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1301
« on: February 22, 2008, 16:24 »
All in all, its a pain in the ass to list the keywords in any order other than random. However it may have paid off in the long run for me. This Fotolia thing was the reason I wrote my tagging script more than a year ago. My port of the past year is already priority-tagged, since me thinks other sites will follow this path soon with 3M+ photo databases.
1302
« on: February 22, 2008, 16:20 »
For instance, I'd love to be able to program a website, as a subscription model, that people could use to track all their uploads to different websites, all in one place. Perhaps additional functionality like sending pictures to various sites and even requesting payouts. I don't know how it would work, but that would be a site I would subscribe to! Technically it's not that complicated to do, but it would pose a huge security risk.
1303
« on: February 22, 2008, 15:58 »
I'm sorry ladies but I have to disagree. If I remember well, 123RF asked an ID even for joining. With so much phishing and fraud going around on the Net, it's very cautious to do so. I think Fotolia and Dreamstime are well-established companies, and it's very safe to upload an ID. I would never do it to a starting site.
1304
« on: February 22, 2008, 15:52 »
It was sad to watch another site become just a ghost of its former self because of weak leadership in not handling the trolls. Well Talkmicro is still in my bookmarks but I quit there, because of "that" ;-) To the OP: I had several forum posts removed too in 2006 when they switched to the cumbersome disambiguation thing. That's fine with me but a post deleted means time lost, so I never posted at iS again. Not much to read there anyways, except hurrayh and wow and thank you iS. You can't blame them for that really. Agency forums are corporate blogs and they can be read by customers too. If you know corporate culture, you will have to put up a cheering face always. If not, it might adversely affect sales. The bottomline is that the iS forum is a waste of time, but I will gladly post a great! wow! thankyou post there if I get properly paid for it 
1305
« on: February 21, 2008, 14:06 »
I had one at 12.5 Euro of a shot 2-3 days after it was uploaded. Sold immediately at DT and SS too.
Very funny, since iStock rejected it this morning as 'non commercial'. Well, I prefer 20$ over 1$ anyways ;-)
1306
« on: February 20, 2008, 22:10 »
Here is the link if you want to check it out ...
Airplane Deicing Operations
http://www.dreamstime.com/airplane-deicing-operations-image4162817 Great shot! But if you had cloned the TED out and some logos on the trucks, you could have had uploaded it as commercial stock and made much more, since it's a fantastic shot.
1307
« on: February 20, 2008, 22:05 »
A site sponser is a guy that sponses the site. 
1308
« on: February 20, 2008, 21:52 »
Last week I started going through my Fotolio portfolio and making sure that the most important keywords are in the top 7. I had not been doing a good job of this in the past when uploading. Sooner or later, all sites will have to use keywords relevance (reflected by order), since in 2010, sites like SS and DT will have around 10,000,000 shots. I wrote something about it last week here, see last paragraph: "Pre-emptive strategy: relevance". I also wrote a script for ordering keywords - FlemishTagger. If ever a site decides that 10 or 15 keywords will do (it should), then they can just truncate my IPTC. I started reuploading to Fotolia last August (I forgot about them for a year) with ranked keywords in my IPTC. As a result, my sales went up drastically with a BME last November.... of my new shots. The basic message is... start sorting your keywords now. About Geckostock: yes Richard got his programming right from when he found this friend that redid the full site. A marvellous MRF section, an FTP that is flawless... and that was just a casual amateur that liked coding. I understood from Richard it was a trucker just like him. So my message to FLA, SnapV and all these sites that can't come up with a working FTP: find that guy, drag him out of his truck, and let him make your site work on a corner of his kitchen table!
1309
« on: February 20, 2008, 11:54 »
OK, how does it grab you.. now : www.zymmetrical.com
Flemish, I agree 100% on the principles of a good homepage design you mentioned, however we are catering to a more specialized visitor base so some of the laws of screen real estate and load speed can be relaxed, a bit. 1 - Like it is now, it violates the 800px rule. The slideshow in col #2 pushes the vital textual info in col #3 and #4 outside an 800px screen. Does a landing page really need a large logo in col #1? Landing page screen real estate is priceless. A good example of a 4-column design is iofoto. All the vital info is there at first glance. Most people in a production environment (picture buyers, not picture admirers) don't use their browser in full-screen. And even if they do, there is the browser sidebar. A design beyond 800px is not recommended, and if you do, put the main info on the left so it will never overflow. There is the 5-second rule. In 5 seconds a visitor has to be able to make up his mind about what this site does. Does it sell, does it showcase, is a portal? Where is the strategic info on page #1 of ZYM? Looking for a one-stop shop where you can license all possible digital art Royalty Free for your projects? You just found it! Zymmetrical licenses fonts, images, music, and all that at fanciful prices, straight from the artists. Blablabla....2 - Since any agency should cater for buyers and not for poor people with slow PCs, you can relax the mean/slim rules for sure. Buyers will have fast PCs and be on broadband. You can also bookmark the backdoor of course, bypassing the official landing page. 3 - The ShutterStock theatre solution is really neat. You have a grand public (buyers) entry www.shutterstock.com with all the glitter and the glamor and the grandeur, and the artists entry at the side submit.shutterstock.com which is fast and lean and small that leads straight into the dressing and make-up stalls ;-) 4 - I don't like to plug myself but I just revamped Flemishdreams like iofoto's site. Have the vital info fast on the landing page, in one glance. (1) What I got, and (2) where you can buy it. Anybody interested will surely trickle down, the rest just clicks away. Any vital info about a site should load and be evaluated in 2-5 sec. That's real life attention span on the net. Just my 5 (Euro!)cents
1310
« on: February 20, 2008, 11:08 »
Killing all cookies is killing the patient to cure a minor diseases. Cookies can make your life easier, like keeping settings. The problem is with third party cookies but you can selectively erase those with Firefox. With Firefox you can also adblock so that tracking cookies (which record your surfing behavior) even don't make it on your PC and you even don't see ads.
I wasn't talking about our own PCs but about the PCs of the visitors of your site. They can get loaded with tracking cookies if you don't watch out for which counter to take. For those on a server with php, you can insert some php code in your landing page that will keep a log file with statistics on your root folder on your server.
1311
« on: February 20, 2008, 10:47 »
You can download mine here. All-in-one: adult, minor, property. It's in MS-Word format so you can modify it and pre-fill your own photographer info. ShutterStock requests minor and guardian info on one single page. Has been accepted by all agencies till now.
1312
« on: February 19, 2008, 13:57 »
I think it's a dependent a lot on the users CPU, but you're right, I've never been satisfied with the animation on that. Guess we'll go back to the standard slideshow. Personally I hate animations and swfs on landing pages. Imagine you're on dial-up in the jungle or on a slow PC. The landing page of a site should be lean and mean and blazing fast. When I visited MostPhotos, I even have to restart my PC after that because it's flooded by nice looking scripts. That's why I never comment there and sneak in by the back door and beyond their landing page. The site of Yuri Arcurs is like that: a landing page with a "loading" progress bar that goes on forever, at least on my slow PC. Luckily Firefox has the ability to block animations and swfs.
1313
« on: February 19, 2008, 13:42 »
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Every "free" counter dumps adware and cookies on your visitor's PC. Why don't you use Google Analytics? No spyware, free, and much more info than just a counter.
1314
« on: February 19, 2008, 13:36 »
The problem is the US court system which just allows crazy damages for anything. In Europe (and Belgium) they take a more common sense approach to damages. "Moral damage" is routinely allowed 1 Euro, unless it has to do with psychiatric consequences like in abused children.
Medical malpractice, McDonalds spilling hot coffee over your leg... no way you get 1M$. The court would say that if you order a hot coffee in a drive-in you have to assume the risk that the guy will spill it, because everybody can make mistakes. The court would only allow damages IF you can prove that he threw the hot coffee on you on purpose. If you don't like that risk, then just take your coffee inside.
Idem ditto with medical malpractice. Everybody can make mistakes and doctors too. Don't like that risk? Well then don't get that operation. The net result is that health care is much cheaper than in the US because they just have to pay reasonable insurance fees.
Copyright infringement is not a statutory thing here. If somebody uses your shots, he can get a modest fine and he has to pay you the normal license fees x 2 or so. If BMW discovered its car shots for sale on a European site, all it can do is request to remove those shots and claim the license fees it has made. X times 30cents for instance on SS. And they wouldn't even get their 1 Euro moral damages since the court will probably judge they got free publicity ;-)
1315
« on: February 19, 2008, 13:18 »
stockxpert and fotolia
For painless upload, FeaturePics, Zymmerical and Mostphotos are as easy or easier than LO. They make me more money too than LO. Got a 12.5 euro = 17$ sale at MP this week.
1316
« on: February 19, 2008, 06:55 »
couldnt they do that fot themself, to spare us uploading such large files! it takes 1 hour to upload 1 file. of.... I will upload entire portfolio in 100 years at that pace. It takes about 30% more time to upload to Alamy. The size is the picture size, not the jpg size. A Nikon D200 shot upsized 131% gives 49MB picture size and about 3-8MB (depending on complexity - overwhites are less) in file size. I use Photoshop CS2-3 bicubic smoother for upsize, and make sure your DPI is 300 minimum. Piece of cake, but only use shots that are perfectly in focus and preferably with prime lenses. The reason Alamy can't do it is that some shots, when upsized, are really substandard, and you as photographer should judge what to upload and what not. You can't expect Alamy to inspect ALL shots at 100%. They just take samples now and then.
1317
« on: February 18, 2008, 21:13 »
hostgator.com - baby-croc plan - great myqsql databases, uptime near 100% - fast from everywhere in the world. Let you host multiple domains on 1 account.
1318
« on: February 17, 2008, 13:54 »
One way of boosting the contrast is to use 'Curves' in Photoshop.... may I edit.. the ONLY worthwhile way of boosting contrast... Not over all the image! Sensovision's image has two parts: the sky and the silhouettes. You can optimize curves for both parts in 2 layers, then merge. Sounds HDR-ish but it can work. Curves have the disadvantage that they enhance noise. Lately, I'm working more with soft uniform W-B layers to reveal details locally without compromising pop-up.
1319
« on: February 17, 2008, 13:46 »
My fav is my lesbian marriage, found by the keyword man. Favors my guess that customers rely heavily on visual search too. 
1320
« on: February 17, 2008, 13:29 »
I got similar, and they were accepted. When the shot sprung up to my screen I felt something odd. It has to do with composition. The jeep runs out from the frame to the right. It dumps into a wall which is the frame border. It hurts my eyes for that. The silhouette is not a problem for me. The sunset is ok but too early and too dull, especially since it is the main focus of the image. I'm sure you have more spectacular views of the same sunset later on. Just glue that flamboyant sunset upon this shot, and clone the jeep to the left side of the image so it has some space to drive ;-) One of my best selling waterfalls has a sky from 300 miles away. There is truth, and there is Photoshop 
1321
« on: February 17, 2008, 13:21 »
Three caveats: - The pitfall of LuckyOliver a while ago was attracting random Google traffic and not concentrate on the market. As a result, LO got catapulted very high in Alexa, it gave an exorbitant view count on pictures (I had one with thousands on the 500px "thumb" that wasn't really watermarked) but a deplorable number of sales. I have been warning a number of times on the Odditorium for this, but in vain. Random hits from picture tourists don't really count. Everybody knows Maserati, but almost no one drives one. - When Googling, make sure to do it by a blank and cookie-clean browser, and not logged in to your Google account. Google stores search patterns in a very clever way and your own name high with any agency might be because Google learned your habits. - It's an ego boost of course for those that are very web-visible but we shouldn't forget that buyers are not interested in photographers to begin with but in the right picture. In a second and third phase come visual search and photographer karma (I wrote some stuff about it last week). - And yes, it's a nice job of course.
1322
« on: February 16, 2008, 06:54 »
The limit of 1,000 is also very forbidding. No info about their customer's base. Do they accept Editorial RF too?
I had to duck out of Photoshelter because they don't want isolated studio models but real people. It's not clear what Rodeo wants...
With a rank of 4,103,115 on Alexa, even my own personal site ranks higher at 600,000 or so.
Compare with Zymmetrical at rank 153,000, Snapvillage at 171,000, Albumo at 72,000 and FeaturePics at 37,000. [ShutterStock has 2,000, Dreamstime has 2,300].
1323
« on: February 14, 2008, 19:53 »
And yet, their initial "f-you" posting should bring hesitation to anyone. It had the reverse effect on me ;-) Maybe I'm a masochist.
1324
« on: February 14, 2008, 19:43 »
I win the UK Lottery a few times per month. And I think Nigeria is a very rich and dangerous country because bankers die there all the time with some undercover money their want me to clean for a 15% fee. I always wonder why they need my bank account number and ID copy. No need for that. They are always welcome here with the cash and I will clean it for them on the spot. scamorama.com - fun
1325
« on: February 13, 2008, 14:41 »
I wouldn't mind trying MostPhotos as well, but the site is so excruciatingly slow I would never be able to check my account... I made that remark when they just started and Moori came on here to endorse them. I have a PC from the Neozoicum with 256MB RAM ( only for the web), and MP didn't load. I found out it was their landing page that contained a 300KB background! It's still slow, with their nice effects, reflections and popups... their programmers must be artists. It just floods my PC with scripts... Any web designer will tell you that a production site should be mean and lean. DT and SS load in a second.
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