My respect to Daniel and Yuri to clarify and apologies if any offence was taken. Yuri is certainly a bigger person than me by having a direct competitor in-house, most be a great friendship - all the best to you both.

I'm still surprised and sad to learn that many seemed to be ok with hypothetically screwing their exclusivity agreement if financially beneficial to them.

Quote from: Yuri_Arcurs on January 16, 2011, 16:37

Istock knows what they are doing and are way better at finding fraud attemps than that.

iStock wouldn't be able to spot a fraud attempt if it slapped them in the face whilst wearing a t-shirt with the words "I'm a fraud" written across the chest. The only thing I think iStock are good at doing is marketing, everything else it would appear is a complete disaster.

Yeah, but IS contributors would spot fraud and out you - even if you didn't do anything wrong apparently.

I think if you did totally different material as contract work for someone else to upload to IS and never tried to use similars and rejects elsewhere you'd probably be fine legally and it would be hard to catch you.

IS has certainly shown that they will manipulate and twist things for their own benefit and I suspect they will more in the future. They have no honor. What anyone else chooses to do is up to them. IS can always just dump you for no reason if they choose, and you can dump them, it just might take a few years to get all your material free from them.

'Personally I take anything Jim Pickerall says with a pinch of salt. I only read the first paragraph of this related blog and it was enough for me to form the opinion that yet again he is using the shock and awe approach based on nothing but his own speculation, there are many great blogs on the subject of stock photography done by people who really know what they're talking about and I don't count his as one of them.'

Lol...

'Personally I take anything Jim Pickerall says with a pinch of salt. I only read the first paragraph of this related blog and it was enough for me to form the opinion that yet again he is using the shock and awe approach based on nothing but his own speculation, there are many great blogs on the subject of stock photography done by people who really know what they're talking about and I don't count his as one of them.'

Lol...

Sorry Sean __ don't quite understand the point you're making there. Are you laughing at Jim Pickerall himself or RT's opinion of his blogs?

I have to say I don't necessarily agree with all of Jim's conclusions but I do think he's quite generous in the way he talks about his own experience and his sharing of the numbers. Knowledge of the 'history' of stock and the financials can only help in our attempts to project what might happen in the future. It's only through guys like Jim that we're going to get that information too.

 Hi Jim and Daniel,

 Thank you Jim for sharing your work for free to this group and to Dan for directly addressing something that was built purely on speculation. Jim, I appreciate your writings everyday even if we don't always agree your information is always enlightening and great food for thought. Much more than I can say for this post. Excuse me for being the catalyst, I never expected this to be the outcome.

This post has been edited.

Best,
Jonathan

My respect to Daniel and Yuri to clarify and apologies if any offence was taken. Yuri is certainly a bigger person than me by having a direct competitor in-house, most be a great friendship - all the best to you both.

I'm still surprised and sad to learn that many seemed to be ok with hypothetically screwing their exclusivity agreement if financially beneficial to them.

    If you spent as much time shooting as you do trying to get someone at Istock to shut down Daniel Laflor, you might have a different point of view. You seem to have some sort of reverence about the sanctity of Istocks' various agreements and the "spirit" inherent in them. I believe that a photographer can and should use every means available to sell their images. I can also tell you with over 30 years in this business that my assistants were and are always encouraged to use my studio, my props and my equipment. Believe it or not, I get more out of their enthusiasm and energy than they ever get out of using my studio. I can give you a whole list of photographers that I helped start out, and it does make for a lasting friendship. As for Istock, they have proven over and over that they could care less about you, so it may be time to rethink that "spirit" you're so full of...

 Hi jbarber873,

    "I can also tell you with over 30 years in this business that my assistants were and are always encouraged to use my studio, my props and my equipment. Believe it or not, I get more out of their enthusiasm and energy than they ever get out of using my studio. I can give you a whole list of photographers that I helped start out, and it does make for a lasting friendship."

 Well done, I couldn't agree more.

Jonathan

Actually, if I were in Daniel's shoes, I'd ask Jim Pickerell to edit the piece, to limit the chance of misinterpretations spreading further around the Internet.

Well, we do already have this angry mob assembled, so we might as well go after him next. 

Hi Sean,
 Your message is a bit cryptic and I am not clear what you are asking. I don't think the word sorry was every used. Not quite clear.
 Jonathan

No, your message was intelligible, and I said "Sorry, what?", because it made no sense.

Quote from: rubyroo on January 16, 2011, 18:45

Actually, if I were in Daniel's shoes, I'd ask Jim Pickerell to edit the piece, to limit the chance of misinterpretations spreading further around the Internet.

Well, we do already have this angry mob assembled, so we might as well go after him next. 

LOL!!! You crack me up :-) this is funny stuff:-)

Okey Sean. My fault I did not see Laflors post, I missed it. My bad.

Jonathan

You mean, Yuri's post?.... (JUST KIDDING!!!:))

Don't get the point of the blog article. Or, in other words, don't think it has that much substance, at least not for well informed, active microstockers:

People who start out now can acheive great success and make a good living from microstock, as long as the circumstances (talent, investment, luck) are absolutely exceptional - we knew that before. Daniel Laflor is a very successful IS exclusive who started out much later than the top few at IS did - we knew that before. He learnt "a great deal" from Yuri - we could all see that before. Daniel Laflor decided to accept the exclusivity deal, Yuri didn't - we knew that before. The only thing that was new to me are the numbers that are quoted, especially those that are used to compare him with other topselling contributors, and I don't consider the numbers of the top contributors to be any of my business, even though there seem to be people who watch the top few more closely than I find tasteful. But then again, taste might not be a category in the top level of success in any business.

The first sentence of the article suggests that it is aimed towards macrostock photographers in the process of deciding "whether to retire from the stock photo business or get into microstock". All of us round here are already active in microstock, so what's the fuss about? It's about (a) a suspected case of rule-bending which is pure speculation and thus doesn't really belong here and (b) the old discussion of educating others to become one's own (and other's), then better equipt, competitors.

All of the top contributors have their destinctive, recognizable style; Looking at Daniel Laflor's port, I wonder about one "lesson" that Yuri has alway emphasised: Build up a brand for yourself. I for myself can't see his. That's a much more interesting point to me than whether they share sets and models...