My best selling image by far on IS has been [link deleted]. I was surprised when it was accepted on istock in the first place (no dynamic range to speak of). I'm pondering my submission of 10  images to SS at the moment and am wondering if I should include it in the selection. Any other tips on what to choose would be good too, as I believe SS has different standards to IS and I don't want to choose the wrong stuff to submit.

...as distinct from no longer istock exclusive, which will take another couple of weeks. I've uploaded an initial four images to Alamy that I intend to sell RM. My main reason is that I've decided to actually make a business of this instead of just a hobby that helps to pay for itself. And that istock rejects a lot of my work. Ultimate aim is to pay my rent from my images - approx $20,000 (AUD) per year ATM. Good as owning a house, which I don't. I do have another job so it will be pretty part-time. Anyway, will I be accepted? A bit of excitement in life again...

I know this question has come up before but I've never been able to quite get my head around how to proceed. I live in Australia. I'm a hobbyist who makes a loss on my photography and my turnover is less than $20,000. The Australian Tax Office doesn't want me claiming my hobby losses against my main income so at the moment I don't declare my stock income/losses and everyone's happy.

I'm currently an istock exclusive and they don't issue any forms, don't withhold any tax, and all is simple. However if I go indie I need to deal with SS (and others). They withhold 30% and issue forms and put me in a position I don't want (or need to be in) - dealing with tax as a business when I the ATO would rather I don't. The advice I've seen involves sending my passport off to the US or something and I really don't want to do that.

Are there any Australians here who have found a sensible solution to this state of affairs?

I'm currently an istock exclusive thinking of going indie. This is partly due to the current issues, but I do have other considerations. My port is approx 600 photos, but I am trying to diversify into 3D renders and I'm finding that istock rejects most of my work in this area. If you're interested you can check my work on istock. The renders are fairly recent so search by age. Question is do other agencies accept renders more readily than istock does? While I can see the reason for most photo rejects I don't get much useful out of 'the quality of this render is not good enough'. I'm at an impasse with it and want to find a way forward again.

I probably will drop the crown due to all these other issues, although I'm not convinced that other agencies are fundamentally better. I've seen some pretty severe criticism of all major agencies on this forum. Being a libran I'll take my time to make my decision. I have already deactivated a few images that I really don't want unrestricted use of out in the wild. Anyway I'm a very small player, and not really at risk with no Agency or Vettas.

Does this happen on other sites? New files are not showing up in portfolios or search on istock at the moment. Apparently it's a hardware problem - not the first. I'm trying to get back into it and files approved days ago have vanished into limbo. I'm wondering if it might be worth the trouble to upload to multiple sites after all.

I see that Yuri is currently at >990,000 on istock.

There are already signs of external search engines that will find images across all microsites. I envisage that this will eventually become the default way that images are searched for - best image at best price. When that day arrives there won't be much point having our images on more than one site. But how far away is it? And which site would be the best, if you choose only one?

I'm contemplating upgrading my camera to one with high res (as in MP). I'm currently using a Pentax K20D at approx. 14MP. Currently I'm istock exclusive, but may not remain so if I can thrive better elsewhere. I have heard that some buyers prefer to buy images where larger sizes are available, even if they're not buying the larger size. Something about respecting photographers more who have better equipment. Also, of course, buyers sometimes need larger images. Any thoughts on this? Alamy is also a prospect if I renounce exclusivity.

A related issue - I believe a few contributors don't upload their largest file size to sub sites. Is this general practice?

3D is improving all the time. Avatar was pretty impressive. Eventually high quality renders of people and products (and landscapes?) will match photography for content creation. There are already programs that can dial up a person to specification, and changing clothing/hairstyles/accessories will be a breeze. It's only a matter of time.

Take a look at this tutorial by Olivier Ponsonnet. I think the last example is particularly impressive.

With most contributors focusing on the changes to royalties, I believe a much bigger bomb is about to drop on istock. From KTs original post:

QuoteVetta Collection Changes
Effective September 27, 2010
Vetta has been more successful than we ever thought possible. It's been a wakeup call to the industry--it's that good. Vetta has far surpassed the definition of microstock and is underpriced when looking at any of its competitors. As such, we will be increasing the prices for Vetta content as well as adjusting Vetta royalties, which will now range from 22, 24, 26, 28, & 30% when sold on iStock. Even with the decrease in royalties, this will be a net gain for contributors, and customers are still getting one of the best collections in the world at a fraction of traditional stock pricing.

The Vetta Collection will now be mirrored at Getty Images under their traditional license model. We've been doing similar content mirroring with iStock Vectors and Videos for several months now, with exceptional results.

The Agency Collection
Effective September 2010
Later this month we will introduce a new collection here at iStock--it will be the first time we've allowed outside agencies on the site. The Agency Collection will feature some of the world's best photographers and agencies, selected by Content teams at Getty Images and iStock. Later in the month, we'll be inviting select iStock photographers to submit to the collection as well.

The Agency Collection will be priced at a premium to Vetta and will be available on iStock, Getty Images, Jupiter and PunchStock.

Exclusive iStock contributors will be invited on an individual basis to add their content to this collection. We will pay a modified royalty for the Agency Collection that fits between traditional stock and current iStock royalties. The royalty range for this collection will be: 22, 24, 26, 28, & 30% when sold on iStock. For content sold off of iStock, all royalties will be 20%.

istock is going midstock, with current Getty pros dominating. The micro collections will become the new Dollar Bin. Most current contributors will become irrelevant. Vetta has proved that the market can bear it.

The decision to go exclusive with istock or remain independent has always seemed something of a line ball for most people, financially speaking. Surely the significant decrease in royalties for most active istock exclusives (not talking about the bulk of inactive/bronze contributors here) makes this decision much easier. Quite apart from righteous anger as an excuse to jump ship, won't istock see a much smaller growth in new contributors henceforth? Maybe they don't care as the majority of their sales come from just a few top contributors anyway.

The qualifying round for the istock Battle Royale has started. First prize $5000 + Wacom Cintiq.

I see Yuri is over 920,000 on istock at the moment. Won't be too long before he hits the million. I wonder if there'll be any official recognition?

Can't get past the log in window - anyone else having problems?  It might be a problem with the network I'm on.

We all know that Lise Gagne is on the verge of 1 million downloads on istock. I thought Yuri, at 860,000+ was second, but the istock contributor charts shows two mystery people above him. One is obviously lise. So who's the other?

ETA: After the server problems istock had a little while ago a couple of contributors were reporting that their stats showed millions of downloads. Perhaps one of those has gone unrectified. Or maybe I'm missing someone obvious.

I've subscribed to the site's feed with RSSOwl, but it would be nice if each post listed the author without having open the page to find it. There generally is a field in the rss format for post author.

The site doesn't seem to be loading at the moment. With all the server problems a couple of weeks ago one has to wonder if they have the worst IT infrastructure in the industry.

I have a need to slide a camera in portrait position sideways to take two overlapping portrait shots and stitch to make a square image. I have a manfrotto tripod with standard tilt head (not ball head), but finding some bracket that can attach to it which has a right angle to hold the camera vertically and also allows sliding is problematic. I do have a straight sliding bracket that can fit to tripod and camera, but I need the right angle. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Most people are probably aware of istocks new star Elena Viverskaya aka Olena Chernenko. 0 to exclusive in about a month, and all of her port bar one now in Vetta. Helped by Image of the Week last week and an istock HotShot as well.

Her work is composited from photographs and hand-drawn elements, very artistic but I don't imagine she'll be producing at a very great rate. There's not much of this sort of work on microstock so it will be interesting to see how viable it is. Almost certainly not in the regular collection, but with Vetta, who knows.

ETA There are a few artists in the Steel Cage who could produce this style of work but the rarely do for istock, tending to produce mostly simple illustrations icons, etc.

David Revoy is concept artist for the new Blender open movie Sintel (Project Durian).

Here he demonstrates the use of open source software in his workflow. Alchemy/MyPaint/GIMP.

KT has announced exclusives grandfathered to next canister level numbers. Announcement here.

It's a long long time since I read Alvin Toffler's Future Shock. I'm pretty sure that's where I first encountered the idea that there is no such thing as a lifelong career anymore. I think he cited that the average person would have five different careers during their lifetime. I'm on my fourth (not counting microstock which isn't at the level of a career yet for me). I must admit I'm pretty surprised at what seems to be the underlying expectation of many microstockers - that they will be still doing this in 10 - 20 years time. Seems unlikely to me.

Some time ago istock reduced the requirement for bronze from 500 to 250 because, I believe, it had become a lot harder for newcomers to reach 500, and because that was the level required to go exclusive. Now it's going back to 500 and getting there hasn't got any easier. If the bias against non-exclusives increases or even if it just stays the same it will be very difficult for newcomers, with small portfolios, few upload slots and no promotion on the site to ever reach the point where they can choose to go exclusive and improve their prospects. The effect of this must surely to be to block access to all but the most talented. They can't be saving much money by doubling that particular cannister requirement, and yet it will probably have the most profound effect in the long term.

mevans has just reached black diamond status on istock. That's two 3D artists in that rare group now (the other is alexsl). Their styles are totally different, but obviously 3D can take you a long way (if you're good enough of course).

For artists who contribute both photos and vectors, what's the breakdown in terms of royalties for those two classes of media? I'm working at becoming a vector contributor on istock, and am wondering what to expect when I succeed.

I bought my first SLR camera in 1985, and that's when I consider myself to have become a serious amateur photographer. I bought books, downgraded my auto (Pentax MG I think) equipment to the venerable Pentax K1000  and learned the basics of photography. Field naturalists club, local camera club, landscape and nature photogrpaphy. Graduated from negative to tranny (slide film, for those who know me too well).

In 2003 I went digital (Pentax *ist D - never figured out how to say that), and mostly looked at my work on computer, with very occasional printing.  In 2007 I joined istock. So I've been working out how much money I've spent since then due to istock. Upgrades to K10D and K20D. I would probably have done only one of those if not for the XL size. Started shooting in studio - first hotlights and then some Bowens strobes. I don't think I would have done that if it wasn't where most of the action is at in stock. More recently, some class glass (Pentax Limited lenses).

I'll break even on my investment in stock (over and above being a serious amateur) when I reach gold on istock. 10,000 images, approx $20,000 in royalties. Interesting to note that, according to istockcharts.multimedia.de, only about 1,400 out of nearly 30,000 contributors are gold or above.

In the past couple of months I've increased my istock portofolio by over 50% to 326 - not a big number I know but not totally insignificant. I went exclusive there nearly three weeks ago and since then have had exactly 5 downloads. I was doing better than that before I went exclusive. Naturally I'm wondering if I made the right decision. Is it down all over, just on istock, or is it just me?

I'm considering applying to SS to become a contributor, but I'm a bit concerned about the tax situation, as I doubt that I'll be able to claim expenses and will end up being taxed on gross income while actually making a loss for a little while yet (hopefully not too long). For those who don't have exemptions is it proving too big a hit on income?

I take a bit of trouble over colour and exposure - use an Expodisk and a meter where appropriate. Most of my rejections are for lighting. On another forum one member claimed to have an acceptance rate of 90%+ on istock, so I checked out his portfolio and couldn't believe how light his images were - typical outdoor shots, not studio.

I had a bunch of resubmits so I opened up in ACR, pushed the brightness slider a fair way to the right, upped the vibrance a good deal, and resubmitted. All accepted. So much for 'well-exposed' imagery. Truth seems to be that successful stock imagery is over-exposed and over-saturated (compared with reality).

Just reveived the Yay newsletter and find that Yuri is now putting 20,000 images there. I wonder why he waited so long?

Theres a question about this on the istock forum. I'll be interested in the response.

Is it possible to search for images by photographer's username on Fotolia? I'm having trouble resetting my password on two accounts so I can't log in, and I want to find out if I have any images under those names.

An istock contributor has been denied exclusivity because she has works for sale on RedBubble. RB sells prints (mounted/framed), greeting cards, Ts, calendars of your work but not the digital files. Has anyone had experience with this situation? I have work on RB and would like to go exclusive on istock when I reach 250dls.

After a not very successful year on microstock I took a break for nearly a year to learn a bit more about art. Been doing some digital painting and 3D stuff. I'm back into photography again, and recently uploaded the first images in months. I'm more relaxed and more confident this time round. It will be interesting to see if I'm any more successful.

I've just challenged gswd to a battle in the istock steel cage, and am wondering if there are any other cagers here? This is my seventh battle - won 3 and lost 3 so far. With a bit of luck I'll earn myself a Mask of the Plata Bigote. I'm a bit out of practice though, and am definitely not a designer (or even much of a photographer). I find the steel cage a great inspiration to be a bit creative. Now, I have the first blow, so about 71 hours to come up with some stunning concept.

I've just upgraded some equipment - a new PC. My 3 y.o el cheapo PC was good for most things, including Photoshop with enough RAM, but I'm about to get serious with 3D work. So, for the first time ever I bought a high end gaming console - Intel Core i7 processor, 6GB DDR3 RAM, 1TB HDD. I didn't find any inspiration in the box, but hopefully that will come from somewhere.

JJRD has announced istock Collections - for fine art that wouldn't get accepted as regular stock. http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=80936

I've had accounts on several sites for a while, mostly inactive, under various usernames, but decided recently to stick with one 'brand' to create a bigger presence in the industry (which wouldn't be hard as my presence is tiny at the moment). Several sites were happy to change my username, but shutterstock refused. My first application for submitter, about a year ago, was rejected, and I haven't applied since, although I'd like to have another go once I've got my accounts sorted.

So, I asked ss to close my account, which they did, telling me not to try opening a new one anytime. Why do they make such a big deal about something that no one else has any problem with? They pretty much said that if I ever want to contribute then they might consider reactivating my old username. However, my other option is simply to try for exclusivity on istock. I know ss is a good earner for most people here, but I'm  wondering why I would want to deal with such a company. istock might have faults too, but support is not one of them APAIK.

I've seen quite a few portfolios where partners have been significant models. So, I'm wondering how many good photographers had the incentive of a live in model to hone their skills on.

It's six months since I uploaded to istock. Half my images rejected, those that are accepted don't sell anyway, so why bother? Besides, I've had other things to do.

Weekend before last I had a model over for a shoot for my current 3d project. While she was here I decided to take a few stock oriented shots, and uploaded them to istock. Just had four notices within a few seconds (so probably all the same inspector). Two accepted, two rejected for artifacts. Same gear, same light, same processing, only the poses were different. So what else is new? Well, they won't sell anyway, so who cares?

Meanwhile, my 3d project. I'm only a couple of weeks into it, so nearly a year to go. This result is not meant to be realistic - just practising my modeling. The skin is a pretty basic shader with some SSS thrown in. Only the third time Ive modeled a head, so pretty happy.



EDIT: Replaced original image with a more complete one, following Sean's comment below. Heads a bit bumpy - needs more work.

There's a discussion on istock at the moment about 3D renders, in which the chief 3D admin, Mark Evans, has said that they intend to segregate 3D renders out into a separate section (or at least be tagged as 3D renders). One or two people in that discussion consider it important to know if an image is 'real' or fake.

I'm in a subversive mood at the moment. My port on istock is small, but henceforth I intend to follow this process with my photos:
set up a plane in Blender orthogonal to the camera, with the same resolution as the photo
map the image to the plane as a texture
use the compositing nodes (equivalent to adjustment layer on PS) for PP
render
upload as a 3D render (which it will be).

As if photography is reality...

I've set myself a challenge. Within a year I will have a photorealistic 3d model of a person accepted on istock. I've got a model coming over Saturday to take the pics as reference for the 3D modelling and for image mapping the resulting mesh, using the Ballistic book The Face and a GnomonWorkshop tutorial as references. I'll be modelling in Blender. I could use MakeHuman (a parametric figure modelling app) but want the basic modellling practice, especially if I end up rigging for animation. I'm actually pretty new to 3D modelling, but am pretty good at getting up to speed with computer applications (though Blender sure is, um, complex).

I posted a while ago that I think this kind of thing will make inroads into traditional stock photography soon. I might keep a record of progress on the web somewhere - I'll let you all know if I do so you can laugh at my petty attempts.

Some time in the next 24 hours Yuri will become istock's number 2 seller. In all fairness Amanda has been busy with other things lately, but yuri's progress on istock has been pretty phenomenal, given the restrictions on non-exclusives there.

The end is nigh. There's some discussion on istock forums at the moment about the placement of 3D renders in best match. XXL images without a Hasselblad. I've been watching the portfolio under discussion (alexsl) and he's reached diamond pretty quickly. mevans there has a nice stable of sports cars that aren't encumbered with copyright issues. I have some images on one of the micro sites that consist of a human model composited into a 3D rendered office setting (I used lisegagne's studio as a basis for my architectural visualisation), and I'm very much a beginner at 3D. Photorealistic renderings of people have started to appear on the covers of fashion magazines. It may already be the case that some artists have a stable of virtual models in Armanis, able to stage endless business meetings. I'd say that 3d technology is about as mature as digital cameras were when they started to oust film.

Having lived through the days of intense competition between Apple and IBM/MS for the PC market, it seems to me that the open architecture approach of IBM is what allowed it to win out in the end. istock's exclusivity program attempts to lock photographers into istock alone. Sure, the quality is great, but seems that many contributors find lack of commitment to be an advantage. While the community on istock encourages new people to become exclusive, as these companies grow and become more impersonal, the lure might not be as strong.