For anybody that didn't get payed yesterday and got paid the wrong amount today here's the thread on their forum:

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=344139&page=1

In case you haven't seen the other thread please view http://www.microstockgroup.com/alamy-com/alamy-creativity/msg255358/?topicseen#new for info on how Veer are putting your portfolio on Alamy, I've also added details of how you can delete your portfolio from Veer if they don't allow opting out from this collection.

Today I uploaded some photos, categorised and submitted them, just went into my contributor account and there's no trace of the batch anywhere, to make sure I wasn't going mad I went into my email trash and confirmed I had received the standard "we have received your upload" email.

Cleared my cache, logged out and back in but no sign of today's batch anywhere.

Has anyone else noticed a recent batch of uploads disappearing from your account?

I've opened an account and uploaded the ten files via FTP, however now I'm completely lost as to what you're meant to do with them, they all have a tick next to them but won't allow me to do anything else because I get an error saying they're not a .zip file. Any suggestions?

Also am I right in thinking there's no release folder and that you have to upload the releases with each future batch? If that's the case I won't be bothering.

This has got to be the most complicated upload system on any of the micros.

http://www.shutterstock.com/buzz/control-your-portfolio-opt-in-or-opt-out?sid=NOVNLS&utm_source=article2&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NOVNLS

Looks like Shutterstock have woken up to what been happening at iStockphoto, I'm not sure how many serious exclusive contributors would be interested though.

Just a quick poll for curiosity, feel free to share as much or little as you want.

I don't personally tend to shoot for the season, I'll have a list of the subjects I want to shoot and will do them as and when, I do occassionally hold images back and upload them at an appropriate time of the year, but I'm not a huge 'holiday theme' type of shooter.

My assistant asked me today how many stock shooters do shoot for specific seasons or holidays, all I could tell her is that I know some do and some don't and that some shoot nothing but holiday images.

So did you get up in the loft this weekend and dig out the tinsel or will you wait till March?

@Leaf

I know you're busy but lately I've noticed an increase in what I would describe as completely irrevelent threads being started by certain folks who seem to have nothing better to do than post what is IMO 'worthless dribble', I appreciate that there is the ignore button for their posts but that doesn't stop their threads from clogging up the home page when I pop in to visit, the result is that I usually can't be bothered to filter through to get to the useful threads - my request (if posssible) is to please implement a button whereby there is the ability for me (us) to completely ignore a thread and for it to disappear from the home page when I visit.

I appreciate you're not going to do this just for me, but I'm sure I'm not the only person who is drifting away from the site, so if anybody else feels the same way maybe add your opinion so Leaf can gauge opinion.

I thought I'd start a thread where we can post questions we'd like asked by the nominated five for the conference call with iStockphoto HQ regarding the recent fraudulent credit card transactions we have suffered.
Let's keep this thread precise and to the point, this thread isn't to be used for your opinions on the nominees or indeed the whole idea of the conference call.
Once the names of the nominees have been announced I or someone else if I don't say that I've done it here (I'm away quite a bit at the moment) could then contact those people and send them the link to this post.
Although they'll be required to sign an NDA by iStock and may not be able to give answers to the questions at the time being  should there be any legal action at a later date either individually or as a class action at least iStockphoto should then be in a position to have the answers.

Just to clarify something, for anybody thinking this is a witch hunt going after iStockphoto think again, this is to discover which party (if there is one) will be ultimately responsible for covering any financial loss, that may be the banks/ card issuers, security providers or it may be iStockphoto if they've neglected requirements for card transactions. I'm as angry as the next person that this has happened but my goal is to get answers.

The question I'd like asked is this:

Q - Who do iStockphoto say is legally responsible for bearing the financial loss of these transactions:
a - The card issuing company/bank
b - The merchant (i.e. iStockphoto.com)
c - Us (as in contributors) the victims of this crime being that it was our property (images) that were downloaded using the fraudulent card transactions.
d - The cardholder, the person who's card number was used.

For clarification I understand why the royalties have been taken back from our accounts as we can't benefit from the actual crime itself which is what would be happening if they left the money with us, however at some stage somebody has to be responsible for the financial loss.

Modified to add a couple of more questions:

Q - Do iStockphoto have a security protocol in place such as 'Verified by Visa' or after the initial discovery of Fraudulent card use back in December was one implemented then.

Q - Does and did iStockphoto fully comply with PCI DSS & PA DSS requirements.

Just out of curiosity I did a check today to see which sites out of the top 4 had the highest of number of unsold files from my portfolio, I was surprised to see that Fotolia had three times as many unsold files compared to iStock and Dreamstime.

How about you?

I've only included the top tier sites and Shutterstock has been omitted because I couldn't find an easy way of doing the test, plus I'm pretty confident most of my files have sold on SS.

Edited to now included Shutterstock based on Pixarts suggestion for checking the unsold files.

He starts talking about Fotolia at the 20mins point.

Not the best speech I've ever seen, see if you can spot the mistakes in what he says!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiOM9oy0hBk&feature=player_profilepage#t=1212s

Has anyone else noticed the following:

1. My account balanced went to zero dollars at the start of the new year, I presumed I'd receive a Paypal payment but four days later I'm still waiting.

2. I've recently received a few images rejected for keywords, they were put back in my pending area where I subsequently removed some leaving only absolutly relevant words, rejected again with no explanation.

The keyword thing is making me reconsider whether it's worth uploading there, for so few sales is it worth my time individually re keywording images that had relevant keywords in the first place. Without any guidance or appeal procedure I think I'll hang back for now.

And before anybody asks yes I sent a message to support last time this happened and received no reply.

I've just had another image rejected at Dreamstime with the reason "Too many photos/illustrations on the same subject or from the same series....etc etc", the image in question is based on 2011, I have a one similar image based on 2010.

I am totally amazed that reviewers there have so little knowledge about the stock industry to believe somebody searching for an image to represent next year is going to purchase one that features last year, and of course I can't appeal because it would go back to the same incompetent pea brain reviewer that rejected it in the first place.

Ahh just checked the latest additions to the Dreamstime collection, I can see where I went wrong, I did the stupid thing in thinking that submitting one single image based on a popular selling image that I did last year, stupid me I should have concentrated on submitting 17 images of a baby dressed in a frog outfit all laying on a plain studio floor with the same identical expression like the one's they've just accepted, naturally they'll sell like hotcakes because it's such a sort after theme.

If like me you're struggling to understand Dreamstime reviewers way of determining what makes a similar just search 'baby frog outfit' which may help you know what exactly it is they would like loads of.

Just read this on Fast media magazine:

http://www.fastmediamagazine.com/blog/2010/11/24/alert-your-highres-access-accounts-were-being-traded/

For some it's not good enough that they can get our work for nearly next to nothing but they feel the need to let others use our work without paying for it.

Just had this email from a company trying to sell me their services, it reads:

To xxxxxxxx,

 "I have some great photos. How and where can I sell them? I don't have a lot of time but I'd like to make some money. What's a good place to start?"

Are these your questions? Well then your search ends here. We are a one stop solution for all your Post Production requirements.

We at Photoshopmagic offer our customer a number of services to help you sell more photos online by providing solution about the business, with complete focus on "Microstock". With a Optimum Quality of keywords and trained staff to upload them to your account raising the acceptance ratio of your account.

Below Mentioned are the services provided by us:-

1)      Online Uploads
2)      Keywording (Images, Videos, vectors etc.)
3)      Online Submissions
4)      Optimization
5)      Stock Management


Online Uploads :- Click your photo graph and allow us to do the sale for you including retouching and raw processing or can just give us the retouched images and we will upload them on the desire Microstock  website thus you can give all of your time to do more shots and save time.

Keywording :- Keywords are the most  important  components in a image which actually decide the market value of a photograph and choosing them wisely  decides  the sales of a photograph .we here are specialized in advance vocabulary  used to search a image on stock sites  we are providing keywording services at a very affordable prices.

Online Submission: -   We have a trained staff to take care of the entire online Microstock website, which will take care of all unfinished & pending images. So you don't have to worry about any pending images because of model release or some missing keywords or inappropriate titles.

Optimization: - The images already online but no sale. We have the solution get your images optimize with us and see the difference in the sale's graph of your images.

Stock Management: - We take care of the entire stock site which is online by looking at various issue like Rejection, Duplicate images, Model Release management, FTP and many more.

For further details please contact: -
Punit Patel
+91 9320209128
www.photoshopmagic.co.in  

   

I especially loved their statement about keywording, here's an exact copy of the text on their site (except I've put a few choice words in bold) for their keywording services:



KEYWORDING :
This is an extremely important process for every photographer who is interested in selling thier images in the vast market of stock agencines to earn a STABLE, CONSISTENT and LONG TERM INCOME. Usually the observation and reviews mention most of the images are rejected because they don't have the keyword as per the stock standards. This is frustrating specially after spending so many days and several hard workign hours the effots are gone in vain.
All the images when clicked they just have the names as per the setting in the camera. Here we add titles, descriptions and relevan keywords since we already know all the stock agencines standards it makes it easire for us to keyword the images reducing the chances of the images getting rejected.



So it's something to consider if you want "thier" "relevan" services before uploading to the "agencines" after having spent much "effots" and long "workign" hours behind the camera, it will sure make things "easire"

Not mentioning any names here  but this is how I feel every agency CEO should act in reply to their suppliers concerns:

http://www.alamy.com/Blog/contributor/archive/2010/10/18/4845.aspx

Anybody else having intermittent problems uploading to FT via FTP over the past few days?

I noticed someone else has mentioned it on their forum, I either get critical errors or a message telling me they're only allowed 3 users on their server.

I've sent a message to support but it would be handy knowing if it's effecting anyone else.

Ever had a truncated file?

I was just finishing off some shots for a client and I renamed them to fit in with some previous work I'd done for them, sent off a small jpeg for approval and got an email back saying they couldn't open them, when I tried I got a message in Photoshop saying the files were 'truncated or damaged', so were the renamed tiffs, couldn't open the jpegs but I could open the tiffs and found the image had been split in half and lost a colour channel.

Luckily for me I always save original edits under the original file name to two external hard drives, which I re-opened renamed and saved again, this time it all worked fine but it makes me wonder why are computers such a PITA sometimes.

Just a reminder to everyone to never rename an original, this got me searching on the internet to find out why it happened, I couldn't find an answer but did find that once 'truncated' the file is gone forever!

Just saw this, the ultimate coffee mug for photographers (well those that use Canon):

http://www.pdnpulse.com/2010/03/swag-alert-canon-white-lens-coffee-mug-.html

Apparently Nikon made one as well but it leaked  

Is anybody doing the SS video interview and if so have you had any more info about it, the email and questionnaire were vague to say the least.

Just had an email announcement from 123RF saying they're accepting editorial images, it started with the line:

Yes, it's good news for those of you who've been waiting for this moment. 123RF.com is now accepting editorial content.

Hands up anybody that's been waiting for this moment

It mentions in the email that they want un-model released street scenes, do any of the other micros that take editorial accept street scenes?

Can anyone else get into their balance page on StockXpert, I keep getting the message that the site is being upgraded, I can access every other page on the site without problem.

One of my shots on iStock was used in the designer spotlight, I got the normal email and had a look at the design, this one however is different because the guy has done a Youtube video of how he did it, it's 9 minutes long but very interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGxV9r57Y00&feature=channel_page

Should have said, his brief was to create a Bladerunner type poster for a music festival in Peterborough.

My image is used to make the tiny row of Police officers.

A bit of advice if you own a Canon 5D Mark II, don't buy a Lexar UDMA card - the camera won't format the card, advice on the internet is to format it in the computer, that works and the camera will then format the card....HOWEVER none of the shots you take register when you try to download them onto your computer and when you put the card back in the camera guess what - 'This card cannot be formatted' error comes up.

I normally use Sandisk but my supplier was out and sent a Lexar instead.

Apparently Lexar have a history of cards not working with Canons - shame I didn't know that before 

Just had an email from Getty with their new model release attached, and IMO it's probably one of the best I've seen from any agency.

Tyler if you PM me your email address I'll send it to you and maybe you could put a copy up, it's a PDF and attaching that here is beyond my internet illiterate capabilities 

Is anybody getting paid for their sales on Snapvillage, so far I've only had one payment and that was after chasing them up, now yet again I've had no payment this month.

By my reckoning I'm now two months behind in payments from them.

A short while ago I uploaded a shot to iStock of a building with a large Closing down sale banner on it, it got rejected with the reason 'text could blend in better', not my fault I thought so I uploaded it again, you guessed it, rejected again for the same reason with a comment from the reviewer about using the resubmit option so I presume it was the same person as the first time.
And I thought they liked the shots straight from the camera, or maybe I should find the and blame the sign writer!
Sometimes you just can't win

Original that they rejected:


And here's the version I played with that they accepted:

Hi all,

I would have posted this on the SS forum but for obvious reasons couldn't, I asked them if they'd like to do it but heard no reply, so:

For those that are interested there are loads of photos from Shutterstock contributors on this site:

http://www.fodors.com/travel-photography/

Each image has a credit line with the photographers name/Shutterstock.

Click on a category on the left and then go to the part that says 'See tips and examples' and generally speaking there are normally two shots on each page.

Enjoy

Anybody get the latest email newsletter from 123RF

Good image of the woman looking at fruit.

Shame the image is from Moodboard which are part of Getty!!

Inmagine I could understand, or have Getty finally taken over every other stock site.

But what bothers me the most is why aren't any of my images in the lightbox thats linked to the newsletter.
(Please don't answer this unless it's along the lines of 'I couldn't believe it either'  )

Don't know about you guys but I'm counting the days till 'Punctum Day'.

I've got a gut feeling that this year they are going to do away with the stereotypical 'weird and wacky' winning image from an exclusive, and the winner this year will be from a non-exclusive and it will be a run of the mill image that's just nice.

I've got this little baby that I know people have held back on rating (or buying come to that) until this years contest was announced:



What about you, got any treasures buried just waiting for the announcement of Punctum Day 

I just logged in to my Snapvillage account to find that despite having blocked subscriptions (and it's still showing as blocked in my account) somebody has purchased one of my images by subscription.

I've sent an email to support but wondered if anybody else has had this happen?

Alamy have just announced a new license that will compete with microstock sites.

See the contributor blog for details.

This no doubt is going to cause high blood presure for some there!

I've had enough of their pathetic rating system, the final straw was the other day when I looked through the 'top rated' photo's, a couple of pages in and there were 26 individual images of single letters a,b,c etc, and every one of them had a number high votes, I mean I wonder how that happended!!

If you're to believe the hype that the admin staff post everytime someone mentions the rating system 'this sort of thing shouldn't happen and wouldn't effect where the image ranks, we have an intelligent system etc etc', and yet again here's another example of how it does.

Now I sent a message to their support the other day asking for my portfolio to be deleted, not a single reply and my portfolio is still up there.

I'm getting off all the sites that don't perform, the other sites I asked to get deleted from did it without fuss in a speedy way, why is it Mostphotos can't.

So I've decided to keep adding comments about how pathetic their system is on their forum until somebody answers my request, I don't like to do that sort of thing but it might get their attention.

Has anyone received their payment from 123Rf this month, it's normally on the 14/15th of the month?

I've searched everywhere but I can't seem to find how you delete an image from your portfolio at Crestock, anybody know?

Thanks