Cool, photography and a workout all in one package 

Hmmm It works I'll give you that, but I agree I'm not sure how you stand legally with using the information gained from another website for your own commercial gain.

I agree about the thumbnail thing, you'd need to check whether that breaches any copyright, but I must at least give you credit for not attaching a referral link when you click through on an image.

I have no doubt your intentions are well meant and I congratulate you on developing a clever piece of software, also the fact that you ask for voluntary contributions is another good move.

I'd say get the backing of the sites you're using for information and you could be onto a winner, that could also help with any copyright issues.

Firstly it is not that he is selling something that bothers me, it's not the way he keeps posting threads that then drives traffic to his own website, it's not even the adverts or any referral links on the websites that bothers me.

What bothers me is the titles such as "Some SUPER SECRET Techniques Revealed for the first time here" when in actual fact they are not secret and they are not new.

I'm sure like me you occasionally read threads where someones photographs have been taken and then vector art created from them, or when somebody sells someones images on eBay, and I'm sure like me you think it's a bad thing that someone has taken the time and effort to create such an image only to have it ripped of by somebody else who then takes the credit for all the hard work involved.

Well the tutorials on his site are not new, there are hard working people that create these tutorials and techniques, and either publish them on websites for free or publish books to gain their compensation.

I'm not saying he had done anything illegal but IMO the title of this thread and others suggests that it is he that has created these techniques.

Form your own opinion it's a free world apparently.

Traditionally 85mm was considered the ultimate portraiture lens because it gives the most true to life representation of a human face, all lenses slightly distort the image because of the curvature in the glass, however that would be paying unbelievable attention to detail.
The other consideration as to why 85mm is the best is down to DOF, DOF increases the further you are away from a subject for any given aperture, in other words if you filled your frame with a headshot using a 50mm lens at f11 you'd get less DOF than you would filling the frame using an 85mm at the same aperture, you could argue that why not use a 200mm then, that where sharpness comes into it.
Canon produce the ultimate 85mm 1.2 lens for this very purpose, but at £1300 I'd imagine it's out of your price range.

Like I say though, thats paying the ultimate attention to detail and is for full frame cameras, the 50mm 1.8 is a great 'throw away' lens and you will get good images with it, I don't use a cropped sensor so can't comment on that side of things.

Regards to your last comment, yes PS7 should serve you well initially, and I personally couldn't live without a Wacom tablet.

Quote from: rjmiz on January 30, 2008, 11:06
If you don't like me please just don't read my posts here.
Move on with your negative attitude, I really don't appreciate it, or you.

Well if you don't like peoples replies stop posting topics that are just a way to increase traffic to your website.

I am always very sceptical of somebody that posts information based on something that is freely available elsewhere on the web, do you have any ground breaking tutorials that you've discovered yourself.

Also you make yourself out as an expert and yet your images are not accepted on many sites and those that are aren't what I'd describe as huge sellers.

You replied to a thread on DT about getting a white background and yet the information you gave was totally wrong, as was pointed out by myself and others, so clearly you are not an expert as this is basic information.

I don't have a problem with you or your website, my problem is the way you make out that you've discovered something new, well in actual fact it's stuff that is available in any Photoshop book or across many Photoshop tutorial sites,and have been for years, they certainly aren't 'Secrets'

But by all means have fun with your hobby.

Quote from: rjmiz on January 30, 2008, 04:00
I usually am absent from this forum 9 months out of the 12.

Is that when you read the books that all your tutorials come from, when do your  9 months start again?

Good pirate impression.

Be sure to keep us updated every time you create a new image, or add a new page to your website.

Hi,
I've done a few shots like this, the way I did it was to use an aquarium (obviously), strobes, reflectors and a Canon speedlite with off camera shoe cord, the biggest problem is getting the strobes to sync at the right speed, in a nutshell they don't! hence using the Speedlite and off camera cord, the background is a softbox behind the fish tank, then it's just a case of dropping the fruit in and trying to press the button on a remote cord at the right time, it's trial and error a lot of the time.

To be totally honest they don't sell that well, and not all the sites take them, I've got a few on SS and the other micros but only the one at iS, I also did some shots of just water splashing which do sell very well.

Even though they don't sell that well I do intend to do some more in the future as it was quite good fun to do.

Here's the one on iS:


And here's another one that I've merged together (off course iS wouldn't take it!!)

Quote from: Elena on January 22, 2008, 04:53

What else we would like to ask Buyers?

Where have you all been hiding!

You should take Q1 Q2 & Q5 and make a new thread entitled, "How to make LESS money from your images"

The only reason I can possibly think that you would want to go exclusive is if you're only doing this as a side business, as for moving photos from a macrostock agency to iStock!! why in the world would you want to do that.

I've tried to register (used your referral link) however the form doesn't accept our postcodes (I'm from the UK), I've sent a massage to support, I'll update when I get a reply.

Quote from: Eco on January 08, 2008, 08:14
Thank you for the compliment yingyang.

Not to worry, I will stick to nature with my isolations - just expanding and diversify my portfolio a bit. My son study Zoology and he often collects all sorts of interesting insects and other small creatures for his projects. These I want to photograph before their release. Macro photos normally don't sell that well, but as isolations they may do much better.

Have a look at the portfolio by GlobalP on iStock, a lot of wildlife isolated shots. I think you'll be impressed.

Quote from: Yuri_Arcurs on January 07, 2008, 11:52
In other words. All the keywording I have done on my 8000 picture portfolio is wrong...

Now you tell me, what a waste of time it was copying your keywords then     (I'm joking by the way)

Well as I mentioned earlier I think images downloaded by subscription should be structered on file size, so therefore I'm prepared to take action where I can until that's implemented.

Opted out of sub at StockXpert:

Yuri Arcurs
Freezingpictures
GeoPappas
Smithore
rene
sharpshot
ldambies
epixx
latex
FlemishDreams.
RTimages

If there's an iPod touch up for grabs I'm going to leave and keep rejoining :-)

Well I'm probably tempting fate here, but bloody hell!!! My commission on iS so far today is three times that of SS, normally they run pretty much the same.
Boy I hope this keeps up, I'm very nearly at the stage of saying Woohoo which being English is something I would never do ;-)

Quote from: FlemishDreams on January 07, 2008, 10:12
Macrostock is the 5-star restaurant. It has all that midstock has, but better. The food is top-notch. Prices are much higher but you get value for money, the best caviar and seafood. Those restaurants have many customers, often you have to make reservations.

You were typing this as I was adding my reply, your analogy is an interesting one and I agree with certain aspects of it except for the above statement, unfortunately on Macrostock not all the food is top notch in fact a lot of it is very sub par quality, but as you've rightly pointed out they have the customers who up until recently have only known this type of food!

There are some fantastic photographers on Macro who's work I aspire to, but believe me they are far out numbered by many who's work is quite frankly appalling.
Pick any Macro agency and do a search for an object (anything will do) on a white background, it's amazing how many photographers there think that a murkey dull grey colour is white! The background may have been white when they took the shot but it ain't in the final result, and yet these people are selling them for much more money that better shots sell for on Micro, Why? because as you pointed out buyers are tied into agencies that they've used for years, have accounts with and know how to use their search engines.

Interesting thread and it's nice to see Bryan and Josh adding their point of view from an agency side.

The thing I dislike the most about the subscription model is that we the photographers get exactly the same amount of commission irrelevant of the file size that has been downloaded, what I'd like to see is a commission structure for subscription sales the same as for normal credit sales, for instance 30c for a web sized download and then say $1.20 for an XL, of course for an agency the subscription model is a money making machine which is why SS are so succesful, the bigger the file size a buyer downloads the more money they make because a buyer downloads fewer images but they still pay the contributor the same commission.

I agree totally with what Yuri has said but the same applies to all of us no matter what level of contributor you are, production costs are not being met by commissions, even if you don't hire models,locations and props etc you still have the cost of equipment and your time to balance out.

Microstock exists because of amatuers and by that I'm not talking about the quality of imagery that's produced, for an amatuer who's main source of income is one other than photography the commission is not as a major concern, yet for someone who's income relies on a commission structure from stock it's a fundamental problem, I can see that long term Pro's are going to reach a saturation point as previously mentioned whereby they stop submitting at the current levels they are to Microstock agencies, this in turn will effect the Microstock agencies because even though there are some very very talented amatuers they won't be able to provide a large enough supply of fresh images because of other commitments, then in turn buyers are going to go elsewhere to source fresh material.

Josh, I can't speak for Yuri but I'm surprised at your comment regarding how he must get a buzz seeing his image on a billboard, personally if I saw that and knew it was the result of a few dollars commission 'buzz' is the last feeling I'd have, however your comment is exactly what I am referring to above, for an amatuer 'buzz' is part of the enjoyment they get for doing this, speaking as a Pro the buzz wore off a long time ago I'm in it for the money because it's my job.

Bryan's comment (whatever your personal feelings about LO) is much nearer the mark IMO, I hear people say that buyers are not concerned about how much they pay for an image, I don't agree with those type of statements, when you're running a business or working to a budget you have to get the best deal you can on every part of a contract, price is an important factor and so is quality.

A simple example, Paper, for my business I purchase two types of paper, the cheapest reams of white A4 for my personal records/files etc but I also purchase expensive watermarked stuff for sending out invoices or writing letters to clients, they are both white A4 but for some things I require a better quality and I'm prepared to pay more for it.

Something I've mentioned before is that I would be prepared to send exclusive images to some of the Microstock agencies in return for a better commission, by that I mean proper commision not just another 10% of the $2 dollar download, Fotolia have started their Infinate collection and it'll be interesting to see how that works, however for the life of me I can't understand why they've restricted submissions to a very select few, why not do what I've mentioned above and open it up to exclusive images.

Just slightly off tangent here, but is anybody getting all their pre revamp files showing up in the search results yet.

I've got loads that still don't show up despite having re edited the keywords.

Quote from: yingyang0 on January 05, 2008, 17:06
Alright I'm getting the "too feathered or to rough" rejection from iStock. Here are some crops. Which is it, too feathered or too rough?

It may actually be neither, on occasion I get this rejection from iS on objects I know are perfect isolations, but I learned that occasionally when saving from a Tiff to a jpeg it buggers up the isolation, the solution I have found is after saving the jpeg go back into it, select the white background with a zero threshold, if the edges are  a little bit rough I just increase the exposure by 0.7 and save again, that normally does the trick.

I've no idea why the tiff to jpeg save has this effect and I know it has happened to others as well.

Quote from: rjmiz on January 03, 2008, 23:38
It means you got too much background, and not enough of the subject

I'd say the opposite,  on the first two you haven't got enough background.

Or in other words I agree with what Steve Oh has written.

Where do you pay your money into, if it's a UK bank (after the Paypal process) and you have a UK passport I'd suggest you liable to pay UK tax.
If you haven't told the Inland Revenue that you're now living abroad they'll consider you still liable here, but as suggested set up as a sole trader, tell the Inland revenue when you want your tax year to start, you'll have to pay a class 2 NI stamp and then that's it.
As suggested by the others, go see an accountant who'll explain what to do.
Enjoy your travels.

I'm not that bothered about the review times at StockXpert, for me it's the quality that counts, I really like the fact that they're focused on what they want.
And on two occassions now I've had site mails from the reviewers who weren't sure about a couple of issues on some images in my queue, I replied and then they accepted them, that to me is worth any wait, much better than just a blanket rejection because of the reviewers lack of knowledge which is what happens at so many other sites.

Quote from: madelaide on November 24, 2007, 14:46

Quote from: RTimages on November 24, 2007, 08:19
I just want to point out that not all Macro shooters hate Micro shooters, its a very small minority and generally speaking they are the one's that hide their own inabilities behind their hate for Micro.

The ones I know complain that the microstock sites made images available too cheap (and I agree with them).  Images they would in the past sell for US$1000, now they are forced to sell for US$200.  And these are very good photographers, if it's technical quality that you are calling "inability".

Regards,
Adelaide

Hi Adelaide,

Sorry for the delay in replying been busy.

No the one's I am referring to are the ones that, to be honest, should be ashamed to call themselves photographers, some of these are the most vocal anti Microstock protesters.

They criticise Microshooters and call them amateurs and when you view their portfolios their work would not pass reviewers on even the most lenient of Microsites.

Unfortunately it is these people that through their comments are leading other good photographers into believing their hype.

There are many many good photographers on Alamy who's work will easily surpass the average microstock contributor, although I can understand their views on Microstock (and yes I too believe the price of images should be higher) pricing, and without doubt it will have effected their income through traditional agencies my view is that it's here and you can either sit back and moan or work with it.

I have nothing against good photographers who have a point of view about the industry, the one's that wind me up are the one's whose photography is poor even by Microstock standards and have up till now had an easy ride, they will suffer the good will prevail.

I myself got into Microstock at the recommendation of a friend who is a very good photographer, in fact he is one of the worlds leading photographers in his specialised field, he submits to Micro albeit not his specialised subject, and I know of others who do the same. It's a business and you need to make it work for you.

I hardly visit the Alamy forum anymore, it's threads end up as a childish battle. But if you want to see what I mean, check out the portfolios of some of the microstock bashers, you'll be amazed!

Regards
Richard