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Messages - ShadySue
15051
« on: July 04, 2010, 05:26 »
But here's the rub. That company wanted a nice image from Kvarner to put on their giveaway map. There are 35 images keyworded Kvarner on iStock alone (I guess yours must have come from a different agency). Why would they pay macro prices for a cover on a giveaway?
I've been supremely disappointed in Alamy. almost 900 pics (built up over 15 months); 5 sales, not yet reached payout. (Their 'Sell your image' page says the average editorial sale is $100, but that's gross. Their commission, and that of a distributor, if any, comes off that. (my total is under 50% the gross total)
Clearly I'm just not taking what their customers want, but it's quite hard to research what's selling, so you have to submit almost blind. The research that I'm doing suggests that what is selling in editorial shots isn't so different in type to what I'm submitting.
Of course, 900 is a drop in the ocean of "19.34 million" still images - in the macros, their total is shared with audio, video and Flash files.
That said, I'm trying to build up my Alamy portfolio, and have sent loads of stuff there over the past two months, because I prefer to see real editorial photos, so I prefer to be able to submit them 'real'.
Anyone have experience of Dreamweaver editorial?
15052
« on: July 04, 2010, 04:40 »
Hello everyone, I recently started photography. About 2 months ago. I have found out about Stock Photography this week and it made me quite interested by it.
Wow! You've wasted a whole month and 29 days!
I'd suggest spending a bit more time just shooting and enjoying and learning about your new toy before stepping into the business of stock.
@Nodixal: The advice above is by one of the world's top microstockers. It's worth it's weight in Black Diamonds. Check out his site on iStock. That's what sells!
15053
« on: July 03, 2010, 08:12 »
It might depend on what agency they bought the image from, but as far as I can see, it would not need an EL if bought from iStock (under 500,000 copies). A road map would be a standard printed product (presumably it would count as a 'promotional item', and it's not being offered for sale, a such.
Other agencies probably have different rules.
15054
« on: July 02, 2010, 09:37 »
Hi,
A large part of my images at IStock have 5 - 7 keywords only.
I'm terrified by keywords rejections and I'm playing by the rules.
Once submitted I never edit an image.
The results?
Quite poor, not even a single sale in more than a month.
But in all fairness my sad record has a lot more to do with the quality of my images than to anything else. I have yet to reach mediocrity.
Go for relevant keywords and great images.
That must be the key 
If you're having problems finding good keywords, you could visit the Keywords forum. There are usually some helpful people there who will give you suggestions about good keywords, and also censure you robustly should they find any that don't 'fit'. (Tough love, but usually less 'tough' than the Critique forum unless you're waaaaaay off-beam.)
15055
« on: July 02, 2010, 06:42 »
Did I mention that some Alamy photographers also include incorrect spellings in case a buyer can't spell? One I had to do myself was Saint Theresa which also has Saint Teresa in the comprehensive words.  Then we have the other issue, UK spellings and USA spellings are not the same. Two countries separated by a common language. For IS I had to learn that Canceled is spelled "cancelled" in Canada and the UK. Buyers in the US are not going to type in British spellings for words. Hopefully this helps if I have a photo of a tire and they don't look for Tyre. Or kerb vs curb, or grey vs gray, and we could go on for ages with the differences.
You know, I have been getting confused with why spell checkers always throw up doubled consonants! I know that Word at work keeps defaulting to American spellings, presumably after the techie has been fiddling with stuff. One of my Alamy searches yesterday was University Hall NOT collage (sic). A strange search anyway, since in some tradtional UK universities (i.e. not the redbrick unis or the souped up polytechnics), faculties are called colleges, including my own dear alma mater, and I don't even pretend to understand the Oxbridge collegiate system. Anyway, they searched through 1800 pics without zooming. Sometimes I wish I knew what they wanted. Another hit I got yesterday was 'woman with muscles'. Yup, I have images of a performing Strong Woman. (several other pics of her performing at other locations too!). The search was for RM but without MR specified. Over 300 views overall, but no zooms.
15056
« on: July 02, 2010, 06:16 »
Many people submit images on istock with 10 or so keywords and then added 10 more once the images were approved, so that keywords did not result in a rejection or non approval of submitted image.
Your thoughts ladies and gentlemen?
I can't imagine what value there could be in adding ten irrelevant keywords post inspection. If you have a photo of a red apple isolated on white, you might manage to screw out ten keywords (because isolated, isolated on white, plain background, and white background would all be valid), what possible value would there be in adding green, pear, tree, lunch or any of the rubbish spam which you sometimes see and which have no relevance to the image in question? If you have 50 relevant keywords, which I've had on about five occasions maximum (usually when there are many relevant keywords associated with a location) they will be accepted. If you add irrelevant keywords, your file is likely to be wikied (eventually!) and you may get your knuckles rapped. That won't necessarily affect your placement for the relevant keywords you've used.
15057
« on: July 02, 2010, 05:49 »
iStock: marginally over May for dls and $$, not including a May EL. Compared to June '09: dls down c25%, $$ up c35%, mostly due to Exc+. Alamy: nada. Think I need an Alamy mentor. 
15058
« on: July 01, 2010, 19:09 »
Hmmm. 20% of one million sounds an awful lot like a profit of $200,000.
Which can be looked at two ways ... I made $200,000 over the course of an entire year .. or .. Hmmm I just lost $800,000
$1,000,000 gross - $800,000 costs = $200,000 profit ........ where exactly have you lost any money?
You haven't, its just a difference in opinion about what constitutes a good profit. He does make a valid point though, some shooters yield higher profit margins than others because they simply know how to control their costs better, or perhaps simply increase their gross sales without adding costs.
Still, it's better than 1000 gross - 10 costs = 990 profit. It's all about the bottom line.
15059
« on: July 01, 2010, 16:31 »
That seems like a big waste of money. I can't see how that would make me want to buy a tv. I'd imagine you could do it CG for much less.
That's true. I came home raving to my husband about the 'incredible paint advert' I'd seen and when I found it online I was astonished to find it was a TV advert!!! Still the advert was better than the film, even though it, as so often with adverts, it didn't serve its purpose. Awhile ago in the UK, they got David Bailley to advertise some consumer film camera. One that I remember had some punter asking him to use their camera to take their photo. Rather than just doing a quick shap, he was hamming up getting a 'creative' shot. The punchline was, predictably, "Who do you think you are - David Bailley?" The campaign was all over TV, magazines, goodness knows what. But most people, when asked for a survey, couldn't even name correctly the brand of camera he was plugging.
15060
« on: July 01, 2010, 16:00 »
Talking production budgets how much do you think it would have cost to have set this one up? All you need is a derelict housing estate in Glasgow, 70,000 litres of paint and about 800 bombs and mortars ... for 60 seconds of footage. Oh, and quite a bit of creative talent too.
Sony Bravia Paint Ad
I just love that ad. I'm pretty sure there are at least some details of how they did it on a website, maybe Sony's website. I saw it first at the pictures, and it was just stunning on the Big Screen. Incredibly, I knew instantly it was Glasgow (OK it's only about 30 miles away, but I only go to the city centre or West End, and had never been to that area.) Yup: Phoenix FireworksBBCAAASKI found several links to the info on Sony's site that must be the one I saw before, but it's no' there noo!
15061
« on: July 01, 2010, 15:09 »
OK, OK, you win.
The iStock search is not clean, because like most non-Londoners, people have keyworded Tower Bridge (which is also in the CV) as "London Bridge". I guess the issue is that that may well be what most people expect when they search for London Bridge.
Did you intend that result?
15062
« on: July 01, 2010, 15:02 »
It's not the same as Micro where spamming keywords helps in some peoples opinions. It's a penalty on Alamy. Anyone reading this, should only add exact relevant words and limited concepts. Stop thinking like Micro where more is better and start thinking smarter is better.
I guess you have me at a disadvantage, Sir  I only have experience in Micro of iStock, where spamming keywords is a disadvantage and is penalised by the Best Match. (In general, best match is based on keyword relevance, but spammed Vetta files, of which there are many, trump well keyworded non-Vettas. 
Sure a search for London Bridge will find every image for every bridge in London, because the same two words are there. Try the same on any other site, you get the same problem. Either you want the search to find the words you put in the box or you don't. It's a dumb computer, it doesn't guess related images, it doesn't interpret, and again, it's not psychic! What you enter is what you will get. It's that easy.
Here, sir, I have you at the disadvantage.  Try a Best Match search on iStock for London Bridge. Since "London Bridge" is a keyword phrase in iStock's CV, it's very clean. If you have correctly keyworded and DA'd your file to "London Bridge(City of London)", the files will mostly be of London Bridge. The exceptions would be if someone had either deliberately spammed "London Bridge" in their keywords or someone had made a genuine mistake and thought that their bridge was London Bridge, but it wasn't. In either of these cases, the file would probably show around the top of a search for a while, but would fairly quickly sink down in the search results. <snip explanation> The idea is use the system to our advantage and understand how it works. [/quote] Yeah, but I can be penalised any time anyone searches for Leyden in Holland, for example. Another one I've mentioned before is that I have a file from Queen Elizabeth National park in Uganda. This has turned up on searches for Queen Elizabeth. So I'm penalised for doing things right. That doesn't happen on iStock that I've ever experienced. http://alamy.com/contributor/help/captions-keywords-descriptions.asp
15063
« on: July 01, 2010, 08:16 »
Yup, it's kinda nuts how things work in this situation...
I guess there's reason to it all. How do they know that the graffiti isn't, in fact, legal and therefore not "public property".
In my case, I took photos of public propery, under a bridge.
Well, I give up. Some pretty awesome work, but I'll just keep it for my self
Oh, wait, I don't get to make money off it.. 
You wouldn't want to be profiting from crime, now, would you? 
15064
« on: July 01, 2010, 07:42 »
Can anyone confirm that editing keywords after being accepted leads to a worse ranking?
I've never heard this and I've never experienced it.
15065
« on: July 01, 2010, 05:37 »
15066
« on: July 01, 2010, 02:38 »
Granting vandals the protection of copyright law is just beyond dumb. What's next? Forbidding the property owner from photographing it for his insurance company? Blocking its removal?
"Artist" my @ss.
You can photograph it all you want, you can't sell it as stock, nor can you put it on a greeting card, make a poster out if it etc.
So let's say the owner of the building now wants to photograph his own building, and sell pictures of it. Does he have to remove the graffitti first, because he doesn't have copyright on it?
Ridiculous.
As per my answer above, that's exactly what iStock advised me.
15067
« on: June 30, 2010, 14:59 »
I'll email you with some of mine that only have the world "Joliet" in the location. As I pointed out, since it's the location and not the subject, I didn't want people to get views from having it in the keywords. If I have a picture taken OF a location, I put it into the keywords, if it's AT that location, I don't.
As for the World and End, I have to agree, it searches for everything and anything and if the two words are in there, no matter what context, the image will come up in the search. The only helpful part is that Proximity and word order do count. So someone with End of the World in the keywords will come up before a long bunch of words that happen to have End and World somewhere in there.
You'll have to admit that the word End will come up in many searches and World is pretty common as well.
Someone who does a good specific search for what they want, should get the best result at the front and the ones that just happened to have a couple of matching words, towards the end.
Yebbut they could make it so much better by implementing some method of keyword phrases, whether by commas or "..." or whatever. I accede that changing things now, when they have 19m images would be an utter nightmare, but I can't think why they didn't do it long, long ago.
15068
« on: June 30, 2010, 07:23 »
I know that one myself!
As for searching the location field, YES IT DOES! Remember that the location field is much lower rank than the first two keyword fields, which makes it third in importance. Next someone will complain that they are getting bad hits on locations, because it is included. If finding things wrong is the goal for someone, there are flaws and you can make an argument criticizing any search engine, for omissions and errors, including the almighty Google.
Strange. I uploaded pics from the Glasgow Mela. I had Glasgow in the important keywords, and so obviously my pics showed up in a search for Glasgow Mela. However, I only had UK in the location field, so they were not showing up at all in a search for Mela UK. I can't 'prove' this now, as I added UK into some of the 'essential keywords' fields when I had enough free letters, or in the important keywords field for the rest. They're all showing up now, of course.
15069
« on: June 30, 2010, 05:02 »
I can't say for any other sites, but iStock 'judges each case on its merits', but is more likely to reject graffiti than accept it. (Some of those which were accepted were made specially for the photo). I was told that even if a vandal graffitied my house, it would likely be rejected as 'someone else's artwork'.
Bring them on if they want to sue me, I replied.
It's a bit ridiculous, but it's their ball.
15070
« on: June 30, 2010, 04:16 »
(I realise that 'I can't find' isn't the same as 'it's not there'!)
I know that one myself!
I think what I'm trying to point out is that if you search for three words, your example "Drums, Japanese and Caucasian" You are going to get all the photos with those three words. It's pretty straight forward. The search isn't psychic and doesn't know what you are thinking of, just words that match. The best searches are specific, but lets say you included "playing drums" in the above. Every images with those two "playing drums" words will also come up. But images with all four words should come up first.
The search isn't phychic; but I wouldn't expect it to be. I would hope, however that it was 'intelligent'. If they are going to put things down the side for people to filter their search, they need to give the contributors the ability to enter these definers themselves, should they choose; i.e. we could choose to indicate the ethnicity of any people in our images. On iStock, the problem doesn't arise. Keyword 'Japanese', choose 'Japan (East Asia)' 'Japanese ethnicity' or 'Traditionally Japanese (Traditional Oriental Culture)' or two or all of these as appropriate and it's done - and accurate. I've just looked at yesterday's 'customer search activity' on my Alamy images. As usual, some weird, but the one which stuck out was that one of my photos had shown up, with 1680 others, on a search or 'end of the world'. I was, as so often, perplexed, so went onto my image which showed up in the search and found it was a pic of a mural on a house indicating local people signing up for WW1. So I'd think 'gable end' and "First World War" were perfectly legitimate keywords for the pic, but I bet the searcher didn't appreciate it wasting his/her time on the search. In fact, he/she had not zoomed on any of the 1680 which turned up. One of the things I regularly notice is that some 'customer search activity' shows people viewing more than a thousand images and not zooming on any. Is no-one on Alamy concerned about that? [to be fair, this week I also noticed a customer search on Moremi game reserve, which had 1111 searches, including 26 of mine, and no zooms. I'd imagine (almost) all the searches were accurate, and would love to know what they were specifically looking for!] Do they even analyse metrics? Do 'Them Upstairs' monitor this forum? Maybe they do, but it's not apparent. Lobo posts on the iStock thread from time to time (and I'm guessing it's part of his remit to monitor it all the time) and sometimes clarifies issues or offers help/suggestions if appropriate; and probably feeds back concerns to Them Upstairs. Which IMO is as is should be.
15071
« on: June 29, 2010, 09:45 »
Yeah, its all soooooooooooooo secret, right? and with plenty of hush, hush, on par with the IS best match and all that blaha. Simple answer is: DOESNT work at all and neither does anybody elses.
Buyers will have to throw a dice and hope for the best to find their shot.
IS is a gazillion times better for search then Alamy. At least if contributors keyword correctly, the search will be fairly clean, the problem comes with either spammers or 'genuine mistakes', and even they will fall in the best match soon enough. The trouble with Alamy is that without a CV, or even 'keyword phrases' (e.g. by CSVs), even correct keywording will give poor results just because of the way the system works. Worse still, they seem unwilling to resolve the problem and reluctant to accept feedback from the forums.
15072
« on: June 29, 2010, 08:46 »
These bits that are down the left hand side for choosing - do they come from the keywords? Because I can't find any other way of setting, for example, ethnicity, except in the keywords. (I realise that 'I can't find' isn't the same as 'it's not there'!)
Otherwise we're getting into the same old, same old. E.g. I've got photos of some Caucasian musicians playing Japanese drums. The keywords include taiko and Japanese drums. So will those images show on a search for Japanese ethnicity?
Answer my own question: the pics are now on sale, so I checked and indeed the do show up on Japanese ethnicity. So again, I have to assert that the Alamy search system is seriously flawed. OTOH, I remember being informed when I joined that the location you put in the location bar is searchable. This is NOT currently true, so I've just added the detailled location into the keywords of a couple of hundred photos with probably another few huindred to go.
15073
« on: June 28, 2010, 18:37 »
[snip]
Then there's this part on the left... for searching within the search.
Age
Any
Baby
Child
Teenager
Adult
Senior
See all ...
Number of People
Any
None
1 Person
2 People
3 People
4 People
Groups or Crowds
Ethnicity
Any
African
African American
Caucasian
Chinese
Indian
Japanese
See all ...
Viewpoint
Any
Front
Side
Rear
Profile
Location
Any
USA
UK
Europe
Orientation
Any
Landscape
Portrait
Panoramic
Square
Image Type
Any
Photographs
Illustrations
Date Taken
Any
Last 7 days
Last month
Last 3 months
Last 6 months
Last 12 months
Custom ...
Minimum File Size
Where else can you select files by all those specific limits?
[snip]
These bits that are down the left hand side for choosing - do they come from the keywords? Because I can't find any other way of setting, for example, ethnicity, except in the keywords. (I realise that 'I can't find' isn't the same as 'it's not there'!)
Otherwise we're getting into the same old, same old. E.g. I've got photos of some Caucasian musicians playing Japanese drums. The keywords include taiko and Japanese drums. So will those images show on a search for Japanese ethnicity?
15074
« on: June 28, 2010, 17:10 »
[snip]
Then there's this part on the left... for searching within the search.
Age
Any
Baby
Child
Teenager
Adult
Senior
See all ...
Number of People
Any
None
1 Person
2 People
3 People
4 People
Groups or Crowds
Ethnicity
Any
African
African American
Caucasian
Chinese
Indian
Japanese
See all ...
Viewpoint
Any
Front
Side
Rear
Profile
Location
Any
USA
UK
Europe
Orientation
Any
Landscape
Portrait
Panoramic
Square
Image Type
Any
Photographs
Illustrations
Date Taken
Any
Last 7 days
Last month
Last 3 months
Last 6 months
Last 12 months
Custom ...
Minimum File Size
Where else can you select files by all those specific limits?
[snip]
These bits that are down the left hand side for choosing - do they come from the keywords? Because I can't find any other way of setting, for example, ethnicity, except in the keywords. (I realise that 'I can't find' isn't the same as 'it's not there'!)
15075
« on: June 28, 2010, 16:35 »
For the last few months, I've been averaging sales of around $120.00 on iStock each month. So far, this month, I've only had sales of $38.00.
Is it just me, or are there others who are experiencing a downturn in sales?
Back to the OP!!! I've had a really weird June. First week was dire, I thought the dreaded 'summer slump' was early. Then I had two good weeks; best nonEL weeks this year. Then this past week has been dire again, 3dls Fri, 0 Sat, 1 Sun 2 today. No best match shift that I can see. Maybe this is the start of the summer slump; or maybe it's just ebb, flow and ebb again. Who knows?
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