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Author Topic: great migrations of microstock photographers ;)  (Read 11932 times)

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« Reply #25 on: December 29, 2015, 20:26 »
+1
Excellent post by sgoodwin4813! Said it all, and said it well.


« Reply #26 on: December 29, 2015, 23:27 »
+1
I assume at some point it will reach a sort of equilibrium, and maybe then it will be worth it to submit again.  In the meantime, the largest collections will soon reach over 100 million images, covering virtually every subject and every location on Earth - how many more do they need?

At that stage microstock may get back where it belongs - low prices for low-cost images produced with entry-level equipment and a minimum of effort.  Hopefully at that point it will still make sense for those who stick it out.  If the agencies perceive lack of new content as a problem I'm sure they will do something about it but in the meantime they can just rake in the profits and pay contributors the minimum.

Happy New Year everyone, and hats off to all those who stick it out!  Best wishes to you all for 2016.

i edited to the 3 main points . .. not to say i don't agree with the rest of it but
para 1 ... yes, what else is there that microstock need that isn't saturated???
para 2 ...  those who stick it out are in fact those who are producing low to zero cost products
              whether or not you have an accountant's advice, that is the only sensible thing to do
             if you are spending time doing micro. 

but there is one thing that ss etc can do. do what canva did . do house cleaning eg. you really need one image per person of tomato on white, marijuana on white, apple...etc.
it would definitely not please the creator of those with portfolio of 999 similars of those objects,
but it will please the clients not to have to plough through 999 apples, marijuana, tomato,etc..
to find what they want.

but that would cost money to do . so i wouldn't hold my breath. although , someone maybe can
tell me, does it cost ss ,etc... money to have 999 more images of tomato instead of 1 .
i am not technically knowledgeable of those thing like bandwidth etc. does it???
if so, than it might be financially feasible for ss to do house cleaning , no???

para 3. ... thx... and the same to you.

« Reply #27 on: December 30, 2015, 09:04 »
+1
Happy New Year everyone, and hats off to all those who stick it out!  Best wishes to you all for 2016.

Well said, and Happy New Year to you too! :)

« Reply #28 on: January 02, 2016, 02:51 »
+3
I assume at some point it will reach a sort of equilibrium, and maybe then it will be worth it to submit again.  In the meantime, the largest collections will soon reach over 100 million images, covering virtually every subject and every location on Earth - how many more do they need?  There will always be a need for new styles, new images of old locations, news, etc., but nothing like what was needed in the past - most demand can be satisfied easily by current inventory.  When I first started with SS seven years ago, they had I think around 4 million images and were adding 80,000 per week - both seemed like huge numbers at the time.  Now it is 60 million and over 700,000 per week - how can we keep up?  With subscriptions I suspect many buyers now have their own photo libraries with thousands of images that can satisfy many of their needs for years without paying another dime to anybody, or they can just use images for free from flickr - I have seen a lot of that recently, even in articles by firms that can easily pay.  Or they will just take a pic with their cell phones and call it good enough - when I see all the poor images in published ads and articles with terrible lighting, softness, noise, it is quite clear that quality standards of buyers are much lower than those of image inspectors at the agencies.  I think for contributors the writing has been on the wall for the past couple of years at least and it is only going to get worse - Yuri was very smart to cut the deal he did when he did it.

At some point this will decrease new contributions to the level that the agencies will take notice and do something about it.  We have already seen iS relax standards, SS and other agencies lower their minimum amounts for payout.  I certainly would never encourage anyone to go into microstock any longer and I can't imagine it is very profitable for many people nowadays.  Production will shift to countries with lower costs and to those who can keep to a minimal budget.  Nobody will include expensive props if they can't make back their money, regardless of labor costs (or your own opportunity costs).  Instead those images will go to macro or the micro agencies will have to start paying more.

At that stage microstock may get back where it belongs - low prices for low-cost images produced with entry-level equipment and a minimum of effort.  Hopefully at that point it will still make sense for those who stick it out.  If the agencies perceive lack of new content as a problem I'm sure they will do something about it but in the meantime they can just rake in the profits and pay contributors the minimum.

Happy New Year everyone, and hats off to all those who stick it out!  Best wishes to you all for 2016.

You're on a bus, going down a mountain road, the brakes fail. As you head for the corner at high speed, and are ready to drop off a cliff you say, when the bus stops falling and crashes, we'll reach some sort of equilibrium and everything will be alright, back to where it belongs.

Microstock is an out of control bus, and we are just passengers. Things will never be fine or the way they were. You can get off the bus before the wreck, jump before it goes off the cliff or just keep telling yourself, it's all going to be fine some day. If you wish upon a star, your fairy god mother will come down and rescue you.

Microstock will never be what it was. Never Ever

« Reply #29 on: January 02, 2016, 11:00 »
+2
I think it's dead for a long, long time.  The output media - paper print and LCD screen - aren't going to create any need for more resolution or quality in the foreseeable future.  Subject matter changes slowly.  Clothing and hair styles are already so diverse that it would take a major social change to make everyone's images look dated. 

I suppose the emerging markets of China and India will drive demand.  But no one will make any money shooting photos of everyday life in China.  Prices will only collapse further.

I expect that the whole idea of imagery in advertising will change in ways we can't possibly predict.  The cell phone photo aesthetic is part of that, of course,  and that trend will accelerate, but there will be others.

One big mistake today's agencies made was deciding to let photographers do the keywording.  That left them with 10s of millions of photos with junk keywords and no 'search engine' will be able to straighten that out.   Another big mistake, obviously, was accepting tons of boring, low quality photos, and again, so-called AI is not going to save them.   So we want the micros to come to be seen as places where you waste time wading through boring old junk;  that creates the opportunity for new agencies to offer a better product and compete on something other than price.

     
« Last Edit: January 02, 2016, 11:21 by stockastic »

« Reply #30 on: January 02, 2016, 14:23 »
0
You're on a bus, going down a mountain road, the brakes fail. As you head for the corner at high speed, and are ready to drop off a cliff you say, when the bus stops falling and crashes, we'll reach some sort of equilibrium and everything will be alright, back to where it belongs.

Microstock is an out of control bus, and we are just passengers. Things will never be fine or the way they were. You can get off the bus before the wreck, jump before it goes off the cliff or just keep telling yourself, it's all going to be fine some day. If you wish upon a star, your fairy god mother will come down and rescue you.

Microstock will never be what it was. Never Ever

yes good point YYY
just like that ole james bond movie where the bus is over the cliff and everyone goes to the back of the bus to balance it so the bus won't go over...
instead of jumping off the bus  ;D ;D ;D

« Reply #31 on: January 02, 2016, 14:25 »
+3

I suppose the emerging markets of China and India will drive demand.  But no one will make any money shooting photos of everyday life in China.  Prices will only collapse further.


how do you make money in a country where everything from rolex to madonna to wine is legal counterfeit. the 2 countries you named and brasil are where everything is copied and sold out in the open. i doubt if anyone will pay for the use of anything.

« Reply #32 on: January 03, 2016, 12:40 »
+1
You're on a bus, going down a mountain road, the brakes fail. As you head for the corner at high speed, and are ready to drop off a cliff you say, when the bus stops falling and crashes, we'll reach some sort of equilibrium and everything will be alright, back to where it belongs.

Microstock is an out of control bus, and we are just passengers. Things will never be fine or the way they were. You can get off the bus before the wreck, jump before it goes off the cliff or just keep telling yourself, it's all going to be fine some day. If you wish upon a star, your fairy god mother will come down and rescue you.

Microstock will never be what it was. Never Ever

yes good point YYY
just like that ole james bond movie where the bus is over the cliff and everyone goes to the back of the bus to balance it so the bus won't go over...
instead of jumping off the bus  ;D ;D ;D

Italian Job the original.

What I was trying to make the point was, Microstock will never be the way it was. Agencies know they can do what they want and people will stay for peanuts. When artists keep sending work to small agencies that make little, do nothing but cut prices big, it's clear that artists will take low pay and undervalue their own work.

If people would take a stand and drop the low pay agencies we would show them that we aren't going to take low pay and price cutting. The small places don't make money worth the time to upload. Now they close and don't pay. Why work for nothing?

All the same files on everywhere, the only difference is price. That makes me see that the artists are the cause of the problem when we feed the bad agencies the same as the good.


 

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