Some of the companies I worked for came up from nothing to be global powers and on the way turned very inward-looking...sitting around tables discussing the value of values or mission statements a five year old could have put together with crayons. Suppliers and customers banging on the front door of the glass fortress are at best an inconvenience and at worst, rabble to be removed by security or fobbed off with a PR sheet full of marketing claptrap and a phone number for Customer Services in Azerbaijan (apologies to the fine people of that country)

This sketch is painfully accurate in my experience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUK-w_xbrTg

This is a new one - for me anyway:

Foreign Text -- An English translation is required for non-English text that appears in an image. Please provide translations in the title field. Note that images with large amounts of foreign text cannot be accepted.

I don't speak or read Chinese so I'm fracked on my Chinatown editorial images....Not that it matters since they also clobbered me with composition and trademark....I'm fully confident I will achieve a full house of rejections for one image in the very near future.

Apparently I've forgotten how to achieve crisp focus in my editorial work using an 18mp or 16mp camera - but not with my tired old 10mp camera. Either way, something is afoot - or a leg, or even a wing if you happen to be an SS inspector.

I wish I'd had the nuggets to set up an agency back then - I might have been in the Bahamas quaffing boat drinks with Beyonce by now.

Hopefully the new ones will earn enough to put aside a few quid for eye tests and decent spectacles.

Without knowing the income potential this is a blind judgement - but I would have thought anyone with the skills they are advertising for could find a more lucrative and satisfying way to spend 25-30 hours a week?

The very well built Canon EOS M with the 22mm pancake lens - the geeks rubbished it on release because of slow focus and price point versus competition....it wasn't THAT slow and has now been fixed with firmware and price drops. In any case, the image quality thanks to an APS-C sensor is genuinely DSLR level in a portable package. I also like the 18-55 kit lens but find it top-heavy in the hand. The 11-22mm is allegedly outstanding and on my shopping list.

I'd much rather they gave their sales force a kick up the arse and pulled in customers the old-fashioned way.

Have to confess that SEO is magic to me although half of my twitter followers tell me I can't function without it and they can help me "increase the optimizationality of my conflabburational sales and marketing strategy " for a verrrry reasonable fee..... paypal is accepted as are checks, doubloons and golden nuggets.

Total cloud cover in the shires - although I did notice it got colder and darker and the birds stopped singing....
.....I might have imagined that last bit or seen it in a movie though.

Plus they got it right on the tax....I confess to taking the added precaution of obtaining written confirmation from support that my form was correct and that tax would not be deducted.

I learned two things....never trust a man in green trousers and not all men with beards are hip or cool or even intelligent.

Fun though....and having dabbled in the antiques trade I know that what sells and won't and for how much is often a revelation....wait a minute that's also microstock.

In the absence of a  raise how about seeing more downloads in BRIC and MINT - the fabled new markets every European and American business is always blathering on about?

Brazil,Russia,India,China - Mexico,Indonesia,Nigeria and Turkey

I can't blame them entirely - just more companies suckered in by the Feng Shui nuts and workplace consultants selling them the nurtured employee concept. All tosh really and it costs a pretty penny to have these people come in and tell you your office is all wrong, wrong, wrong. The last office I worked in had air hockey and table football games, "breakout" areas, a free gymnasium and a discounted Starbucks on site. It gets old very quickly.

What most people (the ones I looked after anyway) really want is for everyone to be paid for what they do rather than what they say and to be reassured they will be looked after when times are tough.

I'm thinking about getting a turtle now though.

Good lord - my first "office" was a tin hut on a building site where "downtime" was used to settle arguments over the sports pages, whose turn it was to make the tea and who could fart the loudest.

WE CALLED SS REVIEWERS A DIRTY NAME......AND NOW THEY'RE REJECTING ALL OUR STUFF

Reminds me of a "conversation" with my other half who recently blew £50 on candles - went something like this:

Me: It's a f______ candle!
Her: No. These are limited editions.
Me: I could have bought 500 candles for £50!!!
Her: These smell nice. I've got Shea Butter, Jelly Bean, Aloe Water.....
Me: They smell the same as all your other candles and they smell like toilet cleaner!!!
Her: I don't care they were in the sale........along with these shoes.
Me: (insert sound effect of man gasping for air)

To be fair we have similar conversations about the money I "waste" on photography books.

SS reviewers would probably say red and green.....judging by their latest silly rejections for WB and poor lighting

Symptomatic of many of the companies I've worked for. Too big for their boots and sitting back on the assumption that brand loyalty and marketing bonhomie is going to paper over the cracks in their service and value. Also, pursuing the diminishing returns of short-term profitability by squeezing operational costs, bullying their suppliers and failing to capitalize on new initiatives eg. Editorial and Mobilestock etc, etc....

To be fair they (IS) are not on their own in this....like a lot of successful, fast-growth start ups they leave behind the people who say "Let's do this" and replace them with people who say "Wait a second....how much is this gonna cost?"

The days of universal pay rises in most organisations went away about five or six years ago. You now have to bring something else to the table. Also, SS have already made it clear that earnings (raises) are down to the individual to generate using the platform(s) they have provided.


http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=141017

Oops...Probably shouldn't have brought Martin Parr into the mix. Never mind....I'm also a fan of William Eggleston, Nan Golding, Stephen Shore, Bruce Davidson (see pic below), Lise Sarfati, Alec Soth, Daido Moriyama.......

My favorite photograph of all time:

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on February 24, 2015, 20:13

Quote from: Red Dove on February 24, 2015, 20:02
Fair play to him really for parting so many mugs from their cash. But I do like these comments culled from the British newspaper The Independent:

"I've never even heard of him," Martin Parr, the renowned British photographer, says.

Who's Martin Parr?

Works for Magnum - a cider company I think.

Fair play to him really for parting so many mugs from their cash. But I do like these comments culled from the British newspaper The Independent:

"It's an abomination," Michael Hoppen, a leading British photography gallerist, says of Phantom, which shows a shaft of light entering a canyon. "I remember when he sold the picture in 2010, my jaw dropped. I thought, who could be persuaded to part with $1m for a piece of tat? You could have done it with an iPhone."

"I've never even heard of him," Martin Parr, the renowned British photographer, says.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/photography/peter-lik-the-selfproclaimed-fineart-photographer-whose-work-sells-for-millions-9919427.html

Beppe might be right and I avoid weekends personally....but if I have stuff ready to go I find it hard to wait.

I suspect the people who cast runes and examine chicken entrails in a skillet, have as much success predicting optimum upload times as anyone sweating over spreadsheets and probability models

There really is only one way to find out.

I know this will make some people cross - but I wouldn't advise making any business decisions based on what anyone (myself included) says in a forum.....Unless you can establish a consensus backed up by hard data from a diverse range of contributors.

Ha...what are they going to do when we all have flying cars and jet packs?