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Author Topic: Art Film Stock  (Read 26553 times)

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« Reply #50 on: September 02, 2011, 15:32 »
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I like the idea of exclusive images but I see two big problems.  Lots of people think they can take 2 fairly similar photos and have one as exclusive and the other non-exclusive.  I think it will be hard to police this, how are you going to stop this happening?

There's going to be contract and yes we have some mechanisms we can use to detect such thing.

Fundamentally however, and what we've seen so far, is that most artists are honest creators. We start with that thought.


« Reply #51 on: September 02, 2011, 17:05 »
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To specify what I wrote earlier about "individual frame exclusivity", it should be "photo series exclusivity" or something along that line. So we are going to require that all photos from a certain photo shoot with same setup, model, etc. need to be exclusive. Of course artist can choose what to upload.

Anyway thank you for your suggestions.

« Reply #52 on: September 03, 2011, 05:07 »
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Just a question:
Do you planning putting advertisements somewhere to promote your site???
As you're in Japan, what is your selling strategy in your country???
I see you're promoting on facebook, that's ok for fun, but facebook isn't a professional media!!!
regards

« Reply #53 on: September 03, 2011, 08:40 »
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Of course. We have had trial run of ads in various medias, banner ads, and google adwords. We are now planning something bigger and are preparing for it by analyzing the data we've got.

Let me just say, we are taking this really seriously.

« Reply #54 on: September 03, 2011, 09:57 »
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The problem is going to be getting enough images to make the buyers interested.  I don't see any point in advertising when you have a tiny collection, that's a waste of money.  I would like to see a site get past this problem but if we aren't paid to upload, what's our incentive?  I like giving new sites a chance but there's already so many selling the same stuff.

I remember albumo promised a big marketing campaign and it never happened.  Others have spent money on marketing but they can't offer as good a collection as the big sites.  They just don't get enough buyers to make it worth us uploading our portfolios.  Why would buyers move?  I hope you can be different to all the failed sites of the past few years but you will have to come up with a way to avoid the problems they have all encountered.

« Reply #55 on: September 03, 2011, 18:40 »
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The problem is going to be getting enough images to make the buyers interested.  I don't see any point in advertising when you have a tiny collection, that's a waste of money.  I would like to see a site get past this problem but if we aren't paid to upload, what's our incentive?  I like giving new sites a chance but there's already so many selling the same stuff.

Let me say again, this isn't "hobby project" for us.

We are going to do "Featured Photographers" thing soon. The idea is to promote photographers works and also help them in their own career, for example wedding photographer, sports or studio photographers. And we are going to get some serious traffic to their pages. If someone wants, we're happy to interview him.

We are well aware the most microstock photographers are probably not interested about such thing and prefer to remain anonymous. That's ok. But then, we are NOT just another microstock agency.

Everything we do is based on the thought that we are not selling the same stuff. We are all about unique shots with artistic twist, and we don't especially care about "micro masses" of isolated objects, ordinary smiling people, etc. Sure at the point we do accept such to our RF collection and we sell them, but our featured photos or exclusive collection is all what we are about. That's the core of our thinking. Our niche is art that goes into photos.

We know people who want to get that business handshake shot, he can go to iStockphoto and then the problem is solved.

If person wants well executed, artistic photo and the original large film scan of it (what he can use for big print advertisement, for example), he can come to us. We're going to have tons of these.

We didn't put "art" to our name just for decoration. That's what we're all about.

« Reply #56 on: September 04, 2011, 02:45 »
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I hope your strategy works and I will be watching to see how you differentiate the site.  We really need sites that do things differently.  Photocase seem to be doing a good job selling more artistic images, so there might be a market for art in stock.  Many people have said that art and stock don't mix but there is some art selling well with the big sites.

« Reply #57 on: September 08, 2011, 04:21 »
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I hope your strategy works and I will be watching to see how you differentiate the site.  We really need sites that do things differently.  Photocase seem to be doing a good job selling more artistic images, so there might be a market for art in stock.  Many people have said that art and stock don't mix but there is some art selling well with the big sites.

Thank you for your comment. I also want to say thanks for your uploads. You have great technical execution and skill.

« Reply #58 on: September 08, 2011, 04:26 »
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We have released our Spotlight Blog.
http://www.artfilmstock.com/spotlight/
In this blog we feature our contributors and their works. We will also feature some insider tips for stock photography.

« Reply #59 on: September 11, 2011, 22:57 »
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We are now accepting editorial images.
Only exceptions are sports or famous people, and sensation photos just after some big accident.

« Reply #60 on: October 01, 2011, 01:08 »
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Starting from today, we are only accepting and selling monochrome images. So that's our niche.

It's much easier to market our site now that we have a very concrete / visible difference to other stock sites, we're monochrome! I know you probably think that now we're totally lost our marbles and that might be so.

But we think this will work for us and our contributors, since customers are likely to notice our new theme, and it's pretty good thing.

We're sorry for those whose (non-monochrome) images got rejected/deleted, but we welcome you to do some monochrome mixing in your best shots and reupload if you so choose.

« Reply #61 on: October 01, 2011, 01:19 »
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What?

« Reply #62 on: October 01, 2011, 02:22 »
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Wow, that has to be the biggest risk I have ever seen a site take.  You would be much better off converting all colour images to monochrome and giving the buyers a choice.  The monochrome market is going to be tiny in comparison to the colour market.  You might have a nice niche but I think it will be really hard to get enough content.  Are contributors really going to upload to a new site that only accepts monochrome?  You're also going to annoy the people that have spent time uploading colour images so far, luckily I only uploaded a few but if I had spent hours uploading, this would be really frustrating.

« Reply #63 on: October 01, 2011, 06:44 »
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!!!!!!!!!
Ok, so bye!!! I've sent you 350 pictures in the beginning!!! And now i have a blank portfolio!!!
Good bye and good luck, i will look how to disabling my account.

« Reply #64 on: October 01, 2011, 06:55 »
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That's interesting. I wonder how many people have any idea about how to convert digital to B&W. It's not just about desaturating. Even Nik software's Silver Efex Pro program doesn't seem to get the same tonal range that a good B&W neg will provide, so maybe you should be looking at going the whole way and stipulating film only.

Time to dig the Tri-X out of the freezer?

« Reply #65 on: October 01, 2011, 09:14 »
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Wow, that has to be the biggest risk I have ever seen a site take.  You would be much better off converting all colour images to monochrome and giving the buyers a choice.  The monochrome market is going to be tiny in comparison to the colour market. 

Surely we can't touch or convert the original images uploaded by our artists, that just wouldn't be right. We leave that choice for our artists.

The market might be tiny in comparison, but even if we can get to 1% we're pretty fine with that.

It's better to have that 1% of 100% than nothing.
Plus, there's going to be much less competition between our artists when the amount of images stay lower.

« Reply #66 on: October 01, 2011, 09:16 »
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That's interesting. I wonder how many people have any idea about how to convert digital to B&W. It's not just about desaturating. Even Nik software's Silver Efex Pro program doesn't seem to get the same tonal range that a good B&W neg will provide, so maybe you should be looking at going the whole way and stipulating film only.

Time to dig the Tri-X out of the freezer?

Exactly, and that's why we're going to educate our artists about B&W conversion, tone mixing, etc.

Tri-X sounds great, dig (and scan!) them by all means. We also support very high resolution film scans, higher than our competitors.

« Reply #67 on: October 01, 2011, 09:36 »
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Do you have a market for this? It's not going to fly with any traditional design house or publisher, you would really need to be developing the market for print sales and there are precious few of those around.

The stuff I've seen left on your site isn't going to win any awards, either.

That said, it's new and different so I'll give you a bit of a chance. Who knows, it might work. Japan may be more amenable to monochrome images than the US market.

« Reply #68 on: October 05, 2011, 06:38 »
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I ,almost, don't mind your change of heart as I had only uploaded a few images to you.  BUT, what I do mind is no warning.  Suddenly I can't log in and my email address is unknown to your system.  i want to know that my images have been deleted and an explaniation of why my account no longer exists.
I sent you a site mail regarding this, hopefully I'll hear back soon.

« Reply #69 on: October 17, 2011, 19:24 »
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It's a little bit off-topic this B&W stock-art thing...
I must say, I was wondering where the heck my files were gone. Did you developed a newsletter system? I didn't received anything about the changes. Anyway...
I'm sorry about the time selecting "artsy" images, managing and uploading them. Now I see my 5 most unusable files in the gallery.

Nowadays it's a big challenge to sell the stock images with the most potential, not narrowing down the collection to art-like stock... In top of that, the B&W thing narrows down the collection beyond any usability(?) Please tell me, I'm wrong...

« Reply #70 on: October 18, 2011, 17:17 »
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I can't help wondering if people have simply being scammed into handing over full rez files.

« Reply #71 on: October 18, 2011, 17:23 »
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^^^Not likely, they wouldn't put people off uploading if it was a scam.  I would think switching to a black and white site is going to cut their uploads by at least 99%.

« Reply #72 on: October 18, 2011, 17:26 »
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True, but they pretty much seem to have abandoned the site. Strange.

« Reply #73 on: October 19, 2011, 00:28 »
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And now i have a blank portfolio!!!
You're still on their front page as featured photographer. :-\ Maybe they should rebrand the site as Flying Dutchman (for the culturally differently-abled : an unmanned ship roaming the oceans).

« Reply #74 on: October 20, 2011, 07:17 »
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I can't help wondering if people have simply being scammed into handing over full rez files.

Sorry, I have to step in here. The owner advertised on my blog briefly. I believe that the guy is genuine about setting up a niche market place. He was/is a successful footage contributor at a couple of sites we all know. I'm more inclined to believe people who themselves are contributors and not simply businessmen who come in to the market wanting to grab some of the microstock pie. I'm sure he's been on a steep learning curve, as I don't imagine it is easy to set up a microstock site, but a lot of the microstock sites were in the same position when they started. He decided to take a different direction and if that was what he determined was the best direction, it was better he did it as soon as he did instead of a waiting a year or 2. We may not agree with this decision, but I'm sure the images he attained for his previous concept have been deleted.  
« Last Edit: October 20, 2011, 08:51 by Microstock Posts »


 

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