MicrostockGroup

176

General Stock Discussion / Are Europeans less paranoid about trademarks and logos?

« on: May 19, 2009, 10:46 »

Fotolia seems to accept many images of computer hardware that all north-american agencies rejected. I managed to sell couple pictures with computer memory there.

177

General Stock Discussion / Mid-month catastrophy

« on: May 15, 2009, 12:51 »

My sales are diving this month across the board.

178

General Stock Discussion / Selling pictures from your own site?

« on: May 13, 2009, 14:17 »

I was looking around to learn if any of existing free CMS (e.g Drupal) got add-ons for gallery with shopping cart that could be easily add to my site. Ideally images should be hosted on some storage site like Amazon S3 and cart should handle Paypal or Amazon FPS. Gallery 2 got integration with some photo printing services, maybe it could be adapted to sell images instead?

179

Shutterstock.com / Is search engine totally messed up now?

« on: May 13, 2009, 10:46 »

It seems like my sales went down to almost zero so I started looking at how search works now and it seems to be a little weird. I tried "memorial day" and result are kind of weird. In top 10 there are 3 pictures of woman laying in the spa. There is no word "memorial" in keywords but there is word "day". Since I do not know how to make logical AND it seems like they just mixed up results from two searches for a single word but not intersection of terms I would expect.

http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&searchterm=memorial+day&anyorall=all&search_cat=&search_group=photos&orient=all&photographer_name=&searchtermx=&safesearch=1&color=

180

Computer Hardware / What's the fastest equipment for reading CF cards?

« on: May 12, 2009, 13:51 »

Upgraded camera and files are now 25mb so importing pictures takes forever. It seems like USB reader will be slow too. Which route is best firewire external reader or portable drive with card reader? Are there any external SATA readers on a market?

181

General Stock Discussion / Fotomoto

« on: May 11, 2009, 14:10 »

fotomoto.com
It looks promising. Images sit on your website, no subscription fees, put some code and voila you can sell prints. I am waiting for invitation. Hopefully later you can sell images also. No middleman but you need to do marketing yourself.

182

iStockPhoto.com / How biloba is not fully relevant to Ginkgo biloba tree?

« on: May 04, 2009, 12:51 »

We can argue about other keywords. I think this plant is used in alternative medicine that's why I added these keywords.

{[ Choice, biloba, Growth, Recovery, Healthcare And Medicine, Healthcare And Medicine, Healthcare And Medicine, Herbal Medicine (Alternative Medicine), Herbal Medicine (Alternative Medicine), Homeopathic Medicine, Healthcare And Medicine, Healthcare And Medicine, Decoration, Medicine]}

183

General Stock Discussion / What is most important to succeed in microstock?

« on: May 01, 2009, 13:29 »

I got my coffee so I am in good mood to start discussion ;-) Let's say 25% equipment, 25% photographic skills, 50% post processing (Photoshop). What do you think? Theoretical example: graphics designer with high-end compact camera and no training in photography should do quite well since every mistakes can be corrected in PS.

184

Lighting / Smith-Victor FL150 Kit

« on: April 30, 2009, 13:14 »

Any experience with this kit? I am looking for starter strobe kit for portraits or small object photography?

1-LIGHT 110 WATT-SECOND BASIC ADD-ON KIT WITH UMBRELLA
Part #:    401507
Dimensions:    13 in. (W) x 26 in. (L) x 13 in. (D)
Weight:    10    lbs.
Details:    • 1 FL110i Monolight

• 1 Sync Cord
• 1 60-watt Quartz Modeling Lamp
• 1 45 in. Black-Backed White Umbrella
• 1 Raven RS8 8 ft. Black Aluminum Light Stand
• 1 Lighting Guide: Imaging with Light

185

Shutterstock.com / Titles may not contain camera name, web addresses, or other unnecessary info

« on: April 24, 2009, 13:33 »

I must be some new rejection trend since they made article about it. When I got this rejection it was clear that reviewer was taking IPTC caption as a title.

http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/pdf/IPTC_mapped_fields.pdf

186

Canon / My little 5Dmk2 noise test

« on: April 17, 2009, 00:46 »

ISO800:

ISO1600:

ISO3200:

ISO6400:

ISO12800:

ISO25600:

187

CanStockPhoto.com / My first FotoSearch Regular - $19.80

« on: April 16, 2009, 21:47 »

After initial 3 subs there was nothing for couple weeks and today I got first "real" sale :-)

188

General Stock Discussion / Sold christmas decoration photo today...

« on: April 16, 2009, 12:45 »

Somebody must have very slow reflexes, it's week after Easter :-)

189

Canon / Unpacking 5DmK2

« on: April 15, 2009, 17:16 »

It arrived at the beginning of this week. It seems like the only thing that does not fit is battery. User interface changed a little but I guess I will get used to it soon. The thing that really surprised me at first was Auto ISO setting, I thought it should default to 100.

What custom functions do you recommend to set?

190

General Stock Discussion / Footage - anything up to 60s???

« on: March 26, 2009, 14:44 »

That what I read on SS page about requirements. I guess I can cut bunch of 60s clips from my home videos :-)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1DbXgeGCrI[/youtube]

191

General Stock Discussion / Wow, my first EL on DT and 123RF

« on: March 26, 2009, 14:35 »

I only wish I could see which photo on 123rf. I guess they update stats once a day.

192

General Stock Discussion / 5Dmk2 out of stock again?

« on: March 24, 2009, 12:49 »

I ordered on Amazon month ago and now they send me notice that shipment is going to be delayed again.

193

General Stock Discussion / So far: BME on DT & StockXpert, WME on SS

« on: March 24, 2009, 12:47 »

My estimates shows that week before end of month it's going to be disaster on SS. At the same time I got very surprising results on DT and StockXpert.

194

Photo Critique / Is this photo underexposed?

« on: March 12, 2009, 14:34 »

195

General Stock Discussion / How much your best photo has earned in microstock?

« on: March 06, 2009, 16:49 »

Finally I noticed that I can get this info from Lookstat :-)

196

General Stock Discussion / What software are you using to produce microstock images?

« on: March 06, 2009, 16:33 »

Choose up to 5 used mostly

197

General Stock Discussion / What camera are you using for microstock?

« on: February 26, 2009, 15:50 »

Let's just limit it to your primary camera.

198

General Stock Discussion / I reached plateau

« on: February 26, 2009, 14:49 »

I have seen same level of sales or small decline for last couple months despite of my efforts. So I wonder if this is just related to recession or maybe I need some time off :-)

199

Dreamstime.com / My image was used in Dreamstime blog article

« on: February 23, 2009, 17:07 »

I did not notice this until today. Are there any benefits from being used in blog article?

200

CanStockPhoto.com / First sale on CanStockPhoto

« on: February 13, 2009, 16:26 »

It took 3 months to make it happen. Unfortunately it's Fotosearch subscription...