exactly! I have been waiting for review since this topic is open! well written, thanks for taking the time

Thanks! I like to watch a post wander around for three pages, gathering moss, and then give a succinct answer!

Steve

Luis

Yes - I see that I have 1620 files on Pond5 compared with 3242 on 123RF. I hadn't realized that there was a deal between the two of them. I see some downloads as well (37 - a few more than you!!), but presumably these have all been paid through 123RF. How on earth are we supposed to upload directly to Pond5 without creating a lot of duplicates?

Steve

Another piece of input. As you can imagine, no-one could make a living just uploading to Photodune, and so it is just one of a number of sites that I upload images to (currently around 20). The only sensible way I can do that is to use a service like Lightburner that acts as a distributor of my files - I ftp to them, and they ftp to the 20 sites I am supporting. I then visit the agencies at my leisure and complete whatever steps are necessary to put the files online. With smaller sites, those steps need to be simple and quick, otherwise it is not worth supporting the site. Hence, what arrives at Photodune is just a copy of whatever files I have uploaded elsewhere - no model releases at all.

All other sites then allow you to select the images that require a model release, and, normally in some grouped way, add a stored model release to them as part of the final process. My preference would be to see all new files, select the ones that need a specific release, and then be shown a list of my uploaded model releases so that I can attach the appropriate one. If a particular image needs two releases, then I select that one and add a second release in the same way.

Steve

Interesting - how did you manage to get high referral fees on DP? I have 16 referred members and lifetime earnings from referrals of maybe $40

Steve

In the first image, I am pretty sure the issue is with the bright reflections in the coins. Shiny coins are tricky and you really need to make sure that they are facing away from the lightsource/camera so that there is no chance of a direct reflection. I think the plastic coins here are worse than normal ones as they obviously have a very shiny surface. However, you run into a different issue then with your plastic coins in that they have pretty low contrast and no sharp engravings to create a shadow. Tricky!

I think the best you could probably do with these sort of coins is a hard raking light from the side to try to bring some contrast to them and then have some fill light on the pig.

The second one is probably suffering from that lack of contrast in the coins - all I can think to say about that is that it is a bit bland and probably SS have given it the "poor lighting" rejection because of that. That is about as good as I can do with an explanation!

Steve

I'm Batman. Not the one on this forum, but the real one

I think Batman is copyrighted - you need a model release to be him 

Steve

I think that if people want to share their "secrets" they want to see a financial return on that, like books by Rob Sylvan and Ellen Boughn.  Anyone read any of those and get anything out of them?  I've been thinking about getting them on my Kindle.

I've bought and read them - from what I can recall thinking back, they are nicely produced books that have some good stock images that may give you ideas for a few shoots of your own, but there are no secrets! I enjoyed them - it is always good to sit back and look/read about what others are doing.

There seems to be two types of book around - those glossy ones that make it sound easy to make a lot of money from your camera (and they need to do that to get the sales), and the nitty gritty eBooks/websites that go through the details of how to manage your files, upload smoothly, use the capabilities of the various agency websites to maximise your placement and revenue. They don't tell you what to shoot, just how to get your shots available for sale.

No guessing about where my eBook stands...

Steve

I'm a bit early as usual, but the chances of new sales at 10pm are not high. Overall, my month has been OK - not the best, but not bad. Total earnings were $1585 compared to $1750 last month, but the absence of Enhanced License downloads on Shutterstock hit me a bit. I did get one - on the 31 July, which made the month a bit better. iStock was good for me - a BME at $340 with two extended licenses ($278 last month). Dreamstime was pretty good at $108.  DepositPhotos seems to grow month by month - up to $57 now. Here are my top line charts. More details, as usual, on my blog.




Steve

Josh

A good set of questions, and one that I grapple with as I upload images to many sites. As far as I know, there are no sites that require less than 50 keywords, but different sites handle compound keywords differently - so if I put thailand,royal palace,cambodia in my keywords, that counts as three on most sites, but sometimes I find that sites will accept these as three if the total is less than 50, but if I've made a mistake and added 52 keywords in total, the site suddenly disassembles my compound keywords and I have to remove quite a few to get back to 50. I'm not 100% sure if Photodune does that, but that can be pretty annoying.

I now try very hard to only submit 50 keywords (with my compound ones counting as one), and so it is only when I make a mistake that I have to remove them. In that case, I would much prefer to remove the ones that I think are on the edge of being useful. A count of remaining keywords would be great, as it is trial and error at the moment on Photodune. Removing them automatically would not work for me as I use Lightroom to keyword my images and that always sorts them alphabetically, so my most important keyword may be at the end. I've also found a neat plugin for Lightroom that counts my keywords (described it here: http://www.backyardsilver.com/2012/07/how-to-count-the-number-of-keywords-in-lightroom/), so I should now be much better organized.

So my suggestion - put a count of keywords over 50, don't disaggregate compound keywords, and let me choose which ones to delete.

Steve

Well, it didn't take long for our new member to be insulted...

If all you are trying to do is to properly expose the sky and the darker ground, you can use two of your HDR exposures and simply mask the best view of the sky onto the best view of the ground. For real HDR shots which try to compress all sorts of dynamic range into a single shot, the movement of trees can be a real issue. One thing I have had some success with recently is to align and get rid of ghosting in a merge to HDR in Photoshop and then save as the HDR file. Then open that HDR file in your favorite HDR program (I use HDR Efex from Nik) and process from there. Alternatively, you can get the best HDR result that you can and blend one of the images of the leaves back into that shot with a mask in Photoshop. Hope this is clearer than I think it is!

Welcome to the forum

Steve

Anyone know any more about the sudden drop in Enhanced License Downloads this month (assuming it is still affecting more contributors than me!)?

I plotted out my earnings from Shutterstock over the past 18 months and separated out subscriptions, on demand, EDs and single sales. I have to go back to June 2011 to find a month with zero Enhanced license downloads.



Steve

I'm the same - normally 5 or 6 ELs a month and then this month is zero. Some $18 single sales though, but nothing like as good a month as previous ones.

Steve

But if you look at July so far it's 77 cents and June was 73 cents, and the split for June overall was 46% subs.

Good point - in June, I had 46% or earnings from subs, 22% from on demand, 23% from ED and 6% from Singles. My earnings per download were $0.73, which means I am getting better month by month!!

Steve