Categories - Are they really that necessary?

I get the impression they found the photos first THEN created the sketch!

Same here. The only reason for not using DeepMeta would be if someone has a mac

Why I use a Mac and use Deepmeta to upload to iStock and have been for quite a while.

A few months ago I uploaded a batch and as I was editing them they were being approved! hasn't happened since though.

Your images are absolutely fine for the Alamy market, don't compare it with microstock in anyway whatsoever, one thing though nothing pisses a buyer off more than having very similar images in a series from the same photographer under mixed licences, I know why you've done it but my advice would be if you have to license an image as RM because you haven't got model releases then keep them all as RM, to be honest the type of images you've done that to will appeal more to a RM license buyer than RF one so you're only shooting yourself in the foot.

Another thing you might want to consider for your type of stuff is hide your keywords, i.e. you're putting your keywords in the comprehensive field and as a result everyone can see them, that might lose you the edge.

Finally, I sell quite a fair bit on Alamy and one thing I've learnt is ignore the zooms conspiracy theory thing, it's complete b****cks you'll have a sale when you have a sale irrelevant of how many or few zooms you've had. FTR it's only certain buyers with accounts that count towards your zoom figures, not all buyers.

You do need to get more images uploaded though, good luck.
 

Up everywhere except for Dreamstime which showed a drop, not sure what's going on over there.

Quote from: RT on October 04, 2009, 09:52

Are you telling me you haven't contacted Dreamstime or Fotolia yet!! have you considered going on a sales course, here's a couple more for you - try iStockphoto and Shutterstock just in case their staff don't notice this thread when they pop by.

Oh __ tsk, tsk! It's an interesting thread and the more we contributors understand about the inner-workings of the industry, the various players and how it is all developing then the better for us.

Totally agree, just trying to help Mark by pointing out that it would be better to contact the agencies direct rather than relying on a member of staff popping by here and noticing the service he is offering.

I'd be interested to see which agencies are using his services because personally I can't see any of the big one's letting the reviewing go 'out of house', I can see this would be an advantage to a start up or some of the minor players though.

From Dreamstime to Fotolia, all of the major microstock agencies have someone on staff or on contract who regularly come here and to other similar sites.

Are you telling me you haven't contacted Dreamstime or Fotolia yet!! have you considered going on a sales course, here's a couple more for you - try iStockphoto and Shutterstock just in case their staff don't notice this thread when they pop by.


 

Hi,

Our estimates are based not just on what the reviewer gets in his or her pocket at the end of each pay period, but on the entire cost, i.e., social security, medical, taxes, cost of actually having someone in an office, IT, PCs, equipment, administration, etc.

I've been in this business for 25 years, and the rest of our team comes with nearly the same amount of time as either photographers, editors or managers of agencies.

As I have written, a good reviewer can process between 600 and 1000 images per day. That translates into a low of 12,000 images per month and a high of 20,000 images per month.

I hope this clears things up.

Best,

Mark

Hi Mark,

As I said you need to do your research, I don't know of any microstcok sites that employ reviewers, they work from home and get an amount (very small) for each image they review, the sites don't pay social security, medical,  there's no overheads for IT equipment or office costs and the only admin costs are paying the reviewers.

You say you've been in the business 25 years, microstock hasn't been around ten years yet, I think you're basing your figures on traditional stock agencies that are run in a completely different way to the microstock one's.

However I'd be happy to hear of an example of a microstock agency that does employ it's reviewers.

I'm not trying to knock your business, just don't think you realise how this side of the stock business works.

Good luck though.

As a side note, as you've stated above your business isn't aimed at the contributor, why then have you come to a forum for contributors? Wouldn't it make more sense just to contact the agencies direct.

I was contacted by two retouching companies in India including the one mentioned here, all sounded good until I checked out the quality of their work! Even the examples on their website are very poor.

<OFF-TOPIC WARNING!>

Quote from: RT on September 17, 2009, 06:55

At 1/1000th you could freeze a bird in flight!!

No you can't. You can't even freeze people moving fast with 1/1000th. Of course if you have low standards on what is "sharp", what you say may be true. Here are closeups of a droplet travelling less than 8 miles per hour http://www.scantips.com/speed.html
Notice how Alien Bees are not enough to freeze movement. (I'm saving my money to get me a set of Elinchrom Quadra with 1/6000s speedhead..

<OFF-TOPIC REPLY!>

Great example of why I don't come here much now, I try and help the OP out by suggesting he made be mislead in his original question which as it turns out he was (he PM'd me), but as you want to highlight to everyone how great you are by taking the topic to the extreme maybe you should first download that milk drop shot and then send it off to a lab to view under a microscope just to check because I have a suspicion you'd probably find there's still some tiny insignificant blur and and as you're clearly one of the worlds perfect photographers that might not be acceptable for you.

In the meantime the rest of the photography world could quite happily carry on taking shots of people using studio strobes and freezing the action as they have done for a long time, I took some yesterday of a guy jumping off a trampoline, they weren't for stock and I wasn't bothered whether they would be perfectly frozen, shot with the lights in the studio left on and the model light left on the one strobe I was using, and guess what the guys frozen in mid air and bearing in mind I shot it at f8 manually focussed the result is frozen enough to a standard that I'd argue 99.99% of people would be happy with ( not you obviously, because  as you pointed out it can't be done   ) and if you care to check (I'm sure you do) the strobe was a Bowens 1000DX set at about 7.2-7.4, I haven't a clue what speed flash duration it was but I'm guessing somewhere round the 1/1000th mark as it's max is 1/1500th. Camera shutter speed 1/125th and I had a BLT with a packet of cheese & onion crisps for lunch.

And if you really want me to I'll even skip my work schedule and convert it especially for you and post an example with a 100% crop of the guys eyelid just to prove to you that it can be done, which of course as you pointed out it can't.

To the OP (and everyone else for that matter) - sorry for the rant and yes I'll send you details tomorrow if that's OK.

Disclaimer: I'm not the worlds greatest photographer, don't claim to be, don't care who is or thinks they are, happy to help anyone who isn't on an ego trip, just PM me.

You haven't said whether you want high speed sync for outdoors or in a studio, if it's in a studio (or somewhere where you're totally controlling the light) and you want to freeze action you're barking up the wrong tree as the cameras sync speed is pretty much irrelevant, it's the strobes and the way you have them set that freezes the action.

Now I'm lucky in so much that I've got a studio and lots of gear, however I could if I wanted to totally freeze somebody jumping off a trampoline in mid air using nothing more than two 400w strobes and the camera set at 1/60th (in fact I could set the shutter at 2 secs and freeze them if I really wanted to), there's a bit more to it than that but if this is want you want to do let me know and I'll explain more.

And you can do this using your cheapo radio triggers and any camera.

I think your method has let your model get too relaxed 

Good stock shot.