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1001
« on: January 15, 2009, 14:19 »
...or his wife ... or his kids??? Would they be "homophobic" to see him there? If his wife or his kids, or "homophobes" for that matter, see him in the GayTimes, I think they have some explanations to do first  Homophobes are mostly closeted gays in a state of denial. Straights just don't care.
1002
« on: January 15, 2009, 14:11 »
Personally don't care - maybe the model IS gay or maybe they asked.  Well it's not about what some people might think, but about what the model thinks. I figure that was the question originally. But nevertheless, sexual orientation is not as neutral an issue as vegetarian/meateater, and then there is the crazy American legal system that allows trillions for the most exotic "damages". So it would be wise indeed to ask the model beforehand. I have a very strict clause in my generic MRF that the use of the Photographs is beyond discussion. I don't mention slanderous or sensitive use in it at all. The Photographs and their use are beyond our control. I tell that the models beforehand.
1003
« on: January 15, 2009, 13:46 »
If an actor plays Hamlet, does that imply he is Hamlet? Modeling is about acting and impersonating. I never shot a real businessman but my port is full of "businessmen". I always tell my models that they can be used to promote anything. A vegetarian can be used in an ad for meat. I shot an atheist boy recently as "Muslim girl with headscarf". If they have second thoughts about the job, that's fine, but then I don't want them. You could argue about slanderous use, but as Obama said that race is not an issue, you can as well argue that sexual orientation is not an issue. If I'm right, this is 2009. 
1004
« on: January 15, 2009, 07:59 »
For what it's worth, the last normal month was November: 32$ with 450 online then. December was 11$ and October 13$, but those were not normal months. Taking an average of 20$ per 500 shots, I would extrapolate you can have 100$/month with 2,500-3,000 pics. Of course it depends to the content of your portfolio. My top sellers are nature/landmarks, not models, just like on SS.
123RF is a nice little low maintenance site with stable and slowly growing earnings. I love their Model Release Attach module, no categories and no fuzz no drama FTP upload and submitting.
1005
« on: January 15, 2009, 06:37 »
Okay, good to hear it's not just happening to me. I'm sure it will be fixed soon.
It's already fixed for half a day. Uploaded this morning without a glitch.
1006
« on: January 15, 2009, 06:31 »
But I'm still interested in knowing which advantages offer studio strobes. Depth of field. You can do frontal flashing with softboxes without having hard shadows. With a cam strobe you are bound to do ceiling-bouncing which is much less efficient lightwise spoken. With ceiling-bouncing, the most I can do is 5.6 on 160 ISO. With softboxes you can easily do F16 or up at 100 ISO.
1007
« on: January 15, 2009, 06:12 »
Would it be possible that the lower one is Photoshop'd? Can still see the shadows of the palm trees where there are none. Dunno how far North Cancun is from the equator but I can assure you this, living most of the year near the beach on 9 degrees from the equator. Nobody goes suntanning. You would be fried after 5 minutes. Everybody hates the sun. Everybody hates a tanned skin too. Fair is beautiful. About lies and advertisements, these shots of Boracay. The top one is from the Philippine tourism site and its used daily on TV ads. Everybody wants to be there. At the bottom is the reality as I shot it. Overcrowded, overpolluted, overexpensive. By a land dispute there is no sewage system nor fresh water on the island. They pump the waste water into the ground and next to it they pump up brackish "sweet" water. The sea is full of green algae by phosphates from human excrements. The World's Best Beach, hahaha. 
1009
« on: January 15, 2009, 02:54 »
From TechCrunch, read here. In late 2007 Flickr was strongly considering creating a marketplace where users could buy and sell photographs hosted on the service. It was to be called Flickr Stock.
Then-employee Sarah Cooper worked on the project and described it as The concept of Flickr Stock was to create an online marketplace where existing Flickr users could offer photos for sale as well as purchase photos taken by others. Cooper worked on the project in late 2007.
But Flickr abandoned the idea in early 2008 and decided instead to partner with Getty Images. A just launched beta program lets a handful of Flickr photographers sell their images on the Getty Images website. That program is being expanded and should launch in the next couple of months, Flickr General Manager Kakul Srivastava told me this afternoon. Comment of Paul Melcher: Getty protected its valuable Istockfoto asset thanks to this deal and delayed the opening of the flood gates. I would love to have heard how Yahoo was convinced to drop such potential revenue. Or is getty paying them a fee to be their exclusive representative ?
1010
« on: January 15, 2009, 01:40 »
Once you get your lightbox setup, I have a pretty easy to follow dodge tool tutorial for cleaning up isolations over white. I'm using the dodge highlights tool for a very long time now for overwhite isolations, but to work faster, I first select a rough outline around the object by the polygonal lasso tool, then edit>fill>white. That's faster than to dodge all the background white area and you don't miss spots and speckles. The dodge tool is not perfect for light parts in the object and in this case blow up the image and dodge around the borders (not going into the object) with a small brush of 10% maximum. Always verify the quality of your isolation of course by Magic Wand, tolerance 0, Anti-alias and Contiguous unchecked, clicking in the white. If imperfect at places, just invert the selection and dodge there. The Magic Wand will also indictate pure white spots in the object, like highlights in eyes. To facilitate the work for customer, you can paint #FEFEFE by 10% in there, after expanding the selection with 2px and a feather of 2px. Then re-check.
1011
« on: January 14, 2009, 22:04 »
What I see is not noise as we normally see it, but banding, which can be present in the original, but not an issue, and then be made more noticeable after the edition process. That has always been my nightmare with dark blue skies, especially if you add a soft light gradient on it to make the top more dark or you do for instance a Gaussian blur on the sky of 30px up. I figured the banding was rounding errors but that can't be the whole story since you have it with 16bit images TIFF/BMP as well as with 8bit. Actually that dreaded banding thing was one of the reasons I went to raw and 16 bit, but it didn't work for me. Mystery... I started to see this banding when I worked on my high contrast LCD monitor. It's less visible on CRT monitors. To speak in favor of IS reviewers, they've always spotted it, and the other ones didn't. Mohican: on topic and at first sight, the shot has blown out highlights on the facade and that's why it might have been rejected, not because of the sky. That's very easy to correct. Do a second development of the raw with exposure minus 2, then put this image in a layer under the original and selectively erase there around 30%. One of the many advantages of raw! Not that it matters much. I found out the hard way that shots of not well known historical architecture landmarks like churches don't sell well. The girl with headset at the contrary... 
1012
« on: January 14, 2009, 13:40 »
Like many others here, I am rooting for Dreamstime to take the lead. So far this month they are in 1st for me. 4 me 2. That will be the first year, actually. This month DT will be leading 3/2 to SS. And yes, I keep feeding the beast. I had 19 out of 20 approved this afternoon. They're still in the queue at DT. But Shutterstock is catching up after a slow start. Not for me. They are OK, but it's just 33c at a time. At DT, it's 1-3$ at every click. Last monday I had 6x the amount on DT than I had on SS. SS is great, but my months of 3 digits (a year ago) there are gone. It must be the economy. DT suffers too, but less.
1013
« on: January 14, 2009, 12:31 »
Anyway, in one year with 19 images (10 for six months and the other 9 for six months) I have earned $1363 subtract the placement fee and my net is 663. My production costs were low, about $200 total. Adding my voice to Elena, what is the kind of shots that are successful at Getty? It's totally acceptable you like to stay anonymous, but could you perhaps describe the type of shots? Thanks!
1014
« on: January 14, 2009, 11:53 »
Is it better to shoot RAW or JPEG? RAW. As raw as it gets. One of the advantages is you can recover blown out highlights since raw is over 16 bit mostly and JPG is only 8 bit. You can make omelet out of eggs, but not eggs out of omelet. Also, for recovering detail in dark shadows raw is better. Don't forget, JPG is lossy and RAW is not.
1015
« on: January 14, 2009, 11:26 »
Then combine them to be named Fleamart Photos. Why not FlemishArt?  On topic: I have my doubts about Fotolia. One time I lost my password and I had to resort to drastic means to have it reset. As it turned out after months, they reset it to "Fotolia". Very hard to guess of course for a phisher. When I first registered (back in 2005 or early 2006), they always threw me back on the French site because my IP is belgian and the French still think they own belgium and they have no idea the Flemish are their mortal ennemies. Whatever, no politics here. Sure they sell but I hate their categories. The only site run well as a business is Dreamstime  and I'm glad they turned out to be my best earner the last 2 months, even if I keep feeding the ShutterStock beast.
1016
« on: January 14, 2009, 11:18 »
That makes 2 possible scientific explanation:
---either your image stinks (WE KNOW THIS IS THE ONE)
---or your image is so good, that the reviewer wants it not to be in the pool (CONFLICT OF INTEREST) Correct. But they need the non-exclusives of course, so they can give the exclusives that good feeling of being discriminated positively. A sadist always needs a masochist to stay happy. Imagine iStock with only exclusives? How would they feel good then, knowing they don't have non-exclusives to bash.
1017
« on: January 14, 2009, 11:12 »
what's that scientific principle that says the simplest explanation is most likely to be the correct one? Ockham's Razor
1018
« on: January 14, 2009, 11:07 »
The solution is not the upload limit but deleting over million (billion for US folks) No, a million is a million, but a billion is a milliard in Europe/UK. Link hereOn topic. It's the site owner who decides what's "crappy" and what not, not contributors. It's the customers that buy "crappy" images, not contributors. If iStock limits its upload to 15 for non-exclusives, so be it. It's their site.
1019
« on: January 14, 2009, 10:53 »
Anyone else having any problems, or is it just my account? No I had it too this morning, even with content.cutcaster.com. I guess they're reconfiguring the FTP server.
1020
« on: January 14, 2009, 07:17 »
A bit out of topic - some statistics taken from DT (I guess the figures will be similar with FT):
Total number of contributors: 17.585
Number of contributors with portfolios of more than 100: 2,784
Number of contributors with portfolios of more than 1000: 256
Amazing! Only 245 > 1000? Can't believe that really. Where on DT did you find that? On topic: Overall rank 4620 7 days rank 3570 Sold files 236 Paid 220 Subscription 16 I neglected them for a year to be honest. Their categories are so time consuming.
1022
« on: January 14, 2009, 04:46 »
The commission is 12.5 euros a sale and they are a relatively new site. It is a bit like having an EL on some of the other sites. I have made more there than most of the newer sites and they are only selling one size at the moment. Hopefully when they bring in other sizes there will be more sales. Uploading there is easy and I do it in the background while I am doing other work, so it takes very little time.
Unlike most new sites, they are trying something completely different. Some buyers might like the fact that there are no reviews and they can decide if the image is good enough for what they want. Their collection is going to be different to the other sites that all have the same images from non-exclusive contributors.
Agree 100%. I cooled down a bit about their system. You managed to get a score of almost 1000, so you must be pretty active there. Love your Cornwall landscapes! (look at my comments). I keep uploading all I have, since it's just another socket in Filezilla, and three clicks on the site from FTP to publish. Not even MRF attach. For now I treat it as fun and as a log of what I uploaded in general. There are some fantastic photographers there, and the quality is surprisingly high in general.
1023
« on: January 14, 2009, 04:10 »
As for spain just get a nice pair of cassternets resting on a table with a glass of wine and the sun setting in the background..... There are no marine sunsets in Spain, since the entire coast is oriented East to South-East.
1024
« on: January 12, 2009, 19:18 »
Lisa, you should mention that smaller aperture means a hole or an opening through which light is admitted while f-number corresponding to it will be larger. But watch out. In general the optimum of a lens is 5.6-16. Outside that range, for instance 32, the lens properties deteriorate slowly.
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