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Messages - ShadySue
15376
« on: January 17, 2010, 18:20 »
I don't understand why people use cell phone cameras, mine is so much cheaper:
http://tinyurl.com/ylzs9u3
Huh "We are not able to ship this item to your default shipping address." 
15377
« on: January 17, 2010, 18:07 »
Of course, I have a model release. You may imagine, at the time of shooting I made many other images containing the model's face. This just isn't the case of a sexy hotel worker...
Just attach it and reupload.
15378
« on: January 17, 2010, 18:03 »
Clearly this shot was not taken without consent. However, if a company wants to establish a standard rule they cannot make exceptions or else it becomes more time consuming and costly. That's my guess.
There's a huge difference between giving consent for a photo to be taken and being willing for it to be used to advertise any product or service.
15379
« on: January 17, 2010, 17:45 »
EDITED.
Actually, I guess you could ask Support specifically about that, they might give permission on a case by case basis. But it's the principle that you have to do that - for instance I've used photos taken on a mobile phone - the pics are only used on the Smartboard, they don't have to be 'pixel perfect'.
i'm sorry if i misread.
did you say you actually got a picture approved by Istock taken with a MOBILE?
No. What I said was that in many cases a photo taken on a mobile is adequate for many school uses but still iStock's exclusive rules would prevent an exclusive from offering them to a file-sharing site. (basically I was saying that iStock would never want the photos, but exclusives can't freely share them, which I find a real pain)
15380
« on: January 17, 2010, 17:41 »
Have you read this article http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=648? The bottom line isn't why they need the release; it's that they do. Scout and support tickets won't make any difference. From the article:"A couple of general rules: 1. Always submit a release if you can. In the end it makes everything better for everyone involved. 2. Dont be a jerk. If you think the person in your viewfinder wouldnt sign a release, dont take their picture with a 'creative crop' and sell it as stock."
15381
« on: January 17, 2010, 08:20 »
istock claims to be pretty profitable ATM, despite amateurs wasting their time 'learning'. Was a time when their content chief JJRD spoke of istock as a place to 'grow photographers'. Add the fact that a contributor has to pass an acceptance test (3 images at a time) before being able to contribute in quantity (like, 15/week) and I don't think too much inspectors time is being wasted by newcomers.
I dunno. I keep seeing plenty of threads from newbies who "love rejections" because it helps them grow, and how great iStock is as a "learning experience" because they knew nothing about taking pictures.
I think it certainly used to be that people with little experience could be moulded into iStock's ways more quickly than those with a lot of experience in other fields of photography, who know that sub-optimal photos are often used to great profit elsewhere and railled at the thought of images, being sold for so little, have to be pixel perfect. They probably had a steeper learning curve than those who only know where the 'take' button was.
15382
« on: January 17, 2010, 05:59 »
Nataq's points are valid, but your friends/relatives won't be much use to you [1] unless they're already submitting at the agency/ies you're considering. I haven't seen the images Nataq says "you wouldn't believe your eyes what photos are submitted", and I'm not talking about these. I'm talking about perfectly competent ones which nevertheless have a few artifacts, or are taken in flat light (if that's normal in your area) or contrasty light (likewise), a logo which you need to zoom in to see etc. Lots of the world's iconic photos wouldn't be accepted onto iStock for all sorts of reasons, and now I sit at camera club competitions thinking stupid things like "The light's too flat" or 'there's a shadow over the faraway eye of that eagle" etc, which are irrelevant in the real world. So, everything that Nataq says, and then some. There are many featured articles on iStock - you could usefully spend time studying them. Maybe some of the other agencies have similar, I don't know. The NYIP website has some basic free-to-access 'how to photograph' articles which are very useful at the composition and technique levels in their ezine: http://www.nyip.com/photo-ezine/ezine.html and podcasts http://www.nyipodcast.com/. Health warning: the hard info in these articles/podcasts is padded out by an insane amount of waffle. I used to copy and paste the text, cut out the waffle and keep the hard facts on my hard drive for reference. It's there, you just have to find it! [1] Plus I doubt if I've ever had a friend or colleague not moving in photos circles who doesn't tell me "Your photos should be in National Geographic", so generally take their good opinions with a pinch of salt. Another useful site is www.betterphoto.com, though nowadays they are mostly about plugging their courses, which I haven't taken, so can't comment on. They have free to access articles indexed here: http://www.betterphoto.com/allAbout.asp. I was an active member there for about a year before joining iStock. I'd say what was most useful there to me was recognising that American general taste for images is different from UK general taste. Since the US is probably the source of most stock buyers, that is very useful. They have monthly photo challenges, and the ability to feed back on each other's images, though it does tend to be of the 'wow, fantastic' variety. But overall if it's just improving your shapshots, that's a far better way to learn than iStock rejections, which tend to be very vague: my most frequent rejection nowadays is: "We found the overall composition of this file's lighting could be improved. Some of the technical aspects that can all limit the usefulness of a file are: -Flat/dull colors -Direct on-camera flash and/or flash fall-off (bright subject, dark background) -Harsh lighting with blown-out highlights that lack details and/or distracting shadows - Distracting lens flares -Incorrect white balance For information about iStock lighting standards please see: http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=524For more information on iStock Lighting Standards, please see: http://www.istockphoto.com/tutorial_2.2_lighting.phpRelated Articles: Lighting and Shadows: http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=46Setting up your own home studio: http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=14Custom White Balance: http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=95Decent Exposure: http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=40If you require further explanation regarding this rejection, please visit our critique forum for immediate peer to peer feedback. To visit the critique forum please see: http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_threads.php?forumid=26 " ... which in my case always means flat natural light. So you can see that most of the links, useful in themselves, are of little use to help me to avoid similar rejections in future. (the only thing they could say is 'don't submit outdoor pics 95% of the time from where you live"). That's not to say that the articles on studio work aren't useful in themselves (READ THEM!). But don't imagine that any critique will be personal to your image. All the rejections are pretty general, with loads of links which don't apply to the actual image you got rejected. The critique forum is good, and you will get personal critique. But @OP, to be honest, if you really don't care about whether you sell or not, iStock isn't the place for you. It exists as a commercial business to sell photos. There are other places to learn, even free/low cost. Maybe others can post here some examples of any I don't know about?
15383
« on: January 17, 2010, 05:23 »
Like Michael, I was lucky to have the advantage of the lowering of the limit to 250/50%, which happened when I was travelling. My intention had been to apply for Shutterstock when I got back, but I decided to go exclusive with iStock instead.
I have to say that my downloads are going down - the last two months had lower downloads than the same months in '07, when I had about 1/3 of the images I have now. 2009 uploads especially fared badly. With the current price raise, the money I get might now be about the same. I guess there's a limited amount of buyers but an almost unlimited flow of new suppliers.
My main regret is their stringent rules on what I can do with my photos. As a teacher, I often use CC-released images from file-sharing sites like Flickr, and I'd love to be able to 'pay back' - but iStock exclusivity prevents you from doing that, even with images they would never be interested in.
Actually, I guess you could ask Support specifically about that, they might give permission on a case by case basis. But it's the principle that you have to do that - for instance I've used photos taken on a mobile phone - the pics are only used on the Smartboard, they don't have to be 'pixel perfect'.
15384
« on: January 16, 2010, 08:28 »
But what will happen if I am killed in a car accident without last will document?
That's bound to depend on what the laws are in your country about people who die intestate.
15385
« on: January 16, 2010, 07:22 »
I don't even have a will. Just assumed that everything I have will go to my husband if I die or our (only) child if we are both dead. Sounds like a will would really simplify things as far as the stock royalties go.
God, I hate dealing with lawyers. Guess I'm going to have to, though.
Lisa, I hate to point out again the horrible possibility of both your husband and child, or all three of you dying in e.g. a car accident or house fire etc. Unless you really don't care who would inherit in these circumstances, you should think about making a will. In case that sounds smug, my husband and my sister are my beneficiaries with no fallback, but they're seldom in the same place at the same time. Not outwith the bounds of possibilty, though. I'm not sure who I should fallback my port to: my parents (who I guess would be the legal fallback beneficiaries in general terms) have never had or used a computer, and would be unlikely to start. Would a charity consider it too much hassle? Maybe I should look into that.
15386
« on: January 16, 2010, 07:16 »
I sometimes get contacted by art directors who originally found me through micro and then commission me to do a custom shoot on a much higher budget.
[snip]
Seems like micro customers, for the most part, just have no idea how much (custom) photography is supposed to cost....!
Sometimes I have a hollow laugh when I see the 'request new photos' and see a very complicated requested setup, often involving several models and very precise 'stage directions'. It's obvious that these images would have a 'limited market', yet the requesters sometimes act all hurt if they don't get what they want for their $10.
15387
« on: January 15, 2010, 19:23 »
I don't think you need an MR for your sample shots, though I did hear mention of it once. Bear in mind that even if you get your sample shots all accepted for entry into iStock, they may not get into the collection (even with an MR). That's a shock for some people, but it happens to lots of us.
15388
« on: January 15, 2010, 17:48 »
Do you have a life away from microstock?
Don't understand the question.
Seriously: full time job (hoping to quit in c.10 - 18 months), travel, birding, natural history., chocolate, web design (hobby/pro bono level only).
15389
« on: January 15, 2010, 16:15 »
Bear in mind that your friends and family will need to sign a model release which says that their image can be used to promote any product or service (e.g. Viagra, a political party or religion, a product they may not agree with), may have their image distorted or cropped, added to another photo etc., and although there are restrictions, the agency might be 'looser' about these as you might like. Even so, if an image is used outwith the agreement, there's not much you can do once the horse has bolted, e.g. the British National Party (the UK equivalent of the KKK) used micro photos in leaflets it distributed over an area of England. This was against the rules, as the people were depicted and quoted as supporting the BNP (ironically, one of the families used was Italian). But we never heard what, if anything, the agency did about it, and even at that, the leaflets were already distributed.
Probably you've got a greater chance of being run over crossing the road tomorrow, but you and they need to be fully aware of all that.
With that caveat, I third jsnover's advice.
15390
« on: January 14, 2010, 17:49 »
I used that a lot in vain. Last time I checked, "real" wasn't yet Brazilian currency.
Actually it is - admittedly only, if you search in Brazilian Portuguese, "real" will translate to "Moeda Brasileira" which is "Brazilian Currency".
Most people searching for "real" in English will probably NOT mean the Brazilian currency - and they can still search for "Brazilian Currency" or "Brazilian money", not a far fetch. So I assume, for most of the real-life cases, it works this way.
Michael,
I haven't uploaded for over an year, and when I do is in English. I have just edited one of my images to check, and they still only have two other meanings. They have "yen", "peso" and "schekel" in the English vocabulary, and in other sites people buy a lot of my "real" images (in IS too). In DT I saw many times "real" as the term of search.
You can use keywords that aren't in the CV - they will be used for the image and work in searches, but not translated into other languages, and if they're phrases they would have to be placed in quotes for the search to work
I don't think this is correct, as this is the message I get if I don't check any of the meanings for "real" (the underline is mine):
"You should provide at least one appropriate search term for each of the tags related to this image before completing the disambiguation process. A term is one of the possible meanings provided in the right hand column for each of the tags you've added. Only check those possible terms which are relevant to this particular image. A search term is needed in order to make your file searchable. Do you want to continue without choosing terms?"
That's the problem I outlined above. Because there is/are already meanings for the word 'real' you can't currently use it to mean the Brazilian currency. Same with Pula or Sucre. However, for instance, the currency of Ethiopia is 'birr'. Birr isn't in the CV, but someone has 'added it for their own use' (and if you were the first you could use it). Since 'birr' is the name, in that case it wouldn't even matter that it couldn't be translated, as presumably anyone wanting an image of a birr would type in 'birr'. However, if it's a keyword phrase you can still add it 'for your own use' (you get a message asking you if you want to do that), but then the searcher would somehow need to know that they have to put the search term in quotations while searching. Not obvious or intuitive, but then if they want to qualify a phrase search, they also have to put it in quotations even if it's in the CV. E.g. "Railway track" winter, or "Railway track" Canada etc. Actually I like the CV, even though blips like this are very annoying: it took well over two years to get my home county, Ayrshire, to be added, as previously my only option was 'Ayrshire cattle". Remember the Keywording forum: very helpful people hang out there
15391
« on: January 14, 2010, 12:29 »
As of present I am going through a battle with the wicked stepmother of my fathers estate. And I might mention a very costly battle!! There was no will. Now the concern is this. When this estate is settled the monies will be divided equally between five children. Now if this person had an account with royalties, it would have to be divided amoungst five children. The copyrights would have to be divided amongst five children. I doubt a stock agency would do that seeing how they want to move the copyright to only one person.
Now if there was a will these royalties would have to be willed to one heir not amounst all heirs. Now am I right on this? or would there be a way around it. This could be more complex than it sounds
I can't answer your specific question, and circumstances may vary by country. Maybe this is an argument for being independent, have a lucky dip where each child picks out an agency and that's theirs. You'd need to have the same number of agencies as beneficiaries, and if one folds, it's the 'luck of the draw'. Just a thought.
15392
« on: January 14, 2010, 12:17 »
email [email protected] to suggest new keywords
Absolutely, but you can also make suggestions on the keywords forum. Sometimes that can throw up alternative suggestions you hadn't thought of, other times Ducksandwich or Emyerson will throw in some official words. That can sometimes get a change implemented more quickly, if it's thought to be an important change. The most serious problem is if a word already exists, but you want a different meaning, like you want to add your photos of Spingleplonk, Arkansas, but there is already a CV entry for Spingleplonk, Essex. Then there's not a lot you can do other than holler. IME some changes get made overnight, some take over two years.
15393
« on: January 10, 2010, 06:16 »
I have been doing some weird stock with weird models and it was fun. But by now I learned my lesson. No tattoos, no nailbiters, no digital dental work required. A "businessman" with even a small tattoo or a hole for an earring won't sell.
How strangely conservative microstock buyers must be. Maybe these sort of images would do better on the macros?
15394
« on: January 09, 2010, 18:56 »
How about Winter Wonderland?
15395
« on: January 09, 2010, 18:54 »
Does no one read? My reason for not resubmitting is to not waste a second upload slot on the same image when I have so many others waiting to upload. With only twenty upload slots a week, I'd rather move on to another image from another shoot. It's not about where it would end up in the queue, but about how many I can have there. And resubmits do take up those precious slots.
People do read. They're probably just as confused as I am about why you'd use one upload slot to begin with, but not a second one to make a quick fix to an already completed image and get it online in less time than a new submission by using the "resubmit" function. Or why you wouldn't resubmit an image that you obviously felt strongly enough about to start a forum thread discussing the rejection.
If "Jimmy cracked corn and I don't care", why did they bother to write a song about it?
15396
« on: January 09, 2010, 12:55 »
Looks as though I should try pushing people towards Shutterstock, then. 
15397
« on: January 09, 2010, 12:50 »
i travel extensively, and sometimes i take those photos with the people i live with in those poorer or shall i say less affluence and / or less fortunate countries.
if i had a large portfolio of such images, and they have made a lot of money for me. i would think it's only sensibility that some of that wealth go back to the people who helped you create that instrument to earn you that money.
Hmmm. Depending on where you have travelled, this would be difficult. For example, do you envisage the stock agency doing the work of totting up which models are in which photos and dividing up the proceeds accordingly then directing each portion to the appropriate models? (most/all won't) Or dividing up the proceeds of any photo where you've got more than one model in the image? Or if they are really undeveloped countries, how are the models going to access the internet and actually get their money? The alternative would be to leave all of your portfolio to one charity which was working in all of the countries you worked in.
15398
« on: January 09, 2010, 10:04 »
The inheritance laws in my country are quite simple: everything (up to a couple of millions) go to the spouse. When he or she dies, it goes to the kids (you can't disinherit your children, they all get an equal share). Since these also are my models, it is natural to leave any potential income to them. So if the agencies accept the laws in the different countries without a will, I don't see the need to write one.
What would happen in the unfortunate tragedy that you, your spouse and your children would all die in a plane crash?
15399
« on: January 08, 2010, 16:04 »
Perhaps a lot of buyers will see the new prices and wont be able to find non-exclusive images so easy, so they will go elsewhere and a lot of non-exclusives will be 
Why won't they be able to find them easily? They don't have little crowns under them: 'it's not rocket surgery' (TM)
15400
« on: January 07, 2010, 15:29 »
Except... with the huge image backlog I have at iStock, it's not worth trying to resubmit. By the way, the tattoo in this case is tiny, taking up the ring position on the model's ring finger. Here's the 100% view of the offending area.
i am not a regular with IS, but if i recall, if they say MAY RESUBMIT it takes approval much faster when you CORRECT THE REJECTION REASON. at least it happened to me a couple of times.
I had a resubmit for possible trademark reasons (it wasn't but it was easily removed) accepted today, jumping some of my other in-queue pics by a few days.
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