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Messages - Randy McKown
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201
« on: February 10, 2010, 01:36 »
I agree with Jonathan.
If Getty doesn't like you maybe you're just unworth it.
I see. Is Yuri 'just unworth it' too for example? Apparently Yuri has been named within PDN's list of 'The most influential photographers of the decade'.
Were you or Jonathun in that list by any chance __ or were you 'just unworth it'?
ROFLMAO .. so what Ashton Kutcher made that list too !!  That list is a joke. Actually, when you consider the fact that the list contains a few deserving names like Annie Leibovitz and Mary Ellen Mark it honestly becomes more insulting than anything. I mean that is seriously F'd up !!! That's like Car & driver publishing a 30 most influential cars of the decade list that included the Bugatti Veyron, Lamborghini Reventon ... and the Ford Escort LMAO
202
« on: February 09, 2010, 21:55 »
I don't have any images on Thinkstock, so thankfully I don't have to deal with that, or any other of the related issues.
This looks like good news to me, though. Anything that shows buyers what a slapdash effort Thinkstock is and hastens its demise is good for the industry IMO.
yup .. I'm liking the way you think
203
« on: February 09, 2010, 21:38 »
When did the shutterstock profile icons disappear .. just noticed it today.
204
« on: February 09, 2010, 21:32 »
Had somebody sign up under me and get a ton of images approved today plus I made my second sale .. this site is turning out pretty sweet DepositPhotos
205
« on: February 07, 2010, 15:21 »
Randy I give up as you clearly don't understand a thing about model releases or the law. You also can't read, I asked you to provide me an example of any law that states a model release has to be dated for one day, you won't be able to because there isn't one.
You stated that agencies weren't aware of the 'facts' concerning releases only being valid for one day/sessions, again please provide evidence of these 'facts', each agency make their own rules on what they require on a model release based on what they feel offers themselves and photographers the most protection, and the reason they do this is because of people like you that don't understand the law, these are not facts based on law but based on their own concerns.
MR are not concerned with privacy law, MR forms part of a contract for the commercial usage of images.
I'm also astonished that in you far fetched example you think that is the way law works, thankfully for the rest of the people that live on this planet it doesn't. I'd also like to point out that in your shopping mall scenario the photographer hasn't broken any privacy or other laws concerning the model, millions of editorial photos get licensed each day featuring people for whom no model release is available, it's how those photos are subsequently used that may be of debate, he may have broken some laws concerning the mall owners but that is too complicated to explain to someone like you. And a point to note if the photographer in your scenario had shot her a week after the shoot then the release/contract would be invalid anyway.
I seriously suggest you get in contact with a trained legal professional to explain what a model release is and how it effects you as a photographer, because YOU DO NOT understand it. Now I don't expect you to believe me, and I'm not going to enter into anymore debate with you over the subject because it's a waste of my time explaining it to you.
As for you being in the business for 20 years - you surprise me, but not nearly as much as the fact you are a reviewer judging other peoples work.
A sphincter says what?
206
« on: February 07, 2010, 00:06 »
It took forever then crashed out and didn't install the first time .. second time installed perfect .. still took way too long for an app of this size .. loaded up with errors but still loaded .. clicked a few buttons and got a few more errors ... I'm not entering my login passwords into this application.
207
« on: February 06, 2010, 22:42 »
nice vid, yeah. like massman - I am still alive as well because of wearing a seat belt. I was in two accidents last year that totaled the car I was driving both times. Neither accident was my fault and there was little I could do to prevent it - so it doesn't help to just 'drive safe'. One accident i probably would have survived without a belt, but may have got knocked out - the other, I would have probably been a vegetable or dead.
Here's a nice shiner my wife got from the accident. Couldn't give up the chance for stock ya know!
Your wife gets a black eye and you grab the camera to shoot her for stock .. LOL you're hardcore
208
« on: February 06, 2010, 16:37 »
Well I trained in law and use to work for an firm of solicitors (lawyers) so yes I do know what I'm talking about.
.... I'll even make it simple for you, just show me the US law.
LOL MR's regard privacy rights .. you're not dealing with a single US law .. it's state law that varies from state to state .. HUGE difference. You expect me to write you a book covering all 50  nybody with even the lowest level of intelligence would realise that stalking someone to take a photo is outside of the contracted terms would be a breach of the contract, the contract is for a specific purpose so once the 'stock' or other reason shoot has finished the contract terminates.
if you had MRs not controlled by specific dates then yes it would provide a loop hole because it leaves too much room open for too many arguments. What is the purpose of your activity? She said I could photograph her for stock. So why did you photograph her shopping in the mall a week after the original shoot? Because it was for stock covering retail shopping themes. But why was it being done a week later? Because that's when we scheduled the session and her MR is not bound to a specific date. But the defendant claims you were stalking her. No I wasn't and she knew I was photographing her and I have this signed legal document to prove it. Yes you do have a document to prove it .. case closed .. models privacy rights are screwed. Can you see now where this leave too much room open for legal disputes? It's pretty obvious why multiple MR's for multiple dates are needed. Unless you plan on having your lawyer draw up custom contracts detailing every single specific every single time you shoot a model. Will a photographer make a profit running a business that way? Not a chance .. good reason why it's not done that way huh. I noticed you started as an exclusive reviewer on DT so as someone who is inexperienced ...
Where did that come from ... I started getting paid as a photographer 20 years ago long before microstock or the internet for that matter. you should really get your own contract drawn up by a lawyer in your country to supplement the release you upload to agencies,
I'm not just a micro photographer working out of the house that was all done a long time ago. I don't use microstock agency provided forms. especially if you intend to do this for a living.
I own a full time photography studio and have been a full time photographer for a long time .. or do you mean do microstock as a living? In which case why would I want to do that?
209
« on: February 06, 2010, 04:19 »
lose the entrecard banner .. those things are seen as lame even in the hobby blogger circuit. It's not a way of trying to be taken serious. That was actually the very first thing that jumped out at me the second the page opened.
210
« on: February 06, 2010, 04:06 »
I'm leaning heavily on removing everything and not participating in the Thinkstock transition. I'm not sure that I personally want to contribute any more than possible to the industries subscription-based trends.
In fact it would be nice if the agencies would come up with some type of opt-out option for sub sales.
Maybe an evolution of all these "free image" sections to "sub image" sections is in order. I would probably never donate images to the sub section just like I don't to the free sections now. However, I'm sure a lot of people still would. This would still allow buyers who work on pathetically cheap budgets to stay in the game .. they just wouldn't be getting access to premium images.
The agencies make more money .. we make more money ... the buyers will all still be there because we are dealing with a need industry and not a want industry ... sounds like a nice idea to me at least.
211
« on: February 06, 2010, 02:36 »
However, back then they didn't think (or know) about the fact that a MR for one session was not valid for the next so they just took the easy route and made the system display all images linked to that MR.
What fact? A model release is a contract between the photographer and the model, there are no facts you can write on it whatever and however you wish. You can make a release valid for one, two or twenty sessions if you so desire, the only requirement is that it's written in a way thats legal in the country where the contract was made.
The only 'facts' are a) both Microstock and Macrostock agencies have to base their model release requirements on their own individual requirements as they feel appropriate, and b) you haven't got a clue what you're talking about.
Ok let's pretend for a brief moment you know what you're talking about. If a model release was not bound by a specific date then there lies a loop hole where individuals could potentially stalk another individual and photograph them at any time they desire and license those images for commercial use. This type of image activity obviously would be done without the individuals consent and could lead to decades of massive court cases. One reason why the specific date is important if a legal dispute is ever brought up. You had permission to license images of that specific person taken on that specific day. It's short, simple and legal. Now you did state that a model release is a type of contract and yes .. technically you could write one up that allowed you to photograph a person whenever you want and license images from that single MR .... but that's not the way it's done ... it's not the way it has ever been done .. you basically just wanted to say something intelligent but unfortunately had nothing intelligent to say. Who in their right mind would sign a document like that ? Instead of sitting there thinking of what statement you could possibly pull out of the back of your pants to show that you're the alpha dog why not put some "real" thought into something. Feel free to re-write the way model releases are used around the world that still avoids anyone from potentially getting sued or screwed and then the world will bow at your feet and we can all sleep better .... LOL you're a goof RT LOL
212
« on: February 04, 2010, 19:58 »
Randy, didn't you and your wife provide the tax info they wanted? I did and they didn't deduct any taxes from me, just sent a 1099.
Try contacting customer support and providing your tax info, if it isn't already too late.
I did mine the day I got the email ... but then I forgot about it until she opened her account up and there was a weeks worth of withholdings LOL .. We took care of it but I couldn't help laugh at how ridiculous their 28% figure was .. I'm guessing they just pulled that number out of a hat and said yeah that works.
213
« on: February 04, 2010, 19:54 »
I remember I had a Photoshop Bible years ago when it was at version 5 and it had some ok info in it. In all honesty most of the books you find on the bookshelf completely suck. They all focus on the same topics and waste a ton of time showing you how to do stupid cheesy filters that will get you a quick rejection email. Every couple months I go in the bookstore and they have like 100 books on Photoshop. I flip through them .. get annoyed that they all suck and leave. I wouldn't waste $30-60 on a PS book. Just use Google .. it's free.
214
« on: February 04, 2010, 19:41 »
ROFLMAO !!!!!!!! my wife just logged into her account and noticed they were taking out 28% for taxes. C'mon how stupid is that? 1099 royalties are filed under self-employment and SE taxes are only 15.3% and if your total income goes over 106K that number drops all the way down to 3%
Conspiracy theory of the day
Let's say Fotolia takes the 28% that they would have normally paid you .. hold it until the quarter to report .. in the meantime that 28% is placed into short-term low-interest yet safe investments which draws interest on your money .. not noticeable to the individual contributor but think of this .... interest accumulated on 28% of a million sales would be the equivalent of Fotolia keeping 100% of all sales to themsleves ... or more !!!!!
Stay tuned for tomorrows conspiracy theory when I reveal the secrets behind the sex scandel between Bill Gates and dimestore tycoon Sam Walton which gave birth to a masked evil superpower which is known today as the new world order (AKA Wal-Mart)
215
« on: February 04, 2010, 19:17 »
Holy Bat Shite Batman !!!!!! .... LOL sounds like you need to go in there and adjust a bunch of EL prices pronto. but don't feel bad .. I had the same thing happen awhile back on some of the older images I submitted way back in the day. I was so irritated at myself.
216
« on: February 04, 2010, 19:13 »
actually the submission screen is laid out a whole lot better than other sites .. less clicking and less scrolling to get the same thing done. I processed 500 photos in a single evening while kicked back in my chair in front of the TV .. it was a pretty sweet $100.
217
« on: February 04, 2010, 19:09 »
last pic, as said they are dressed wrong,
Huh? I don't get that? How is that 'dressed wrong'? They're dressed casually for the beach. Would you expect business suits? ballgowns?
they are dressed smartly and would be great for lots of shots but for me if they are on the beach I'd want it to say summer and either swimming gear or shorts and t-shirts etc not jeans and shirts. Here at least you just dont see people wearing those sorts of clothes on the beach.
In some places people hit the beach in the full blown nude .. but that totally would not work for this image either. .. I'm sorry that just slipped out
218
« on: February 04, 2010, 18:50 »
yeah technically you should always get a new model release signed for each shoot even though it's the same model. Most agencies don't care but it's something you should be doing.
So you are saying there a people that handle hundreds of MRs? UI on most sites is not ready for this, sometimes you have to pick from combo box and it will use whole screen??? I never tried to delete older MRs, maybe this is a solution for clutter?
Micro agencies started adding features a long time ago where a buyer could see a shot of a model and then quickly browse all shots of that model. Which is great for sales because often the buyer will buy multiple poses. However, back then they didn't think (or know) about the fact that a MR for one session was not valid for the next so they just took the easy route and made the system display all images linked to that MR. What they should have done was designed the systems so that a contributor created a model entry that could allow multiple releases to be attached to it .. then display results attached to the model entry instead of the model release. It would have made it clutter free when submitting while still maintaining proper business practice. At this point I don't think most of them care .. or even realize the flaw in the first place. Maybe they will catch on eventually. It always amazes me how little microstock companies actually knew about the stock industry when they got the ball rolling in the first place. You'd think it wouldn't take a decade to run to the library and pick up a book on selling stock photography. LOL
219
« on: February 04, 2010, 18:13 »
yeah technically you should always get a new model release signed for each shoot even though it's the same model. Most agencies don't care but it's something you should be doing.
220
« on: February 04, 2010, 18:08 »
there's also the question of what makes a best selling subject .. a subject that sells a lot simply because there's a ton of them or something that earns a lot even though it only holds a small percentage of the library? If I group my folio into subjects then people shots have the highest selling numbers as a whole. However, my RPI earnings for my smaller landmarks group is 14 times higher than my much larger people grouping. This is where I think it becomes a numbers game. I'm guessing if contributors with larger people collections looked close at their RPI's they would be quite small when compared to other subjects. Yuri for example has a top notch massive portfolio of 25,000 images on dreamstime with 174K sales .. mostly people. However, if you go there and sort his work by most downloads you'll notice that each images sales drops way down below 20 only 2,000 images into his portfolio. I wouldn't be surprised if he had 10,000 images that have absolutely no sales at all. What if his other 10,000 images just sitting there were of different subjects .. industrial themes, landscapes, and everything else that has been purchased in the last few minutes? His profits would skyrocket. The downside to that possibility is time spent. It's nothing to do a model shoot for an hour and slam out 100+ images that will all be accepted into an agency with flying colors. If only half of them sell who cares .. you're dealing with quantity. If you think you can do the same thing in the same time with other subjects .. it just ain't happening in many cases. So are all these people shots top selling subjects or are there just too many of them cluttering things up to be able to figure it out? Who knows .. I'm gonna go take a picture of a pickle.
221
« on: February 04, 2010, 11:46 »
A thread just for pimping your referrals LOL that's awesome Let's see if I can pimp my way to a new 60" flat screen for the bedroom. C'mon Big Money .. No Wammies No Wammies No Wammies .. SCORE !!!!!! ... LOL yeah ok I should really get up and do something productive now. http://submit.depositphotos.com?ref=1004416
222
« on: January 31, 2010, 18:59 »
3 hours of robot shooting + 94 hours stitching together 1,665 photos = 1 really big snapshot ..... potential copyrights, bad composition, limited commercial value, total waste of time LMAO !!!!!!
223
« on: January 31, 2010, 14:14 »
I uploaded the 500 photos and got the $100 plus I stuck their banner on two blogs which gave me $10 each. It only took them one day to review the images .. 100% acceptance ratio .. requested the $120 payout and it was sitting in my paypal account the next day. I also made my first sale that same day. It's definitely worth checking out. The submission process is very well laid out as well. Submitting is much faster than with other sites. I hope this one sticks around. http://submit.depositphotos.com/?ref=1004416
224
« on: January 31, 2010, 13:59 »
Interesting idea with their online OS. However, it's kinda goofy to try to push it towards the general public. They have cheesy little everyday applications running like todo lists, media players and things that are not near complex enough for people who would actually need to run remote applications in a virtual workstation setting. People who are accustomed to running physical servers with tons of VW's are not going to be impressed with this at all. Instead of wasting their time on photo organizers, mp3 and video players they should have focused on HR applications, payroll, book keeping and all the other boring apps used by people who would honestly pay for an online OS. Site looks good just not productive.
225
« on: January 26, 2010, 03:24 »
well I am sure it would work  I wondered though, sometimes, if that wouldn't be such a dumb plan. If I upload 50 landscape from a trip for example - landscapes generally don't sell that great, but sometimes they do. If I have 50 to choose from then the buyers may make 200 purchases of my landscape but they will be spread over 50 images giving only 4 sales per image. If I had only 5 landscape then I would get 40 sales per landscape and that would push the images into a higher level on DT. I am exaggerating a bit, but I wonder if the idea of 'less is more' is the best strategy.
The one thing that keeps stopping me is always being surprised when an image starts to sell really well that I never thought would sell that great.
I think it would actually work but only for some people. Like on DT I know that even though my DPI is only 2.5 about 80% of my sales are all XL, Max & this week I'm seeing TIFF sales (btw, are those new or something because I've never seen them before) anyway my point is my sub sales are around 10-12% and small-med is maybe 5% and large 5% of the total sales. So if I removed all the 0 sales then chances are I would lose a lot of higher-credit sales so there's a greater risk involved ... I know I've heard others talking about getting crazy sub sales like over 60% .. if that was the case then I would definitely think removing a lot of the 0 sales would be a good idea because they now have a better fighting chance of eventually getting closer to making a dollar per download. I don't know .. I'm not brave enough to take the risk on something like that. After all it only takes the right person to throw a shot with 0 sales in their public collection one day and then you suddenly get a couple 50 credit EL's from it out of nowhere ... that and going through and deleting files seems like a lot of work. I have to force myself to upload as it is LOL
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