into the nearest Starbucks and hire a tiger for a couple days of modeling; they, he and his guides. were in the woods for a bit of time.  Every week, they had to send in their rolls of film via FedEx to this editor.  Now understand, wildlife photographers on assignment for one specific species are going to photograph something, just to keep practiced with the light angles, timing, etc.  So this photographer was photographing monkeys.   Week after week, month after month, this editor was reviewing hundreds of rolls of film, thousands of transparencies, of mostly monkeys.  Monkeys in the trees, monkeys swinging, monkeys scratching their private parts, and so on.

This photographer continued his assignment for months, after about three months he got a message to call the editor.  During his telephone call, the editor told him "I don't want to see another *(&   %^$* picture of a monkey unless it is in the jaws of a tiger"

I hope you enjoy this true story and think of it also when you are having a dry spell shooting the subject you desire.

True. And I like it.

I wonder if regular agencies are losing a lot of potential sales by not accepting that.

I did an internship in the London office. One of the most inspiring experiences of my life, with hindsight. Although I was rather too immature at the time to fully appreciate it. The office staff were as serious and interesting as the photographers, is one of the things which struck me btw. I think people often forget that sort of thing.

Um I think you mean Robert Capa. Frank Capra was a film maker (A Wonderful Life etc)

Ha, reviving an old thread to point out a recent Lobo post.
Conversation on the targets announcement thread:
Posted By DebbiSmirnoff:
Please also note most contributors who voiced a negative opinion last time were merely banned so their voice could not be heard anymore
Posted by Lobo:
Wrong. People who couldn't conduct themselves with civility were banned. And that number was 7 over 3 weeks.
Huh, are these posts "uncivil"?
Posted by me ages ago:
Question on the Japanlypse thread:
"Who pays for the 'lypse'?
Me: "The participants pay for their air fare and hotel bills, we pay for the rest"
(These were deleted instantly and I got a warning)
Then a week or two later:
Question: "I've lost feature X: where has it gone?"
Me: "It's gone as an F4 'improvement'". (or F whatever that alleged 'improvement' was).
(It turned out that actually Sean had written a Greasemonkey script for that, which I didn't know; but honestly, were these answers "uncivil"?
Pots, kettles; glass houses, stones.

Lobo* just took out a post altogether that he locked a short while ago - if I were CEO of iStock by dcdp. There was nothing rude or defamatory, just a list of specific suggestions about how to do things differently. They clearly aren't going to permit discussions of that sort, no matter how polite.

* I know lobo locked the post as I read the short "lock it" post he made. I don't know that he deleted the post afterwards, only that the post is gone.

Oh boy. It's really getting bad over there. Dystopian even.

Yeah that was me. I chatted back and forth with Lobo about it and accept his reasonings for pulling the post. We may get it up again at a later stage, but for now he's told me he is canning it.

It covered RCs (1 of the 5 things I would change if I was CEO) but also covered a bunch of other things like EL and Vetta/Agency Royalty %, Agency ring ins, V/A Filters, Dollar Bin - so literally wasn't on topic with the RC thread and was an off-shoot.

His argument was that the present "discussion" was strictly about RCs and if my thread stayed it be a chance for people who were already angry about that to start complaining about everything else. I wanted the discussion to be productive not another gripe session, Lobo didn't believe that was going to happen in the present environment.

So we haven't just "sort of settled down".
Plus I guess he knows there aren't going to be any concessions which might benefit contributors, so what would be the point of discussing it?