Hmmmm
I was thinking of booking a trip to Madagascar (actually, I was booked last year,but they cancelled the trip of FO advice following the coup). I got a 'general information' pdf in today which inter alia said:
"NB: Extortionate camera fees are sometimes charged at the National Parks to those who seem to be taking photographs in a professional capacity (i.e. EU305 per person per park)."
Note that at today's exchange rates that's about US$417 per park. The trip I was looking at includes six national parks.
Looks like it's back to the drawing board. 

Quote from: stockastic on March 10, 2010, 15:17

Oh yeah, lawyers now control who can use which colors. Hadn't you heard?  John Deere owns green and yellow.  They invented those colors.

 I hope that on some future date we start to get court rulings on intellectual property, copyright etc. that make rational sense. It's totally nuts at this point.

I'm not sure what's nuts about being able to protect the use of your branding or intellectual property.  Should it be allowed for another tractor company to ride the reputation of JD by making green and yellow tractors?

Yebbut there's a huge gap between a rival company making a tractor of the same colour scheme (and presumably it's two very, very precise shades) and using a photo with a tiny JD tractor in the background.
It's just that no-one knows where the line is.

Had a rather strange reject from iStock yesterday. I submitted two photos of a rhinoceros. One was rejected because I didn't have a property release from a zoo. The other one was accepted. Two different angles, but in both you can still see the same background. I have other photos of wildlife from the same zoo and they accepted them. I guess it was a different reviewer than the other. Just thought that was funny. What zoo is going to give you a property release?

I know Fort Worth Zoo it states on their information pamphlet that you have to have permission to photograph, but no other zoo I've been to require permission. I don't know that Fort Worth Zoo would actually give you a property release though. I always ask if it's not posted before I photograph.

It is actually stated (in theTechnical Wiki) "Zoological Locations such as Seaword, San Diego Zoo, Busch Gardens, etc - Logos, images from theme parks, shows, attractions, products, animals, productions, characters or wordmarks are all protected and cannot be photographed for commercial use.

For clarity this policy applies to ALL zoological locations."

This is clearly not consistently upheld; many iStock inspectors can't distinguish between an 'animal in the wild' and a 'captive animal'. Keeps my wiki finger well exercised. However, some inspectors are more cautious than others.

It has been asserted by someone fairly knowledgeable (Can't remember who) that random zoo animals are not protected, unless they're well known 'characters' of the zoo. In the UK at least, it's doubtful that a zoo would have any grounds to sue. But who wants to be the test case?

As to whether a zoo would grant a property release, who knows until they try? I was thinking of trying for a profit-sharing route with my 'nearest' (relatively) zoo, but as I'm a teacher, whenever I can go, it's mobbed with screaming weans ...
I've never had a reply from anyone I've written to or emailled asking for a property release - positive or negative, so when in doubt, I go RM/editorial.

Wecome to the club of inconsistent rejections. It's all part of life's rich tapestry.

Hi all

A buyer wants 7 of your XXXL pictures on iS and nothing more. You are non-exclusive so the buyer needs 7 x 25 = 175 credits. He sees that the cheapest way to get this amount of credit would be to buy the following combination of credit packages: 120 credits for 170 $, 50 credits for 73 $ and 12 credits for 18,25 $. This will give the buyer 182 credits and cost him 261,25. You make 20% x 1,44$/credit (the average credit price for his purchase) x 175 credit = 50,24 $ and Getty makes 261,25 � 50,24 = 211,01$. Weirdly enough this 20 % (actually: 19,2%) commission scenario is what you are hoping for, but it ain't gonna happen! Because, just before he clicks �buy� he notices the link to Thinkstock and decides to see if your pictures are there - And they are,

Hi -
Can you post a link to the 'link to Thinkstock' the buyer can see in your scenario? Thanks!

Quote from: ShadySue on March 07, 2010, 09:09

There are many words and phrases which are not in iStock/Getty's Controlled Vocabulary.
I find it all the time with species of animals and plants, but a more general keyword phrase which isn't in the CV is 'aerial perspective'.

Aerial View is in the CV, and that's pretty close. 

Not at all - these have extremely little, if any, relationship to each other.
Aerial view is a view from above, e.g. from an aeroplane.
Aerial perspective is the effect of atmosphere on light, whereby more distant objects seem paler and more hazy than objects in the foreground.

Quote from: macrosaur on March 05, 2010, 12:57

but my impression is it's not just about the price, but about something
else, about pictures that would be rejected by QC but that are great
nonetheless.

Flickr can really prove the lack of market knowledge on the part of agency reviewers... I've had photos become very popular on Flickr after being rejected at the agencies... those "inferior" shots have found paying customers.

That's not at all surprising - friends who work in printing assure me that over 99% of the time, you don't need the quality demanded by e.g. iStock, e.g. the printing process itself would wipe out miniscule faults or artefacts. The most asked-for pics from my personal website are a series of unique content which iStock rejected for 'flat light' (my main rejection reason). If I were doing them now (the chance of catching it again would be miniscule, apart form being over 1000 miles away) with my 5D2, I wouldn't even consider micro for them, but that's another story.

Quote from: sjlocke on March 05, 2010, 14:17

Quote from: loop on March 05, 2010, 13:24

And, as a buyer, and seeing the growing amount of people posting with their names images that they don't own, I wouldn't use a Flickr image in my life. Go and use an image that results being from Getty, and you'll receive soon The Letter.

Exactly.  Also, there are no quality or release guarantees.  Basically, you've got a huge unedited pool of everything.  I can't imagine most serious buyers want to take a risk like that.  Or maybe it's worth it if you're doing something on the cheap-cheap.

I'm now using Flickr more and more when sourcing images on the free-free for school lessons. They have the huge advantage of being real and unstaged. Often I couldn't source usable images on e.g. iStock (too stylised, too generic) even if it was possible to purchase there. What I don't understand is why people put images up there without watermarks, if they don't want them to be avai;able under a cc licence.

First, I am not native English speaker so I do not understand all nuances of this language. Why flipping burgers seems to be the worst insult here. "You are lousy photographer you should be flipping burgers instead". My mom always said to me that it's not shame to do any work.

Unlike what's been said above, my take on 'flipping burgers for a living' is that it's a hot, sticky, sweaty, stressful job with zero respect, which leaves your hair and clothes (under the naff uniform) stinky every day, yet pays peanuts.

Will the magical stock fairy be filling this 3rd party search thing with content?

I'd imagine they would be doing searches, for a fee, through all the agencies.

given that more and more images are available, and buyers are spending more and more time searching for the right image, is it possible in the near future to have 3rd party vendors that will do the actual searching for the buyer? Is that service available now or is this plain stupid idea... 

Some of the RM agencies offer that service 'in-house'. Don't know about the micros/third party.

Quote from: ShadySue on March 03, 2010, 12:47

I guess you'd also have to wait until the Thinkstock figures are in (mid-March for Feb) to get a fuller picture.

This is news to me.  Can you provide a reference, or are you assuming a monthly report?

There is a monthly report, which is around the middle of the following month.
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=183461&page=1

I guess you'd also have to wait until the Thinkstock figures are in (mid-March for Feb) to get a fuller picture.

Quote from: ShadySue on March 01, 2010, 17:46

The OP is OK, as their editorial content is RF.

No, that would not be ok.  Maybe you mistyped?

I did, sorry.
But there's still the apparent exception in 2.2 which says 'exclusive content shall not include ... content that is produced for editiorial purposes'.