MicrostockGroup is great and I've followed it for years even though I no longer shoot microstock.  People here can pretty much say what they want, unlike the captive forums of the microstocks and PODs.

For general photography discussions, the DPReview forum seems most active. 

Then there's FredMiranda, Lumininous-landscape, and a lot of others that don't seem very active anymore.  I recently did a search and found on most forums, current activity was a trickle.  Some were ghost towns.

Does anyone here know of a good and currently active photography forum, besides DPReview?

I've been contacted by an art consultant who wants to license some photos for prints.  I'd like to find a standard license agreement that I could use, granting them a one-time right to make a print, but stating that I retain ownership of the images.   And that's all it really needs to say; I've dealt with these people before and they're totally on the up-and-up.

Can  anyone point me to a generic license agreement that I could download and use?

I know this comes up every now and then - but I need an application to copy/paste all the IPTC data from one photo to another.  I used to use Nikon CaptureNX but that's dead and buried.   I've tried a number of applications, and they're either junk, or they don't  have this feature - except for Photo Mechanic, which does it well but has a nosebleed price of $150 (I let the trial expire).

Surely there is something.

Getting out of DT has always been a royal pain.  Besides the 6 month lock-in, there's no way to disable multiple files. Does anyone know of something like a Greasemonkey script that will disable everything? 

UPDATE:  I'm doing it with iMacros.

I haven't submitted anything to microstock in a long time and will probably never do so again.   With about 300 old images online, my expectations are pretty low these days.  But I'm thinking about starting the new year by cleaning house.

In the last couple of months DT has completely dried up;  I barely made enough in December to pay for a latte.  Time to end it.

For SS it's been a year of out-of-control spamming, junk portfolios getting side-loaded without inspection (like those 30,000 photos of pot), crazy rejections wasting everyone's time, and steadily declining sales for individual contributors.   I've been waiting for them to make some "exciting announcement" about a new giveaway or royalty cut, but at this point they're in such chaos they probably wouldn't even announce it.  So I'll dump them too.   

I was ready to give up on Alamy after months without a sale, but got one a few days ago that netted me $10.   I really have nothing against them, so I'll leave my stuff there.   

The wild card, once again, is GL stock images.   I thought the new ownership might take it somewhere, and I got a couple of sales after the transition, but it went cold.  Unsure about this one.

Bottom line, I'm dropping SS and DT on New Year's Day. 

An art consultant wants to do a print of one of my photos for a client - just one copy.   Does anyone know of a simple licensing agreement I could download and use?

I'm not worried about this consultant, they're a small local company and I'm dealing with a single person.  They say they don't have a standard agreement and normally the artist provides it. 

Does anyone have some good pointers for shooting stills from a moving car?  The subject I want to get is big, and far away, which is good - but the view is only available while driving across a bridge.  And I need to shoot in early evening so I won't be able to use a really fast shutter speed.

I know nothing about camera stabilzers.  Would some sort of gyroscopic rig actually help, or are they just for video?

I've been contacted by an art consultant who wants to use one of my photos in a local hotel.  I don't know the details yet but they want to license the image and do their own print.  I'd like to make this happen and am not really worried about them ripping me off somehow; but I'd need to gin up some sort of licensing agreement, giving them rights to some number of printed copies.   Can anyone point me to a generic agreement I could use?

When logging in, FAA contributors are now being asked for a 'yes' or 'no' opinion on a new plan.  Here's an excerpt:


"Fine Art America is in discussions with a major electronics manufacturer about co-developing a large-format digital picture frame which would hang on a wall and allow the owner of the picture frame to stream FAA images to the picture frame using an iPhone or Android phone.

The owner of the picture frame would pay a monthly subscription fee (e.g. $10 per month) for the ability to stream any image from Fine Art America to the picture frame at any time.
 
You (the image owner) would get paid based on how many minutes your image appeared on the digital picture frame during a given month.   Please read below for complete details."



Needless to say, your markup is ignored - you have no control over pricing, you get whatever they decide to pay, and I assume that will be pennies.   I couldn't click "NO" fast enough.   But watch the FAA forum for gushy posts thanking "Sean" for this "great new opportunity".

I decided to give Crated.com another chance, maybe things had changed.  I put up a couple dozen of my best wall-art photos, including some that have sold on FAA.   Not expecting anything, really, and after a couple weeks they still don't show up in search, so the mystery 'curator' either hasn't looked or didn't like me. 

What bugs me, though, is that I now see plenty of seriously mediocre photos that do appear in the search.    I'm talking about really lifeless snapshots, some just as-is,   many with the typical artsy Photoshop filter or  'vintage' app applied.  Click on the contributor and you find they've submitted nothing but a handful of similar shots.    There's a lot of good work on Crated, but I'm seeing a lot of questionable 'art'.

No, I'm not going to post links and embarrass people, or talk about how great I am.  They can apply whatever standards they want, it's their show.   I'm just wondering if Crated is still alive.  I see pretty much the same photos and artwork on the main page every time I look. 

I quit submitting to microstock over a year ago.  I recently got an email from someone at Alamy, saying they planned to 'feature' me later this year and wondering if I might submit some new photos. I don't want to seem unappreciative or rude, but given the few sales I get at Alamy, I can't believe even a 'feature' would be worth the effort.

It appears that a 'feature' just amounts to a paragraph and a thumbnail on a 'featured artists' page.  Have others gotten these emails, or already been 'featured' and if so, did that generate any sales?

How many of you have received the nice email saying "your images are trending", telling you your CTR is in the top 10%, and you should submit more images to sit there without selling, until the end of time?