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Messages - mindstorm
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151
« on: December 20, 2018, 22:34 »
Seems kinda stupid to filter results according to the contributor agreement and not the content quality - but it is what it is...
Not in the least. Any agency wants to promote media that cannot be obtained anywhere else. This is one of the few edges they can have, other than chasing price down to the nonprofit levels. If I ran an agency, you can be guaranteed I would put the content of those exclusive to me first, over those that can be gotten at a dozen other competitor locations too...
152
« on: December 17, 2018, 15:11 »
my LR is a mess. Finding stuff in there is getting to be impossible.
Then spend the time to straighten it out. it is well worth the effort. I did that twice, many years ago. After a year or so, I realized my photo organization was not working well. I designed a new approach, and spent a day reorganizing. That lasted maybe 3 years, until I realized I had outgrown that organization too. I then did the last (well... most recent...) reorg around 6 years ago. That one has stood the test of time, and only needed minor tweaking to keep it working well for me. I live and die by Lightroom -- if it stops working, I am not sure I will be able to get up in the morning any more! FWIW, I have roughly 300,000 images, mostly spanning the last 13 years, since I got into digital photog (with a Canon 5D). Another 40,000 or so that are scanned images from the 1968 to 2005 period (college through first 5D). If I want an image from that set, I can often find it in 5 seconds or less. Never more than a couple minutes for the oldest, most obscure images.
153
« on: December 17, 2018, 15:04 »
why are you thinking, that this site was from russia?))
Plus, if you go to the website url now, you get a Russian language placeholder...
154
« on: December 16, 2018, 22:58 »
2) The DJI OSMO Pocket has a mechanical gimbal, which works great when I'm snowboarding, but when I'm just walking around in an urban area or even on a mountain trail, I see consistent slight bumps up and down as a I walk.
All the non-professional gimbals (ie, anything under about $20,000 or so) have that issue. Do a YouTube search on using the Crane2 (the one I have) or any of the other brands (whose names slip me right now). There are several that show you how you have to walk to avoid that problem. Essentially, you bend your knees and do a "ninja walk" to get the smoothest video without the vertical bumping.
155
« on: December 14, 2018, 14:55 »
I saw everyone dropped Bigstock... But it's one of my favorites
I dropped BS because of their bug in uploading. If you select more than one image to set the categories on, then ALL metadata gets changed to the first image. The title, description, keywords ALL CHANGE when you only wanted to set the category. I told them of the bug close to a year ago. Their response was "yes, we know about the bug and are working to fix it. In the meantime, just edit one at a time." That was a year ago, and the bug still exists... BS sales are so pitifully small that I am not willing to put in that effort only for them.
156
« on: December 12, 2018, 01:58 »
the same clip was accepted by all the other stock sites that I submitted it to.
Not the slightest bit relevant. Each agency has their own standards and what they are looking for. In fact, they would LOVE to have different media than their competitors. If they are identical media, then all they can compete on is price -- which is to your detriment... Weird. I'll submit the video again and hope for the best.
Just move on to other media. Stop worrying about one agency not accepting one piece of media. It happens every day to those of us that submit regularly. It is simply not worth your time to flog a dead horse, and does not really help you in the long run. FWIW, I have lots of media that was accepted by x by not by y. When I see it sold on x, I used to smirk and say "I told you so." However, when I tracked those media that got accepted after first being rejected, I have had ZERO sales on them. ZERO. NOT ONE. Yes, they sold at the agencies that accepted them up front, but not at those that rejected it the first time. What does that tell me? They have different clients looking for different media. They aren't as stupid as people here seem to assume. They are looking for media that fits THEIR clients, not a lowest-common denominator of clients.
157
« on: December 10, 2018, 00:01 »
Check what you wrote in the first post and the title - you put ColorStock in both (or somehow the forum changed what you typed to that)
OOPS! You are right. In fact, I also entered 'ColorStock' in my own personal notes. Going back and verifying from where I saw the reference 'ColorBox' is the right name. I did a switch in my mind apparently... (I have now edited the OP and made the correction) I have now read the links you supplied (thanks!). Reading those, I think I will pass on this one...
158
« on: December 09, 2018, 21:40 »
Not sure, but if it's this outfit, it's closed as of March this year <snip>
I don't think it is the same. I am asking about ColourBox, while your link is ColorStock. CBox has nothing to do with images of 'people of color' as far as i can tell from looking at portfolios there.
159
« on: December 09, 2018, 20:58 »
I saw a reference to ColorBox yesterday. I had not heard of them before, nor do I see a forum here for that agency.
Anyone know anything about them, pro or con?
Apparently, to get approved as a contributor, you submit 14 photos for them to decide. I don't know anything beyond that though...
160
« on: December 07, 2018, 23:49 »
That was the forum topic on 'footage'. One of their footage contributors (Crossroads) had virtually the whole of page 1 of footage with any/all most popular keywords. SS admitted that they had been fiddling with the algo ahead of the launch of Shutterstock Select footage and that it was a glitch caused by them. Thx. I went back and tried to find that discussion again, but came up empty.
161
« on: December 05, 2018, 17:10 »
Which never happens. Impossible.
I think these trashy spam pics never make it to the first page, not even the first 50.
I thought we were talking about the person that literally owns the first page of each of several key search terms. Examples were given (above, I think, unless that was a different thread...) of terms and pages that were 100% all from one person on Shutterstock in particular.
162
« on: December 05, 2018, 16:14 »
My bet is from my experience on how these sites work, they aren't achieving anything at all, it's a complete waste of time.
Why do you think that? If I am a buyer (which I have been on occasion), I go to a site and enter my keywords. 80+% of the time, I will choose an item from the first page that shows. Sometimes onto page 2, and if i am really specific about my needs and am not seeing it, i might go further. However, whoever is on page 1 of my search returns has by far the highest chance I will buy it. If one guy controls that entire page, he has an 80% chance of making the sale (at least if I am the one buying)...
163
« on: December 04, 2018, 13:23 »
Hackers use brute force to try to guess pasword and that how it was probably done.
That is how they used to do it. More recently, they hack large databases where they can skim millions of passwords. They then go through various other sites trying the same email/password combinations to see which ones get unlocked. That is why you have probably gotten a slew of emails saying they saw you on a porn site playing with yourself on your camera, which they controlled. Actually not at all true, but they took the passwords they gleaned from one of the mass attacks and sent out the emails, knowing that a few would fall for it and pay the ransom. They only need a very tiny percentage to succeed to reap themselves millions of $ in profit... And BTW, I don't think I have EVER seen a captcha on SS. When I log in, I am directly on my dashboard.
164
« on: December 04, 2018, 13:12 »
Just because you hit 300 doesn't mean you have earned the coupon...
I have never seen this in ANY of the announcements for this award, but it turns out you also must have at least 50% acceptance rate to qualify. If you have 300 accepted, but have submitted 700 (and been rejected on 400), you will not get the award.
I only learned this when several months had gone by without my getting the award. I emailed them, and they responded that my acceptance was too low (and said that it had just gone above 50% that week, so I would now get it, which I did a couple weeks later).
In my case, I submitted a bunch of editorial images early in the year, to see if they would accept them. Of course they rejected most (as I expected), but took maybe 20% of those. Only later, when this award was announced, I found I had almost cost myself getting one...
165
« on: December 04, 2018, 10:44 »
Yep. Happened to me earlier this year.
I got an automated email from SS saying my payment info had changed -- it now went to some bank in Eastern Europe. That wasn't me...
I managed to log on (had to jump through a couple hoops because they had changed the password, but I did manage to get in). I then changed my password to something stronger -- AND UNIQUE TO SS -- and then changed the bank info back to my own bank.
I then sent an email to SS, telling them of the unauthorized change, and my response to it. I heard back from them a couple days later. Clearly a personal email. The SS support person thanked me for letting them know, and said they would have told me to do exactly what I had already done, and thanked me for taking that action.
I expect my experience was then entered into a database somewhere in SS to let them know the extent of the problem, and perhaps help them come up with ways to stop the incursion.
166
« on: December 03, 2018, 17:43 »
There is also one question. What to do with images and videos from the same location? Is it possible to send a video from one location to BlackBox and to send photographs from the same location to others agencies manually (because BlackBox does not support images)? In such a case, there can be video on the BlackBox's account (for example on Shutterstock) and exactly the same composition on the photograph (different media) from contributor's account. That would be weird. Is it againt some rules? How to solve that?
Not a problem. Completely within the rules of both BlackBox and all agencies. Videos and photos are separate media types, though it is not likely you would actually submit a screen-grab from a video into still stock. The resolution just would not be acceptable unless you were shooting at least 8K...
167
« on: December 03, 2018, 13:46 »
What about you guys? Has anyone else faced this problem? To transfer your portfolio of images to a another or new stock agency? How did you tackle this?
I am baffled that anyone thinks this is a problem at all. KEEP the originals, edited. TOSS those junk JPG and MOV files after uploading. Simply re-export from Lightroom if you need them again. I even keep my edited Final Cut stock clips in LR, because I can then store the name, description and keywords with them. Absolutely trivial and FAST to regenerate the upload file when needed. And doing it this way, you (1) don't have duplicates that will drive you crazy, (2) don't waste ANY space on files that have absolutely no future use, and (3) each time you will get the very latest in any edit improvements you made, along with any fixes to the title, desc and keywords (don't tell me you never spotted a typo, or wished you had added xxx to keywords after uploading to the first agency)...
168
« on: December 03, 2018, 13:42 »
No help now, but for the future why not just keep a folder with all fully keyworded files (jpg version) on your drive? No need for another export, all ready to upload. Cost of disk space is not an issue any more...
YUCK! What a TERRIBLE way to organize files! Keyword the original edited RAW files. Use something like Beard's addon to allow you to flag those sent to agencies without going into the keyword field. Then export fresh JPG when you want to send to a new agency. This way, any new edits you do to the file are included, as are any improvements to name, description or keywords. Those JPG are THROW-AWAY once they have been uploaded. No further use for them. Re-export if needed again.
169
« on: December 03, 2018, 13:38 »
I use the same workflow with Lightroom. But again this will take a lot of time. Imagine going folder by folder exporting the images + the computing time for the export. We are talking about thousands of images.
The easiest way would be to download all the exported images with the metadata from another agency. But it seems that this is not an option.
Huh??? How the heck do you organize your files??? In my case (with a rational hierarchy and keyboarding scheme), I can export 100 images in roughly one minute. That is one heck of a lot faster than I would be able to download them! And you MUST break your uploads into sets of no more than 100 or they will simply fail on many of the agencies (who have a 100 max per batch). Once exported from Lightroom, they are instantly available to upload to any other agency (including StockSubmitter if you wish to pay for their crappy work). If you have your Lightroom properly titled / described / keyworded, then there is NO faster way to do this. Guaranteed. If you have NOT yet done that in Lightroom, then you really need to do it regardless how you end up getting these files. That should be the centerpoint of all your organization and stock uploads.
170
« on: December 02, 2018, 20:09 »
The problem is not that I have lost the metadata. I use the Adobe Bridge to burn the metadata to the files and it is always there. The problem is that I have to go back and export all the images again from RAW to Jpeg. We are talking about thousands of files. This will take to much time.
Again, use Lightroom. I typically export 100 at a time, simply because many agency submission systems choke on more than 100. Create one export preset -- max jpg quality, etc. Call it "stock" (or whatever you want). Now select 100 images in Lightroom. Right-click, choose export->stock. It will take about a minute to export 100 images with all the info, in whatever folder you have told it to use (my 'stock' preset goes to a folder I call 'stock upload' -- creative, ain't it?) Now you go down your list of agencies and upload that 100 images. I typically have a FTP program open and send to all those agencies, and a browser window with half a dozen tabs for all those agencies. Set them up, and go have dinner. Return when the uploads are complete, and then go to each agency for the final cleanup of your batch submission. Now onto the next batch (I tend to just do 100 per night, wait a few nights, then do another 100). Unless you want to pay someone like StockSubmitter (and then spend hours trying to fix the mess it makes...), that ain't no easier way than this.
171
« on: December 02, 2018, 09:39 »
The reason I am asking is because I want to transfer some of my photos/videos to some new agencies and I do not want to go back to my archives and export all of the files again. To download them from already submitted place would be a lot easier.
You should be using something like Adobe Lightroom to manage you images. You then put the titles, descriptions and keywords in Lightroom. When you export JPG, all that info is baked into the file, and you do not need to enter it at the agency sites. Personally, I use the Shutterstock keyboarding tool to expand the keywords beyond what I could think of myself. I then copy the keywords (during the submission process) back into Lightroom. All other agencies then just get whatever I have put into Lightroom -- I don't bother customizing titles / descriptions or keywords per agency.
172
« on: December 01, 2018, 14:54 »
It's totally irrelevant, though. If an agency decides not to accept photos of grass, that's their decision.
And THAT completely sums it up. Why is this thread even still hogging my RSS feeds?
173
« on: December 01, 2018, 14:21 »
CanStock has a grand total of $9.50 on 12 downloads for me in the last 2 years.
DepositPhotos is more than double that! (tongue firmly in cheek...) with $25.48 on 84 downloads in the same time.
I stopped uploading to both of those last Summer, though I have not made any effort to remove what is already there (maybe 2000 images on each or thereabouts).
I have only been with Alamy for less than one year, but have a little under $400 on 15 downloads. I only get one or two sales a month from them, but they are each over $20 per sale, which would take 60 sales on ShutterStock to equal. Yes, I keep them, and continue feeding them new material.
174
« on: November 29, 2018, 19:09 »
Yeah, that's for October, after the sales have been notified. That's not real time reporting, which is what the OP asked.
You're right. It is "real time" for all other agencies, but they pop up end of the month for iStock.
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