MicrostockGroup

well i'm waiting to see some pictures from you guys, michaelo and faber!!!

Some photographers are carefully investigating what "micro boys", "idiots", "corporate slaves" like us are doing.....oh boy....

http://www.alamy.com/forums/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=2448

istock, will you please stop organizing events at "holiday destinations", burning all the "photo opportunities" for these poor guys?

These discussions are so weird and illogical. Malta is burned now for photo opportunities? Yeah, it was a well hidden secret before....just 14.121 images at Alamy to compete with. And Alamy claims that  most of travel images sales are RM(L) editorial - no istock competition here.

Obviously microstock-phobia beats logic.

so how is the image editing going by the way?  I uploaded 20 today after we got the releases.. heres hoping they get accepted.

Wow they sound totally desperate and paranoid.  Jose Elias defended himself extremely well but I'd rather them think that we make a pittance here then less of them will decide to try the micros.

Funny coincidence - since Malta my istock revenue is going down - and my shutterstock revenue is going up....if the trend continues July will be shutterstock-BME and istock-"worst month of the year".

Yeah, the gods of microstock are unpredictable....maybe I produced some bad karma in Malta....

Would someone who's registered point out to the tools over there that Yuri's #1 image has over 7k DLs?

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/health-and-beauty/fashion/2100749-businessteam.php?id=2100749

Someone on page 1 said it was 2100 and nobody corrected him.  Uninformed lahoosers.

Ok.  finally a few pictures from malta

Ok.. just thought i woudl give the cost breakdown here.....

My costs for Istock malta Ref5esh   
flight - $455
hotel - $410
istock admission - $342
Food and Fun in malta - $195

Total - US $1403.52

Calculating that each image on istock earns me $10 over it's lifetime, I would need 140 images from this event to break even.  I am hoping these images will sell a lot better than the poor pictures I uploaded 2 years ago to istock... so perhaps I can expect $20/image average or more.

I was thinking to take the best 100 shots from the event, edit those and see how they sell.  I am not yet through the first two days and have over 20 so I don't think it will be a problem at all to find 100 shots.

iStock meant this event primarily to be a 'holiday' with shooting opportunities but I wanted to go as a business trip that was also a holiday.  It will be interesting to see how the images sell and how long it takes to get paid for a couple weeks of 'work' (weeks being 1 week in malta and 1 week editing)

well no downloads yet, so I have a ways to go

Wow and they were standing there letting you take pics of them. What a great event LOL. And how did they do with the releases? They was giving you them at the end?

The discussion on Alamy is very entertaining also. Thanks for linking!

If any one is interested here is a lightbox of my images from Ref5esh - 12 so far

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&lightboxID=4379218

For the lifestyle shoots it would generally be a creative director to help with setup and lights, 3 to 5 photographers and you would wander around the city with the models and find a place you wanted to shoot. It was pretty flexible, limited only by your imagination!

-> michealo
hey, I see first downloads of your Malta images - congrats!!