For me, they're at about the same level as bigstock, but I have a lot of Norwegian motives there, which may help. They are probably rather local in their marketing approach.

pictures of the massachusetts state house now need property releases!
yup, that one came in from them this morning.....since when did the outside of a public US state government bulding need a release....

 I just had a reject from IS: It was an image of the Hua Lampong Railway station in Bangkok. Like all public buildings in Thailand, it has an image of the king on the facade. Removing it from a photo would probably be a criminal offense in this country. Still, IS needs a property release for the image. I wonder who to ask, the king, since the copyright of the image probably has been transferred to The Royal Household, or the photographer? Or maybe I should just be happy that the photo was accepted at 12 other agencies... LOL

Probably too late for these ones then.. Oh well, new upload tomorrow   

I do both, and most of the time, I follow a few principles:

- I never upload the same images to both kind of agencies
- Unique photos, either because of quality or because they are difficult to find, mostly goes to macro-agencies, preferably as RM.
- "Isolated on white" goes almost exclusively to micro-stock.
- Editorial goes mostly to macro-agencies

Most of the macro agencies are more liberal with regards to technical quality than SS etc., but if the photo doesn't have unique qualities, it will sell slowly or not at all. Unique photos, with maybe a very small potential as micro, may well sell for big amounts as macro. Maybe only one or two times, but sometimes, that's enough.

In general though, except for a very few top photographers, most people have a higher earning per photo per year at the micros.

It is possible that your lens isn't sharp enough at the smallest aperture. Most lenses suffer from diffraction from around f/16. I've found that a dedicated macro-lens is a big advantage when photographing for stock. They are incredibly sharp, and can usually be stopped down to f/22 without problems. I bought my Micro Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 used for less than $350, but both Sigma, Tamron and Tokina have excellent macro-lenses. A longer lens also gives you a lot more room to manipulate the light.

Quote from: epixx on February 02, 2007, 20:23

It is important to remember her, that the "personal, non-commercial use" they are talking about, is a very big chunk of the microstock market. If the personal, non-commercial users don't get or buy the images they need through MS, they would have to buy them directly from IS, FT etc.

I don't quite understand this statement. You really think there are a lot of photos being purchased for personal, non-commercial use on microstock agencies? No one I know purchases photos online for non-commercial uses. If it's not for a commercial use, they just use google image search and take it from there. How did you come up with this conclusion?

That depends on how we define "personal, non-commercial use". I think we can forget about the "personal" thing. Very few people will acquire images for birthday invitations from MS. The customers are businesses and NGO's. Most businesses will consider internal use as "non-commercial". That is one of the biggest potentials for microstock, since there's such a huge amount of internal presentations and reports produced every day worldwide. Those are of course also the customers that are interesting to MS.

I noticed btw., that when clicking on the istock link at the MS site, and making a search, one of my photos came up, and I'm not exclusive. That means that there's something to gain for all of us at that end of the deal (unless there's some hidden, reduced profit when sold through the MS-link).

well in terms of use on every single one rf agencies DOES NOT say: "images that are approved on our competitor - sites/agencies are automatically aproved here" , but it DOES SAY: " every image is going to be inspected by our inspectors, and once approved will be online for selling" (not these words, but this point ).
 for example i am in most active users on StockXpert. and my approval ratio on every site that i upload is between 75% and 95+%.
 yes a few days ago i gad rejection with "please upload better quality images" - should i be angry with that? - no. should i consider that explanation personally? - no. should i complain to site admins?(with booo-hoo-hoo text? )? - no.
 so, what did i do? - i smiled and said "o.k. - i'm going to make some better images" (and i did )
 so ... cheer up my fellows, get a smile on your faces, and... work.work.work...

Usually, I don't have any problems with rejections. I get a few, and they are mostly easy to understand. With StockXpert, it's different. A batch of very similar images, taken at the same time with more or less the same parameters, can be rejected for completely different reasons. They probably have a purpose with the rejections, but so far, I haven't found out what direction they are going, since they seem to go in all directions at the same time.

I don't expect StockXpert to accept photos because they are accepted at other agencies, but when they are accepted at other agencies, and selling well several places, it's at least an indications that the photos in question are good stock material.

As an industrial photographer, I submit industrial shots regularly, and some of it sell well. StockXpert mostly rejects those photos, for all kinds of different reasons. Maybe they aren't interested in industrial customers, which has to be their decision, but it leaves me wondering what they want.

It is important to remember her, that the "personal, non-commercial use" they are talking about, is a very big chunk of the microstock market. If the personal, non-commercial users don't get or buy the images they need through MS, they would have to buy them directly from IS, FT etc.

As has been mentioned earlier in this thread, this is very good for IS and MS, and it may even, to a certain degree short term, be positive for the exclusives at IS, since it ties the customers to that agency, but long term, it doesn't increase the market. It's an attempt to increase the market share of IS, which is legitimate enough, but I also have a feeling that contributors are left with an even smaller piece of the cake here.

It has happened to me at FT a couple of times too. Not this year though.

Rumors that I'm hearing is that the Nikon camera division might be going the way of Minolta, perhaps to Sony.

Fact is that Nikon's camera division is going better than ever. It would be very surprising if they did anything with Sony, except buy sensors. A much more logical development would be closer ties with Fuji. Fuji uses a Nikon body for their DSLR (which is not very successful, although the S5 might become just that), makes some of the best sensors available, is successful in the p&s market (which Nikon isn't) and makes medium format digital cameras (Hasselblad, body as well as lenses, is made by Fuji and sold under the Fuji name in Japan).

It would have been nice if more manufacturers would do like Pentax have done: let you choose between Pentax RAW and DNG from the camera. Their may be problems with data from certain sensors though, like the Fuji with two sets of sensors.

Seems that things start to get crazy on the supply side of the business.
Whats your experience?

This market is bound to become over-saturated. Not only are there increasing numbers of photographers, but they all seem to upload the same technically perfect but conceptually boring photos that they believe will become best-sellers.

The challenge to survive with increasing sales will be to see into the future, and find new areas, new angles and new motives. Smiling pretty girl with headphones apparently sells very well, but there is a limit as to how many are needed, I guess.

For the agencies, the challenge will be to find new markets, both with regards to types of customers, but even more with regards to geography. From the download time of day, it's easy to see that most of the downloads are in America, so Europe is lagging behind here. Even more so is Asia, where more than half of the world population lives. Many Asian countries are relatively poor, but not all, and it's a huge market with different needs and a different taste from the western hemisphere.