Re IS - On many levels I agree with you, however I also firmly believe Shutterstock's business strategy has taken its toll overall.

Surely Shutterstock could have competed using many other methods in lieu of downward pricing to capture market share. As you mentioned Stocksy was able to do this and they had a substantially later start than Shutterstock.

Defend cheap, easily implemented and predatory business strategies all you want; in the end they are detrimental to all of our bottom lines. By defending pathetic business tactics we are slitting our own throats.

in spite of agreeing with you for the general benefit of all contributors i would not go so  far as to say Stocksy because they still seem to be the trendy bubble drink new kid on the block.
i think Veers or even Alamy or GL ...used to be that too, and now see where they are.
it's too soon to cheer for Stocksy just yet... moreoever they are not the one size fit all alternative to ss or what used to be is.
i used to think canstock was a good one where the owner was sincere , or that one with Elena...
or even John of Cutcaster. but sadly none of them had the market network of ss and is .

Quote from: Copidosoma on April 17, 2015, 13:30

Quote from: abfoto on April 17, 2015, 13:26

Quote from: Semmick Photo on April 17, 2015, 13:19

Quote from: OM on April 17, 2015, 12:17

As a private individual, I have come to expect nothing of benefit to me from large publicly-owned corporations.....and, so far, I have not been disappointed. Every individual, whether employed or as freelance, has to work harder and harder for less and less reward to satisfy the demands of the stockholders for ever greater return. It's the way the system works and I'm used to it by now. 

With all do respect, if everyone thinks like that, you give them free hand to screw you over till you have no other choice then to pack up and find a day job.

Reminds me of a docu called Food Inc. Chicken farmers squeezed dry by corporates  to the bone until they cave.

So what are YOU going to do about it?

Given that it is publicly traded, you could buy shares. 

And contribute to the biggest Ponzi on the planet...Wall Street....no thanks! 

shareholders my @r$e. yes, you are right, the biggest Ponzi on the planet. shareholders are no better than scavengers, as they will sell the ss stock soon enough once they made their profit.
i suppose when the stocks crash it will be karma for them for * the contributors dry

remember what goes around comes around...

There will be a raise.  For SHAREHOLDERS. Not for contributors.

To the people who thought SS would never screw contributors - Welcome to the inevitable, otherwise known as reality.

picture this from resident evil where the bad dude is on the top of the bldg when annie kicks him out of the chopper . then the eagle eye shot of all those zombies / infected humans come on him and ate him .
soon, there will be a movie similar to that based on microstocker and oringer 

oh right i keep forgetting the ODDs that occasionally come by, that totally justifies making pennies.

even that has sort of gone with the wind coming from that hole at the bum

Two weeks ago I submitted 7 images of phone linemen to the agencies I work with: SS, FT, DT, and BS.
Still waiting to hear from DT (duh), but FT and BS accepted them all.

Shutterstock rejected all of them for "focus and noise" problems.
Full frame, 1S0 200, sharp at  200%. 

I've become philosophical about such things; but after reading other posters' experiences, I decided to resubmit the exact, unchanged files and selected the "Resubmitted with corrections made" choice using the drop-down menu.

All accepted the next day.

So, I guess the takeaway here is, review your rejected images with a honest and critical eye, and then if you think the reviewer was wrong, resubmit.

Can't hurt, might help.

yup same thing here. guess ss don't mind double paying reviewers
but won't hear nothing about increasing contributors pay .
guess best to apply to be reiveiwer, even if you don't, get your kid do it with his uncalibrated screen...
he wants to earn money... i say go fer it, just grab a whole load of files and macro it with "focus not where it should be"; WB off;...  and get paid. why not??? soon, my grandkid will earn more than i do as ss reviewer atilla the new 

Quote from: Rinderart on April 13, 2015, 15:12

On the flip side I have a friend and former student who does Nothing But Instagram Images. He has about 1300 and makes a small fortune. He couldn't get accepted because of Noise and switched to filtered Look. Quite amazing.

Some people will adapt to new trends and microstock agency demands and will do well. Others will keep trying the same old thing (along with the thousands of others who do the same thing) and wonder why they aren't getting sales/positive reviews.

One person's observation/opinion. Feel free to ignore. I'm a small fish.

op is not talking about adapting to new trends or getting sales. op is talking about reviewers
saying one thing and ss using images that say another thing.
you cannot talk from both sides of the mouth...
either it is in focus or it is not. you can say that experienced contributors suddenly lost their sight and all their work is now out of focus
then put an amazingly out of focus image as the main image to show clients
ss is the place to get the best images in the market.
small fish or big fish, there has to be some form of clarity
and lately looking at the forum there is no clear rule of what reviewers are doing
if you being a small fish is getting 100% approval on out of focus image
no problem , so long as images that are in fact in focus do not get rejected en masse
simply because the reviewer feel the focus is not where it should be

and no, we do not have to ignore you simply cos we do not agree with you.
ignore is not going to make the issue go away

Quote from: Cesar on April 11, 2015, 09:06

a lot of noise , not enough detail

Heh, ok.  Please spotlight the "noise" for me.

http://submit.shutterstock.com/?language=en


how did this image get approved. better still, so good that it is used by ss for home page
... bigger question...
how did atilla miss this one???

Now there is an idea why not send requests to Jon Oringer's twitter account requesting a raise?

currently  he has 2,665 tweets  646 following
and none of the tweets have anything to do with ss... just lots of mush.
so many he does need a boost off his plinth like you say... tho i don[t even know what they mean  but it sounds good 

Meanwhile in India...

India's poor have to open a bank account so they can receive subsidies, but are sometimes asked to pay a bribe when they try.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/indias-push-for-banks-for-all-leaves-some-still-outside-1428528601?mod=e2fb

india is like all colonies (brazil, baptista cuba, marcos philipines,etc) where there is a tiny portion of society who is allowed to make money more so to remain filthy rich literally while the rest majority is to remain dogs. much in the same way as china used to be where the majority eat sh*t while the ppl in the forbidden city live comfy and expect the whole country to fight for the emperor.
india is the same, where the rajas live down their brown nosing (that came from here when the raja brown nosed the british, to collect lagaan from the poor farmer and untouchables).
today is no different, these rich filth continue to rule the banks,etc. brazil is the same which came from their colonials , locals appointed by portugal to be the lords of the nation while the rest suffer like dogs for a jobs .
they are not considered criminals. eg marco , baptista, now live comfy somewhere in US or other colonial countries . to brown nose the white colonials is not a crime , you are more likely to be welcome to US ,etc when the time comes for the country to kick you out like baptista cuba.

Quote from: etudiante_rapide on April 09, 2015, 22:20

all in all food is still the best to shoot for microstock. you can't go wrong with food,
even if you don't make any money, you already reward yourself with some food you would not eat

Absolutely - and it also saves money if you cook everything yourself, as I do. I've learned a fantastic amount about cooking in the last 10 years and I frequently turn out posh restaurant-type meals for the price of a McD "happy meal". A lot of things don't get shot, though; for if a recipe is too complicated and little-known it probably isn't going to attract much buyer interest.

so right BT,
the more generic food the more downloads.
i find that it is futile trying to be too clever as a home-economist as many food recipe wine guide etc will not use stock photos due as they have their own photo dept much like luxury cars
will not look to stock photos.
which in a way is better for you and me as we do not have to use much of our grey matter to make food shots esp for the money we get... why think at all..
just shoot and eat

pixelbytes...    i think you're right... but both bush and nixon can be overlapped with oringer 

the lifting of the bar and dollar store argument is right on too.
the bar has been lifted so high that there is actually very good images , perharps too good work on micro ss going for less than a dollar. at least the dollar shop never goes below a dollar.
and most of the stuff you find in the everything for dollar shops are pretty much junk...
not so for ss work . esp when you consider how atilla and breed expect the new work to be absolute .

problem is also no one else is big enough to take on ss and give good images the higher price.
there is offset and stocksy and canva  but i really don't think they are cracking the market that much
to the point where oringer would shift gear into getting more money for all of us.

it's the way they do business these days in the great North Am (USA and Canada). Even the banks do it, like Free Notebook for new customers. You go in to ask the Bank Manager for a free notebook saying what about me, I have been your customers since 1970 etc..
they laugh and say, then you get nothing from us.

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on April 04, 2015, 17:01

There's plenty of opportunities for people who have the right skills for jobs that are in demand and are motivated to get a job

It seems like the go-getter is a dying breed.

yes but only as long as the US limits the number of H1B visas and as the EU sticks with draconian work laws, the whole supply/demand is totally artificial and if it was for the employers they would flood the market with millions of skilled but low-paid immigrants.

so where are you living??? a long time ago Enoch Powell had the same spite for immigrants
in Britain but no one in England wanted to work instead of collecting social assistance. The brown immigrant flooded England to work as garbage collectors, WC cleaners and maintenance,etc
Powell was pissedoff because they brown the white society.
these days, we also have low-paid immigrants like you call them coming from latin-am, eastern europe, etc
seems like everyone dislike the idea of immigrants. we forget sometimes that the first immigrants came to USA as cheap labor too, to build the railroad and they too were looked down upon by the settlers.
but before the settlers came, the land was actually already occupied by the native.
in india and other colonies, the same thing was happening when the cocky brits and spanish and portuguese considered themselves as the founder of the land long occupied by natives.

so, cut the crap about low paid immigrants flooding the nation.
to USA