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Messages - ShadySue
14576
« on: December 13, 2010, 18:48 »
People, it's the after Thankgiving rundown till Xmas. You're probably going to have really slow sales the last week of December .
Probably, but this is only the middle of the month, which has traditionally been good for me. But I've already seen that last week was much worse than the corresponding month in previous years. The promised "50% in the last four months" hasn't worked for me, and no-one answered when I asked if it had been true for them.
14577
« on: December 13, 2010, 18:18 »
Interesting, I just did a search to see if there were (m)any others of a pic I was going to upload. Surprisingly, very few (13), most wrong (because of bad keywording), and one of them was a Dollar Bin image, among a general search. At the end of best match, but there.
14578
« on: December 13, 2010, 17:38 »
It's going really weird right now. My search for elephant was OK on page 1. Go onto page two and you don't get another page of options, you get a category list from which to choose. I chose animal, and got back to the first page of elephants. Tried page two, back to the list of categories. Out of badness, I chose archticture. And got a page of elephant carvings on buildings. So if you want a second page, you must use a category to filter. Is that really what the facetted search is all about?
14579
« on: December 13, 2010, 16:46 »
I just searched 'elephant' again, and every image has a red rectangle with the word SALE in it. Does that mean it's on sale, or there's a cut-price sale on? Added: no, that's just the Vetta images. I hadn't noticed the red Sale notice before.
14580
« on: December 13, 2010, 16:45 »
I just searched 'elephant' again, and every image has a red rectangle with the word SALE in it. Does that mean it's on sale, or there's a cut-price sale on?
14581
« on: December 13, 2010, 16:41 »
The search is not looking too good at the moment. Tried to do a couple and got no results. Lots of complaints from buyers in the forum, meaning lots of free/low cost credits being given away, meaning we get less royalties for Istock's poor execution.
I'm getting single words (elephant) but not phrases (New York City)
14582
« on: December 13, 2010, 16:38 »
I will stick with alamy for editorial. It doesn't seem to of taken off with the micros and I wonder why it has taken so many years for istock to have editorial? As they aren't likely to sell in the same volume as non-editorial, it seems like a waste of time with low microstock prices under 20% commission.
I'd agree. Most editorial shots are going to be low-volume sellers more suited to RM prices.
And although RM prices are sinking, at least a separate payment has to be made for each use. RF one fee, many possible uses.
14583
« on: December 13, 2010, 16:37 »
I see that the editorial pictures must have the same acceptance standards as the general collection. That'll rule out a lot of genuine natural light images, then.
14584
« on: December 13, 2010, 16:28 »
I send most things to Alamy. If they don't take it then I'll send it to DT. My editorial sales on both sites are about even.
Do you mean in terms of dls, $$$ or both?
14585
« on: December 13, 2010, 15:23 »
I noticed one interesting point: iStock does have a better understanding about what "editorial" means than most of the micro sites. In fact it's total opposite.
I think they have chosen a strategy that encourages to upload images that have a long "shelf life" instead of snaps of events that are downloaded once or twice while they are new and nothing afterwards.
(I still hate iStock)
Maybe that's because their inspection process won't facilitate timely images from getting online, unless there was a 'fast track', which wasn't mentioned.
14586
« on: December 13, 2010, 15:13 »
I will stick with alamy for editorial. It doesn't seem to of taken off with the micros and I wonder why it has taken so many years for istock to have editorial? As they aren't likely to sell in the same volume as non-editorial, it seems like a waste of time with low microstock prices under 20% commission.
I'd agree. Most editorial shots are going to be low-volume sellers more suited to RM prices.
I agree in general. But RM prices are coming down rapidly, e.g. newspapers and educational publications, and iStock has a higher reach, according to Alexa: I'll be very interesting to see what happens. But I'm hopeless at making decisions!
14587
« on: December 13, 2010, 14:20 »
Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed that.
To be honest, I didn't know what you posted about isolated product shots, because I see them in (UK) mewspapers and mags. Though I've tended to assume they came from the company's publicity dept.
14588
« on: December 13, 2010, 14:16 »
Editorial by definition doesn't need a release. Editorial is "newsworthy" images. IS is the only site that requires an MR for editorial images be released. Any MR that IS accepts now should work for the editorial images.
I'd hope they'd provide one which is very specific for editorial only. (I do understand it's only for non-group images of minors, so will only apply to a few images).
14589
« on: December 13, 2010, 14:04 »
I know that one of the reasons textbook manufacturers haven't used iStock (and presumably the others) in the past was that they didn't know if the images were unaltered. I hope there will be some way of indicating that our images are unaltered (to editorial standards, i.e. a bit of levels etc, but that's all) even if they don't need to be designated as 'editorial'. E.g. unaltered wildlife. I have always indicated this in my description if I've altered a wildlife pic., but it's never been a requirement.
14590
« on: December 13, 2010, 13:31 »
It's RF editorial so the same release you always use should cover it.
I've never been able to find an editorial release, and I've asked at least three times in the past for a link to one (though for RM).
14591
« on: December 13, 2010, 13:14 »
They also say that they won't take, for example, 'improved' skin - an example is shown. Given that many iStockers have been doing this invisibly (unlike the rough and ready improvement in the example) for years, how would the inspectors know it had been done? Of course, they're relying on the photographer's honesty, but they have rather put themselves on the spot (pun unintended) by saying that.
14592
« on: December 13, 2010, 13:11 »
They say, " In most places police and emergency crews will require that photographers have press accreditation to shoot accident scenes or similar sites. You must show us that you have the necessary permission to upload any images of this kind of thing." This is not a requirement in the UK, certainly not in Scotland. Will the inspectors know which countries need this and which don't?
14593
« on: December 13, 2010, 13:09 »
Admins have referenced the need to "caption" editorial images a couple of times. I can't seem to find what that means. Anybody know?
Most of the details are spelled out here: http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=939#3Although they have a tight close up of a man and woman through a window, and say : "A good caption: Istanbul Turkey - November, 2009: A man and woman ride a tram on İstiklal Caddesi, a busy pedestrian shopping street leading to Taksim Square in Istanbul." Despite the fact that you can hardly tell it's a tram window, and the location is totally invisible in the image. I'm confused - but can't post on the forum for a better explanation.
14594
« on: December 13, 2010, 13:05 »
I see they are requiring releases signed by parents for images of minors. I wonder if there will be an 'editorial-use-only' release for that purpose.
14595
« on: December 13, 2010, 13:00 »
Until about two years ago I was shouting for this. Now, I'm not so sure. This now means I have to make decisions (Almy or iStock) for each of my images, whereas ATM, editorial is clearly 'for Alamy'. I still think most of the editorial images I shoot are of limited end-use, so not great for Micro. It will be interesting to see what sort of Editorial sells well enough on iStock to make it work well.
14596
« on: December 13, 2010, 12:55 »
I understand that I think.
What about using the isolated coke bottel while writing a factual article in a newspaper about coca cola. Would that be ok in the same way that editorial photo's of people are ok without releases?
Maybe, and it'll be different in different countries, but you'd have to ask why someone would pay for such a photo when they could probably get them for free from the product's HQ (though maybe not if it was to illustrate a bad true story about the product). Same goes, unfortunately for many 'travel hotspots'. So much so that when my friend was planning a trip to New Zealand, she saw the same three pics in eight different brochures - all from the NZ tourist board or equivalent. Added: the new announcement from iStock seems to trump Sean's post, as far as iStock is concerned: " Products It's true: that isolated on white picture of your Fender Telecaster is now acceptable on iStock. We will be accepting all kinds of product shots."
14597
« on: December 13, 2010, 10:41 »
I understand that I think.
What about using the isolated coke bottel while writing a factual article in a newspaper about coca cola. Would that be ok in the same way that editorial photo's of people are ok without releases?
Maybe, and it'll be different in different countries, but you'd have to ask why someone would pay for such a photo when they could probably get them for free from the product's HQ (though maybe not if it was to illustrate a bad true story about the product). Same goes, unfortunately for many 'travel hotspots'. So much so that when my friend was planning a trip to New Zealand, she saw the same three pics in eight different brochures - all from the NZ tourist board or equivalent.
14598
« on: December 12, 2010, 20:10 »
I guess I'll give up because any search will find any of the words someone asks for and the words that someon has included in their keywords. Complaining that a search finds things that are there, and trying to explain it, is getting frustrating.
I understand the system, you don't need to explain it. Understanding it doesn't mean I have to like it. As Leyden is a valid alternative spelling of the Dutch town Leiden (both are used in the town itself), my pseudo sometimes gives false findings for searches for that town. Maybe I should scan and upload some of my old slides from there and give myself a double whammy! I'm sure it must be really annoying for people genuinely searching. And what if your surname was Brown, Gray, Black or White, all of which are common enough? Why should you be almost-forced to use a pseudo other than your own name, unless you choose to do so. If buyers want to instigate a search on a contributer, instigate the search properly, by giving a field where you can specify a pseudo, and that info is taken only from the pseudo field. Otherwise, a pseudo name shouldn't come into a search. Also, if they want a search on ethnicity, why not have a field for that in the keywords section which the contributer can tick if appropriate, and avoid adjectives which are also ethnicities making a file show up in the ethnicity field? There are easy ways around all of these issues, which should have been built in from the outset. But I know that the more files are in, the more contributors will hate having to change things. I was really lucky to start at iStock after they had introduced the CV, and remember the complaints from those who had big ports even back then. But it should be all about giving the buyers the cleanest possible search result. I know by the search results I get, they're not always getting that. And I look at them all to see if I could do better, and usually, I can't. The keywords I have that led to the search are actually needed for the image. Etc etc etc. Another illustration: noticing that iStock issue of 'white rose' leading to pics of 'white rose potato' (as well as white roses), I searched on Alamy, DT and SS. They didn't feature the potato, but they did feature bottles or glasses of wine, presumably because they were keyworded either white, rose, red wine or wine, white rose red. Which comes from not having a CV whereby you could keyword 'white wine' 'rose wine' and 'red wine'. I'm rambling and it's bedtime. Slainte mhath, all.
14599
« on: December 12, 2010, 15:39 »
IS has a post about a new F5 coming out after the weekend. That could be what your seeing in the recent Alexa stats as people keep checking to see what has broken, I mean, new woo-yay site whatever F5 thingy is.
Not the chart I posted above: that went up to 8th Dec and the announcement was made on the 9th.
14600
« on: December 11, 2010, 20:13 »
Hey, back on topic for a minute: Has anyone noticed an increase in Vetta sales this week?
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