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Messages - ShadySue
14151
« on: February 07, 2011, 15:05 »
I've also recommended in emails and support requests, that the developers should be made to read, "Don't Make Me Think", as they have no idea about Site Usability 101. If they had, they'd have designed their editorial upload page with fields in the order they wanted the information.
14152
« on: February 06, 2011, 18:10 »
Absolutely no clue why they would do that. At one point I believe the functionality was tied together, so banned from one, banned from both. But recently ShadySue was banned from the forums, but still had access to sitemail.
It is a little annoying, because there are people I would like to communicate with about business matters, but now I can't. And I have a few sitemails that I am unable to access. So, I hope whoever sent them doesn't think I'm a jerk for never responding back.
Hey, shhhhh, maybe they forgot, and will 'remember'  The people who matter know I'm on here too, so could SM me here. Some even know my real email, which I think I took off my iStock profile as my website isn't 'professional'.
14153
« on: February 06, 2011, 11:04 »
Oh, come on, be reasonable.  It's only disappeared from the Uploads page. Why on earth would you be looking for it there?  You can access it from all sorts of places, like the Sitemail page, or the Contributors' Lounge. 
14154
« on: February 06, 2011, 10:11 »
So the client payed $3.09 for the rights of a microstock Extended License. Good job.
In November I had some RF shots licensed on Getty by buyers who paid $0.35 , $0.80 and $6.40, there were some more sensible rates as well but it goes to show it's not just Alamy that will virtually give our stuff away for less that microstock agencies.
Yup! not just Alamy at all. Business and competition is fierce. Where is it gonna end? soon we will be working for honors.
Then we'll be paying them to publish us for the honour.
14155
« on: February 06, 2011, 07:21 »
I hate to throw cold water on the whole prediction plan, depends on how many get accepted. What goes on DT isn't always the same as what makes it on IS and SS. Also for me it seems they have been tougher on reviews than two years ago.
Certainly true in my experience for iStock. And take note they hate flat, natural lighting.
14156
« on: February 05, 2011, 18:47 »
And here's another question. In the article, http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=939#7 there's that photo of a sad-looking bloke looking out of a window. It's big at the top of the page and also lower down referring to captions. It says that a good caption for that image would be: A man and woman ride a tram on İstiklal Caddesi, a busy pedestrian shopping street leading to Taksim Square in Istanbul.
This caption is specific, to the point, and includes enough basic information to explain the image to the viewer.
I cannot for the life of me see what the point of talking about the busy pedestrian shopping street leading to the Square is in relation to that photo. You can't see the street at all. It's just a man looking out of a tram window. Fair enough to say it's in Istanbul, that would presumably explain the design of the tram, but the rest is surely totally irrelevant?
14157
« on: February 05, 2011, 18:40 »
Update:
I'm assuming the editorial pics are being fast tracked over the 'normal' queue. I've got all my rejections in (for having date and title reversed) from the 2nd, but my 'main collection' files from the 1st are still pending.
Likewise, Sue, all mine from Feb 2nd reviewed today but older non-editorial files still waiting. Oh, and yes mine were all rejected! Somehow I had managed to miss that the caption info had to be in an exact format (as with SS and 123). The format is on their Editorial use forum BTW for anyone else who hasn't seen it. No problem now I know that -and all the images were invited for re-submission once the caption is sorted. Regards, David.
I am curious. Is it simply a matter of fixing the Caption and then hitting a resubmit button - or do you have to re-upload the image and go through the whole process again?
I just noticed I left the colon out of some of mine, although the format is otherwise as required. If I have to resubmit 20 files for a missed colon, I am going to be quite peeved!
I personally think that locking the caption field prior to the file being accepted is just dumb! If they want to lock it after acceptance, that's fine. But why lock before that?
You have to resubmit the image again from your hard disc. Your main info will still be there: title, caption etc. You can fix the caption, and leave the rest if it's OK, but you'll have to retick for ELs, if you want to, DA your keywords and rechoose categories. I'm sure there's a way you can do it via DeepMeta. I put the point to an admin this morning that we should be allowed to change the caption while it was in the queue. Like you, I'm fine about it being locked upon acceptance. He gave me the same answer he put on the forum. "You must get your caption correct at the time of upload. Your caption is as important as the image. Just as you have to get your image right before upload and can't edit it once it's uploaded, you can't edit your caption after upload.
Captions will not be editable by members after approval either to prevent possible legal risk of captions being changed after an inspector has OK'd them."Which completely missed the point about editing captions prior to acceptance, while they are still in the queue. Oh h*ll, I haven't got a colon, I guess they'll all come bouncing back again. My acceptance rate will be shot to pieces, and doubling up on submissions means I'll be out of upload spots. Sh*t and h*ll. I also suggested: "Why not redesign the editorial page so that it has: 1. a field for Date 2. A field for Town 3 a field for e.g. state, county, province, as there are many occurrences where there are several towns with the same name in the same country) 4. A field for country (fields 1-4 or at least 2-4 could be optional in the cases of isolated studio shots) 5. Caption field. 6. Description field (optional, unless you can give me a really good reason why it's compulsory, when for many images - not all - the relevant information can easily be covered in a sentence or two in the caption. I noticed that someone later made an almost identical suggestion in the forum. and added: In future, why not do tests of new 'features' on people not involved in their development, not only a section of exisiting contributors and buyers, but total newbies to the site. This is standard web design practice. If you're already doing it, you clearly need a larger sample." I think it's really, really ridiculous that the 'hint' at the caption field says: "The caption is where you need to supply the 4 W's. Who is in the photo (if a person is present), What is happening in the photo, When was the image taken and Where was the image taken?", but that's not the order they want you to write the caption in. Again, poor writing and poor quality control. Nothing new here. And, again, we get punished (by having to re-upload, by losing upload spaces, by our acceptance rate going down) because of their ineptitude.
14158
« on: February 05, 2011, 13:19 »
Update:
I'm assuming the editorial pics are being fast tracked over the 'normal' queue. I've got all my rejections in (for having date and title reversed) from the 2nd, but my 'main collection' files from the 1st are still pending.
14159
« on: February 04, 2011, 20:06 »
That's interesting. Anecdotal evidence from the forums here seemed to suggest that SS was on the up, which doesn't seem to be supported by the poll.
14160
« on: February 04, 2011, 18:49 »
Also, the queue is longer again at the moment because many contributors are shooting up their editorial images. Almost 10,000 in the past 24 hours.
(I have no idea if these go to a separate queue - has anyone read anything about that?)
14161
« on: February 04, 2011, 08:48 »
So I'm now banned, by special request.
Hey, look: the Club of the Banned is so cool, people are asking to join.
Welcome! 
I am a little puzzled at asking to be banned. Why not just stay out of the forums? That's pretty much what I'm doing, just not wasting my time over there.
Thanks, Sue.
Tundra, I'm just fed up. With Lobo deleting my posts and not those of others, with one brouhaha after the next, the whole shebang. And sure, I could self-censor/moderate or just stay out of the forums, but I know myself. crap there continues to hit the fan and piss me off and I'd rather not have even the temptation of posting or having to bite my tongue. If the threat of speaking my mind in my own voice (and yes, sometimes that means with a heavy dollop of sarcasm) means sitemails warning me to cool it or be banned, ban me then. it. I no longer give a crap. Besides, like I stated earlier, there is this forum if I *really* have something to say or want to interact with my fellow contributors.
I hope they get it together and the company continues on successfully for each of us, I really do. But I'm no longer interested in trying to help people who could care less about what I have to say.
That's essentially why I declined the offer to become unbanned.
14162
« on: February 04, 2011, 07:36 »
Back to the extended licenses question.
I'm in the middle of uploading an image, so out of curiosity, I clicked on the extended license option explanation link and to my surprise, the ELs there are just the same including 'items for resale'. What 'items for resale' could incorportate editorial images?
A poster of the cover of TIME magazine, for example. There's nothing to say you can't put an editorial image on a tshirt, either I guess. "Commercial" just tends to refer to the promotional aspects of a license.
Oh sh*t. So either we have to accept the t-shirts or anything else they could be put onto, or forego the chance of appearing in e.g. Time Magazine or a high selling Guide Book (I guess there aren't many with 1/2 million circulation, though)
14163
« on: February 04, 2011, 06:29 »
A lot of their images are available in Alamy.
"We are eager to welcome new photographers with fresh ideas who can add new creative stock images to our library on a consistent basis. Because our professional reputation depends on the quality of the images we represent, our critical standards are very high. So dont be discouraged if we say no; you can always try again in a year or two. Your initial selection should have between 150 and 300 images representative of your style and general subject matter. To help us decide whether your work is appropriate to us, please first complete our questionnaire form.
Once our picture editor has reviewed your pictures, we will write tou you to let you know our decision. If you are successful, RH Library will expect to receive submissions of 250 images or more of equal quality at least twice a year. "
14164
« on: February 04, 2011, 06:25 »
Andrew linked to the Editorial article again in his first post in the Editorial Use Only - Uploads Open thread. In the article it says :
" All captions must include:
The date the image was taken.
The country of origin where the image was taken.
A brief but detailed description of what the image is. This description must quickly and accurately explain to anyone looking at the image who or what is in the picture, where and when the event takes place, and what exactly is going on.
Your caption only needs to be two or three sentences. In the first sentence, describe the subject of the image in the present tense, and then where and when you took the image.
In the second sentence add any additional information you have about the background on what's happening, and why it is of interest"
It seemed pretty clear to me, then, that caption' s first sentence should describe the scene, and where and when the image was taken.
Indeed, but it's overkill. Most of my editorial shots are simple location shots. Title: e.g. "Men pulling passengers in pousse-pousees, Toliara, Madagascar" Caption: date and "Men pulling passengers in pousse-pousees (traditional wooden rickshaws), Toliara, Madagascar" Or, to follow the example, date, Toliara/Tulear, Madagascar and "Men pulling passengers in pousse-pousses" As it's a digital image, the date is taken from the camera (ouch! I didn't change the camera date/time on my last two trips) then you choose a country of location from the dropdown. And then there's a compulsory description field. So all I can write is 'men pulling pousse-pousses' just so that I can actually submit the images. Note that Andrew's instructions seem to have a 'description' within the caption. I'm sure that's just bad writing, but it's all we have to go on. Well, I guess I'll get them all flung back. But I'm sure there'll be plenty of time to redo them before launch date.
14165
« on: February 03, 2011, 20:54 »
So I'm now banned, by special request.
Hey, look: the Club of the Banned is so cool, people are asking to join. Welcome!
14166
« on: February 03, 2011, 19:09 »
Back to the extended licenses question.
I'm in the middle of uploading an image, so out of curiosity, I clicked on the extended license option explanation link and to my surprise, the ELs there are just the same including 'items for resale'. What 'items for resale' could incorportate editorial images?
Also although I've seen it's been said that editorial files will have big red signs making it clear that their use is for editorial only, will buyers also be told that they must not manipulate these images to distort truth, even such as defacing faces or figures of people in the photos?
I'd SM RM, but he hasn't replied to my previous queries, sent the day editorial was announced. Has a 'dedicated' admin for editorial been appointed yet.
14167
« on: February 03, 2011, 17:27 »
I was just about to be offended that they didn't like any of my pics enough to pay 3.09 when I noticed it was RF sales. I'd better check my setting, I'm 'in' to the newspaper scheme, but all my images are tagged as licensed, which I'd guess is what newspapers need more (editoral pics).
This must be another deal, maybe not newspapers, if they only take RF.
Curious.
14168
« on: February 03, 2011, 11:40 »
There is so much wrong in this scenario.
The biggest Microstock image supplier in the industry happily announces to leave the office during christmas holidays.
Hellooooo, there are people on this planet that don't celebrate christmas and do business as usual. Unbelievable to leave such a big company on auto-pilot. And I don't even know if they learned from this mistake.
I wrote to them and suggested they hire some militant atheists who wouldn't mind working over the holiday period. Seems incredibly obvious. I don't think it could be advertised as such in the UK, but maybe other places? But I guess you could phrase the job advert to indicate that working over Christmas and/or Easter would be required.
14169
« on: February 03, 2011, 10:19 »
Previously taking 80% of non-exclusives to run an "unsustainable business", I would have expected iStock to be so smart to get an insurance for such cases.
We, the contributors, are not protected whatsoever by the largest image supplier on this planet as it appears that they didn't even consider becoming a victim of online crime.
Oh, they considered it OK, but didn't want to eat into their huge profits by insuring against it. From the SpinDoctor's OP: "Since early December, we've seen an increase in downloads of images using fraudulently purchased credits. We have been working hard on identifying and stopping these fraudulent downloads and have involved necessary authorities, whose investigations are ongoing. So, we are limited in the details we can share. Ordinarily, iStock does not take back royalties after verifying a fraudulent download." So it's clearly happened before, albeit on smaller scale. They took a risk, and we lost. From the thread below, we can read of credit card crime at iStock since at least Feb 200 9. (sic) http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-403-265-3062
14170
« on: February 03, 2011, 07:54 »
So I got today 2 sales of $3.09 each, on Alamy. Not Novel Use, I'm opted out of that. I couldn't believe my eyes and I emailed support, asking them if Alamy is going microstock way or what's up with those prices.
I got this reply:
"This image was billed for one of our key RF editorial clients. They usually do one bulk invoice per month, around 1000 images mostly RFs.
They do have agreed price agreement with us and these rates are irrespective of RF/RM. Also RF images are eligible for unlimited reuse and unlimited seat licenses.
Thanks for your understanding."
So the client payed $3.09 for the rights of a microstock Extended License. Good job.
See also this topic: http://www.alamy.com/forums/default.aspx?g=posts&t=9861
Yes, it's hysterical how rabid some of the people there are about micros, yet these payments happen. The thing is, so many newspapers in the UK are folding, it's understandable to some degree. One of the major Scottish newspapers just made several of their staff photographers redundant a couple of months back. The money just isn't there - people aren't buying newspapers, and the advertisers are also cutting down. Something's got to give. The good thing is that at least we have the option of opting out of the newspaper scheme (I'm in, for the reasons above, for all the good it's done me). Via iStock, I read that some Getty payments are much, much lower. (Under 10c sometimes).
14171
« on: February 03, 2011, 07:40 »
I bet no one who has any clout reads that thread. They put it up just before closing the office for the day, then they all skipped home for forget about it all. Lobo makes sure the postings aren't too bad, and that all comments stay in the one thread so that they can easily be ignored. End of.
14172
« on: February 03, 2011, 07:38 »
Welcome to that glorious Limbo of the Banned.
14173
« on: February 03, 2011, 07:01 »
Do they DL, ELs as well?
From the big thread, apparently so, though who knows why. Apparently a few of those which were reported to users, and by them on the thread as unsold were ELs (because of that odd way iStock reports ELs).
14174
« on: February 02, 2011, 20:19 »
One last thing then I will stop. I read so far the 20 pages on IS Forums... 2 things I noticed.
1. Istock has shown no proof of CC fraud... report.. anything.
2. I did not see anyone ask for proof of it (I could be wrong and someone asked but I missed it.)
If I had over $500 taken from me... I would be calling up for some type of proof. Even at the least to let then know I was checking... just in case they might get the itch to say in the future.. "They dont check on us.. we can just call it CC Fraud"
The email they sent us said, inter alia: "Please know that we take these issues very seriously and we have been working hard to identify and stop these fraudulent downloads. We have involved the appropriate authorities, whose investigations are ongoing and we are not able to provide further details at this time."
14175
« on: February 02, 2011, 20:06 »
If J-Lo can insure her Butt Cheeks against damage.. then IS sure as heck can have some type of insurance in place for this....but...why do that if they have all these people who they can just take the money back from the next month.
I'll just reiterate my hypothesis that iStock is one big experiment to see how much people can be shafted but still come back for more. Whoops, that'll be me: who, having uploaded almost nothing for weeks, suddenly took a notion today.
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