Author Topic: Hot microstock concepts for 2012 (Read 17402 times)

Poncke · « **Reply #25 on:** September 25, 2012, 17:30 »

Well, I am trying to tap into some of the concepts of using normal people, everyday situations, panorama landscapes of travel locations that are not done to death, tourism photos, seniors, but fotolia rejected 60% of what I submitted. Only agency that does that since everyone else is accepting the photos.

cathyslife · « **Reply #26 on:** September 25, 2012, 18:12 »

Quote from: cthoman on September 25, 2012, 11:38

Quote from: sjlocke on September 25, 2012, 11:22
So, you can't shoot what he says not to shoot, and you can't shoot what he says to shoot. This is a tough business!

The secret is just to not listen, then you can do whatever you want.

Exactly.

lisafx · « **Reply #27 on:** September 25, 2012, 19:10 »

Quote from: sjlocke on September 25, 2012, 11:22

So, you can't shoot what he says not to shoot, and you can't shoot what he says to shoot. This is a tough business!

No, the real message is take your marbles and go home! Please!!!!

But seriously, I agree with Cory and Tyler. Best solution is think for yourself and shoot what you like.

Sion · « **Reply #28 on:** September 25, 2012, 20:51 »

Quote from: sjlocke on September 25, 2012, 11:22

So, you can't shoot what he says not to shoot, and you can't shoot what he says to shoot. This is a tough business!

My take is if you shoot what he doesn't shoot you remove him as your competitor. Who needs a powerful competitor like him?

Sean Locke Photography · « **Reply #29 on:** September 25, 2012, 21:26 »

Someone who believes in themselves and not in invincibility.

ClaridgeJ · « **Reply #30 on:** September 26, 2012, 02:10 »

Quote from: Poncke on September 25, 2012, 17:30

Well, I am trying to tap into some of the concepts of using normal people, everyday situations, panorama landscapes of travel locations that are not done to death, tourism photos, seniors, but fotolia rejected 60% of what I submitted. Only agency that does that since everyone else is accepting the photos.

Or get inside Cape Canavral and photographing space launchings, shuttles and all that

rubyroo · « **Reply #31 on:** September 26, 2012, 02:20 »

Quote from: Poncke on September 25, 2012, 17:30

...but fotolia rejected 60% of what I submitted.

I find Fotolia's acceptance criteria so completely out of kilter with all the other agencies that I have stopped caring whether they accept my work or not. I just pitch my work at the level that iStock and Shutterstock accept, and that seems to work for all the agencies except Fotolia.

Given that Fotolia don't constitute a huge slice of my 'pie', I'm certainly not going to change the way I work just to suit their idiosyncrasies.

rubyroo · « **Reply #32 on:** September 26, 2012, 02:22 »

Quote from: sjlocke on September 25, 2012, 21:26

Someone who believes in themselves and not in invincibility.

That's a brilliant phrase. I'm going to write that one down.

Poncke · « **Reply #33 on:** September 26, 2012, 11:49 »

Quote from: rubyroo on September 26, 2012, 02:20

Quote from: Poncke on September 25, 2012, 17:30
...but fotolia rejected 60% of what I submitted.

I find Fotolia's acceptance criteria so completely out of kilter with all the other agencies that I have stopped caring whether they accept my work or not. I just pitch my work at the level that iStock and Shutterstock accept, and that seems to work for all the agencies except Fotolia.

Given that Fotolia don't constitute a huge slice of my 'pie', I'm certainly not going to change the way I work just to suit their idiosyncrasies.

Thats what I do, well, process for SS, I am not on IS, and they all take the photos, but FT doesnt like them. The photos are technically fine because the only rejections I get from FT are too many on file or we dont like the aesthetic quality. When I search their database of touristic locations, I find gaps, I submit photos that fill that gap, and then they reject for too many on file.

WarrenPrice · « **Reply #34 on:** September 26, 2012, 11:50 »

Quote from: rubyroo on September 26, 2012, 02:22

Quote from: sjlocke on September 25, 2012, 21:26
Someone who believes in themselves and not in invincibility.

That's a brilliant phrase. I'm going to write that one down.

Sean seems to be in an especially good mood. Yuri must be copying his stuff.

stockastic · « **Reply #35 on:** September 26, 2012, 12:15 »

In another thread I'm ranting about 'focus' and 'lighting' at SS. There's a common topic these days: the agencies are all trying to become more selective, they're dialing up their acceptance criteria, and they're doing it in goofy and inconsistent ways that are pushing a significant number of experienced photographers to the point where they stop submitting, or greatly reduce it. I know I've reached that point myself.

I'm seeing lots of posts from people saying they've finally stopped contributing to an agency because of over-the-top rejections for content, commercial value, lighting, focus, 'similars', etc. We've all accepted some number of rejections in the past but lately it seems to be getting to a level where we feel it's just no longer worth the hassle of submitting, given the other factors of declining sales and commissions.

I think people who really take pride in their work and try to produce a solid product are the ones most likely to get angry about dumb rejections (especially 'similars') and start to redirect their efforts elsewhere. The micros will be seeing a higher percentage of stuff from people who care less and just keep hammering in mass quantities of uninspired shots.

It's a good example of the "Law of Unintended Consequences".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences

Wim · « **Reply #36 on:** September 27, 2012, 02:43 »

Quote from: stockastic on September 26, 2012, 12:15

In another thread I'm ranting about 'focus' and 'lighting' at SS. There's a common topic these days: the agencies are all trying to become more selective, they're dialing up their acceptance criteria, and they're doing it in goofy and inconsistent ways that are pushing a significant number of experienced photographers to the point where they stop submitting, or greatly reduce it. I know I've reached that point myself.

I'm seeing lots of posts from people saying they've finally stopped contributing to an agency because of over-the-top rejections for content, commercial value, lighting, focus, 'similars', etc. We've all accepted some number of rejections in the past but lately it seems to be getting to a level where we feel it's just no longer worth the hassle of submitting, given the other factors of declining sales and commissions.

I think people who really take pride in their work and try to produce a solid product are the ones most likely to get angry about dumb rejections (especially 'similars') and start to redirect their efforts elsewhere. The micros will be seeing a higher percentage of stuff from people who care less and just keep hammering in mass quantities of uninspired shots.

It's a good example of the "Law of Unintended Consequences".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences

You just nailed it mate, exactly my thoughts.
These incompetent/inconsistent reviews are still the main reason I'm moving away from micro.
I was just about to create a whole post about mass rejections on IS which never happened until recently when I still had a few previous batches in que (so now we know why)
I wonder though, if they are dialling up then why do I still see so much snapshots getting accepted into the libraries?
Anyway, what to expect from hobbystock right? Talk is cheap, action=reaction.

Good luck

ps. to show it's not all bad I have a +95% AR at FT, no complaints at all.

Drexxle · « **Reply #37 on:** September 27, 2012, 18:40 »

Guys (& Gals)

You cant expect a model like this to continue working forever. The likea of Yuri were smart to tackle this industry with such gusto when they did a decade ago.

Theres this thing called a saturation point, ive mentioned it in other posts. Photographers got screwed with technology for the last ten years. Its starting to plateau out now. Professional gear can seperate itself from consumer gear once again.

But now we have image agencies that have millions and millions of photos. Of course they are going to get stricter on submissions they have started to a reach a saturation point. Customers dont want to look through white noise to find one good shot.

Ive noticed, looking through searches, alot of these agencies rather than hurting submissions, really need to start culling crap images from past years. You can really see the difference in image quality from earlier digital to now.

This alone would create a better market place.

stockastic · « **Reply #38 on:** September 27, 2012, 18:56 »

Saturation, obviously true, and also new owners and investors casting a jaundiced eye on reviewing costs.

I'm sure the agencies feel that weeding out the old junk would be prohibitively expensive, whereas imposing stricter standards on new submissions is relatively cheap. The faster a reviewer rejects an image, the less time he'll spend on it overall.

My point is not that the agencies are trying to raise standards to unreasonable levels, or are doing an inconsistent job of it (although I think both statements are true) but that this will have unintended consequences, by discouraging higher quality contributors who spend more time on their shots and therefor need to get more of them approved in order to make any money.

In other words I think there's a point at which "raising the standards" - beyond what's reasonable - actually results in poorer quality material overall.

Drexxle · « **Reply #39 on:** September 27, 2012, 19:00 »

I have not worked in stock, i do IT for photographers.

I have watched this industry from an IT perspective for its lifetime. My thoughts are, as a digital product, they have no choice but to now go back and cull the crap.

They could start by running scripts to remove any images from certain cameras, certain uncompressed image size, image dimensions, etc, i have created this scripts in the past, they are not to hard. PHP can do this quite easily.

Alamy have 32 million imgaes, when i do a search on one of my images it comes up with a handful of others, they all look like they were taken with a 3MP camera in 2002. Thats got to look bad for Alamy.

Les · « **Reply #40 on:** September 27, 2012, 19:25 »

Quote

I'm sure the agencies feel that weeding out the old junk would be prohibitively expensive

Not necessarily, you just run a batch program that looks at the history of each image every night or once a week.
Dreamstime is automatically deleting old images with no sales in four years. Gradually, the criteria could be raised even to images that sold in the early days but haven't sold in last five years or so.

stockastic · « **Reply #41 on:** September 27, 2012, 19:26 »

Yes they could query their databases on criteria like image size or age, but that's the easy part, isn't it? If we're talking about cr@p I think the high value targets would be dumb, repetitious content and outrageous keyword spamming. And culling that stuff requires lots of human effort.

I actually think this is how new agencies will eventually win out; by starting fresh and learning from the mistakes of the big players, who are now burdened with tons of low-quality material and no easy or inexpensive ways to filter it out of searches.

oxman · « **Reply #42 on:** September 27, 2012, 23:15 »

What many do not understand is HOW you shoot a subject allowing for copy space and HOW you crop it to create tension and intrigue. You have to think like an art director or web designer. Also creative execution in critical.

Those who grasp that knowledge should do well regardless.

velocicarpo · « **Reply #43 on:** September 27, 2012, 23:35 »

Quote from: stockastic on September 27, 2012, 18:56

My point is not that the agencies are trying to raise standards to unreasonable levels, or are doing an inconsistent job of it (although I think both statements are true) but that this will have unintended consequences, by discouraging higher quality contributors who spend more time on their shots and therefor need to get more of them approved in order to make any money.

Exactly my thoughts, could not have said it better.
Another side of the Problem is pure incompetence of Inspectors to judge quality. When talking about quality I do not mean noise. I mean composition. Inspectors too fail on protecting originality. It is IMHO ok and useful to copy concepts and adapt them, but they allow images which are basically 100% copies which is very discouraging.

Then they are punishing creativity. They complain about duplicates and similars but as soon as I upload other looks or concepts which differ from the current Paradigm they reject them.
Pure incompetence.

The dominant Paradigm on the Agency side still seems to be: We do not know anything about art, composition and market value of an image so we approve everything which is technically ok. Now you could say this is true but anyone with experience who is watching some newly approved files on most agencies knows what I am talking about. Too much (compositing and style) crap coming through the filter. I do not want to post links to examples since I do not want to offend anybody.

Furthermore, because we do not know how to invent stimulus for creativity we punish successful microstockers (mostly VOLUME producers) by blocking repetition. Fail. Running an Agency is not only about setting up a nice site with a smooth Database backend and watch sales coming in. It is about to channel creativity, reflect current market and trends and be the node between the creatives and the customer. Worst job ever is doing Dreamstime on this (forgive me the little sidekick).

ShadySue · « **Reply #44 on:** September 28, 2012, 15:37 »

Quote from: Drexxle on September 27, 2012, 19:00

I have not worked in stock, i do IT for photographers.

I have watched this industry from an IT perspective for its lifetime. My thoughts are, as a digital product, they have no choice but to now go back and cull the crap.

They could start by running scripts to remove any images from certain cameras, certain uncompressed image size, image dimensions, etc, i have created this scripts in the past, they are not to hard. PHP can do this quite easily.

Alamy have 32 million imgaes, when i do a search on one of my images it comes up with a handful of others, they all look like they were taken with a 3MP camera in 2002. Thats got to look bad for Alamy.

Alamy would have no reason to do that. One of their key markets is secondary editorial where archival images are often required. Even nowadays, news and newly submitted archival images can be as low as 5Mb uncompressed. Although not all news images will go on to have a useful archival life, a program could not decide which - and neither could a reviewer second-guess which story or celeb will suddenly rise in the public interest again. The big story in the UK news last week was the follow up to something which happened 30 years ago.

With a trend towards smaller image use, buyers may not care what camera a photo was taken on. Of my top sellers in iStock, the top was taken on a G12; the next with a 350D and the next two are scanned slides from a Pentax film camera. Probably only one of these would be accepted nowadays, but they still sell. The scans sell from time to time despite there being at least one series in the collection now which is much 'better' on just about any criteria, and are almost certainly selling much better nowadays, but for whatever reason, mine must fill certain projects or layouts better.

Why deny buyers the choice?

Drexxle · « **Reply #45 on:** September 28, 2012, 16:51 »

They have a range of settings to start a cull. It is the best thing for the industry at this stage. Millions is getting larger at tens of thousands a day across many sites.

G12, 350D and a scan all are acceptable cameras from a tech point of view. The g12 is fully manual with a ASPC sensor in it. I have g11 to side kit my 5d love the little thing.

They can also use data in the database (input by both staff and users) to help refine this cull, any ignore any image uploaded as editorial.

Who wants to look at bad color rendition, jaggy edges, blocky old looking early digital images. Compare that g12 with an a95 for instance. I can only see a benefit, this is where fresh and active agencies will win into the future. This is why i gather Yuri would have created his own agency, finer control of whats in the catalog. That and he would have had hundreds of thousands of images in his name.

rubyroo · « **Reply #46 on:** September 28, 2012, 16:56 »

I wouldn't have any problem with a cull of older stuff, but it would be good if they warned us before removals and gave us the opportunity to re-shoot the subject and submit an improved version.

pancaketom · « **Reply #47 on:** September 28, 2012, 17:19 »

Some of my best sellers are from old point and shoots. Some are fairly unique images, others are not. Search position is pretty key, and that is what the sites need to make work. They also could have someone go through the most popular search terms and put some sort of modifier on all the images that don't belong (or just delete them if they are outright spam) so they appear farther back in the search.

This is what BM2 was supposed to do at IS. I think it hurt exclusive sales so they scrapped it (or maybe they just couldn't get it to work right).

On more than one occasion I have re-shot old p&s images with newer gear and better light etc. only to have them rejected or not sell as well as the original. It probably wouldn't hurt the agencies much to delete them, but it would make for a noticeable drop in income for most long time microstock submitters.

velocicarpo · « **Reply #48 on:** September 28, 2012, 17:23 »

Definitely no problem here with removal of old material. I reshoot the same concepts anyhow every year or two and it would reduce competition from the inactive contribs. But it has to be from the Agency side since no one is willing to disable their own files in fear of losing a cut of the share (like Dreamstime is asking for).

In case of Alamy it may make no sense but nobody really needs a Handshake shot from 2004 of a Point and Shoot anymore, so I think in most cases a script like this would be welcome.

Drexxle · « **Reply #49 on:** September 28, 2012, 17:59 »

You dont have to delete that stuff either, just relocate it to a mirrored system so that its always available (in case of editorial stuff, or if a submitter makes a request)

It is obvious as a business model, if images that sell from old cameras still sell, then an executive decision would be made to keep those images. There's nothing stopping a smart programmer from automating this on a tri-monthly basis.

Warn users, image has x issues with it, click here to complain, or it will die.

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Author Topic: Hot microstock concepts for 2012 (Read 17402 times)

Poncke

cathyslife

lisafx

Sion

Sean Locke Photography

ClaridgeJ

rubyroo

rubyroo

Poncke

WarrenPrice

stockastic

Wim

Drexxle

stockastic

Drexxle

Les

stockastic

oxman

velocicarpo

ShadySue

Drexxle

rubyroo

pancaketom

velocicarpo

Drexxle

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