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Messages - maunger
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201
« on: February 27, 2007, 12:25 »
it's this kind of crap that is making me very seriously think about dropping all sites and going exclusive with istock. Istock protect their users and their images, more so if you are exclusive. I seriously don't think shutterstock and a lot of the other sites have the money to evn attempt to tackle this kind of blatent missuse of images.
That is way open for debate IMHO - just ask the person who's old man image was used on a 'racy' site and IS said it was acceptable use.
202
« on: February 27, 2007, 12:22 »
"pure nature" says to me - no people no buildings nothing but nature - animals are ok, but nothing human related.
JMHO
203
« on: February 27, 2007, 07:03 »
unfortunately, their 'warning' thread is locked - otherwise i would post.
204
« on: February 26, 2007, 20:39 »
The reason why they are prohibiting this is because the creator could potentially take the users passwords and take the accounts funds. Of course we know Daneel wouldn't do that.
My understanding is that the program only stored passwords locally and it never transmitted information to any "home base". And if he were planning to do that in the future, then why would he use his real name and give links to all of his stock accounts?
The fact of the matter is that they don't have any legal right to stop him from creating a program that can access their site. The only thing that they can do is stop him from using their logo.
But they can bully him, since they know who he is, and threaten to remove his account from their site. If only he had done his program anonymously, then they would have had no recourse, especially since he lives half way around the world from them...
Boy this is all very disconcerting... i was thinking of writing something very similar with a different technology. I don't understand how they can really legally keep you from writing something like this like StockManiac says. They obviously don't want people stealing other people's passwords and i can understand their concern... however, i've just checked just about all of the sites i am a member of and low and behold, if they're so concerned about user passwords, then they shouldn't be using "http:" login pages they should be using "https:" LuckyOliver in fact is the only one i tried that is using encryption (https:// as their login page) meaning all of the others are possibly sending their user's passwords via "clear-text" (meaning unencrypted) and therefore endangering their users. I'm not totally versed on the inner workings of the web, but my basic understanding is that if you're to be sending data around that you don't want others to see, you'd use https (or SSL - more at this page on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Https ) So, if the company you're talking about isn't LO, and is one of the others that i checked, then they should be using https and coming down on you seems a bit heavy handed. I'm open to be taught something new if i'm not correct.
205
« on: February 22, 2007, 06:42 »
sales have been picking up for me lately - for a week or two i was getting about one a day. litifeta said that it looks like too much work - actually, their site is the easiest of all to upload to... iStock is the absolute worst and LuckyOliver is the easiest. And their making progress on all fronts. Google searches often come up with LO links in the first page now - that is building traffic by itself.
206
« on: February 21, 2007, 11:43 »
I can say that my BEST shots, the stuff I'm REALLY proud of... aren't on ANY microstock site.
... They are the images that bring clients to your other, less than stunning images, because they click on your name, which take them to the rest of your portfolio ...
I wonder. Does that ever happen?
Someone, in a recent post elsewhere in this forum, said that designers/purchasers on microstock need a specific image and they search for that. They don't give a rat's ass who took it.
Any designers/purchasers on here care to comment?
I am not a designer - am a photog but my experience is that absolutely it matters what your portfolio is like quality wise. i have a friend on IS who for the first year had 1100 downloads. She had one series of images that were popular at christmas, so she shot and uploaded more similar... once she was noticed, her entire portfolio got more exposure and she's now over 17000 downloads and 16000 of those came in the last 5 months! when i had an image on the top 30 on IS, my entire downloads went up for the week that it was there (and other images were being downloaded) and when my image disappeared from the list, my DLs gradually went back to normal. it is ALL about getting your images noticed... if you can't get them noticed, they won't be bought like hotcakes, they'll just sell in a trickle. that's my opinion only.
207
« on: February 06, 2007, 06:00 »
I agree with Freezingpictures - i was lucky about 3 weeks ago and had one bust into the top 50 - made it all the way up to #18 as a matter of fact! Boy was that fun. Still getting good sales, but not more than 5 a day and that's keeping me out of there i'm sure.
208
« on: February 06, 2007, 05:57 »
Congratulations on the sale! In regard to whether anyone is getting payouts, the answer is yes. Please go back and read Bryan's blog post: http://www.luckyoliver.com/blog/169/another_fantastic_weekGranted LO isn't in the top 5 yet... but patience Grasshopper (reference to old American TV show heehee)
209
« on: February 01, 2007, 06:00 »
How shall I find out which of my photos are commented???  Is it only by going through photos to check whether it is commented or not??? 
Bryan Please Help!!!
River - go to your home page http://www.luckyoliver.com/homelook for a link in the lower right that says "received comments" it should take you to a link like this (or put in your profile name - mine is maunger - replace that with yours) http://www.luckyoliver.com/profile/maunger/received_commentsMitch
210
« on: January 21, 2007, 06:33 »
" Projects that also service iStockphoto competitors will not be considered. "
So, you can't create a great tool that includes service to other sites and get access to the API.
sad
211
« on: January 18, 2007, 07:13 »
I find it interesting that people aren't saying similar negative things about DT like they did when LO was down... i guess it is ok for DT to make mistakes but not other sites.
212
« on: January 09, 2007, 09:12 »
That being said, I can't believe a "wannabe major company" would be so irresponsible. I'll admit that I am, but I don't hurt anyone but myself if I forget to renew and my site goes down. They have other people counting on them. Other people whose images won't be in front of buyers today.
Not very impressive.
I admit it is a bit disappointing - however, maybe it points to them working so hard on finding new customers that they let this one slip by. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and let this minor incident slide. It has happened to many major companies too and this won't be the last. Minor blip.
213
« on: November 04, 2006, 08:53 »
I have Aperture, I do like it but it seems kinda clumsy to use, mostly I work with iPhoto for organizing and then take them into photoshop. I do like the istock plug, but you still have to fix the titles of your images, currently it inserts the jpg name.
Is this a clumsy program or do I just need to get used to it?
I love it personally - use it to manage all of my images on the different sites i submit to - have folders for what's been accepted/rejected on each site. The image editing often saves me from going to PS to do edits too. It isn't perfect, but in my mind it is very useful for managing and editing my collection.
214
« on: November 03, 2006, 14:48 »
Here is a photographer I find stunning. (not stock)
Michal Chelbin
Stunning work, but man, i hate that website! Way too many clicks to get to the images.
215
« on: October 28, 2006, 07:52 »
How do you work out how much a photo has made on istock? I have stats for sales but can't see how much individual photos have made.
Go to http://www.istockphoto.com/my_uploads.php and it is in the far right column called "royalties"
216
« on: October 28, 2006, 07:08 »
Speaking of strange search engines. I went to LOs 'big top'. Found there list of top search words. Ocean was number one. I click on that and it brings up 1 of 50 'of a very large number'. None of the 50 had anything to do with the ocean, and none of the ones I clicked on had ocean in their list of keywords.
Could this be why there are no sales?
I reported this bug to them some time ago - i guess it hasn't been fixed. It isn't bad keywording, it is just a problem with the stats page - it was generated with a bad links. If you click on each one of the keywords on that page, you'll get the same results, and actually the result is the entire collection of photos! If you put "ocean" in the search box and do the search, you'll see you get much better results. Mitch
217
« on: October 19, 2006, 11:44 »
After Bitter announced a new version of best match last night (wed evening), i posted this note this morning on IS (starting with his post in the block (which won't work right here on yahoo but you get the point):
Posted By bitter:
There is a new version of Best Match that is being launched in the next 30 minutes. I think you'll be pleased with the new results. I also think you'll find that it's a marked improvement over the old Best Match. Comments are welcome.
You likely won't see the full results until after midnight MST as the caches are cleared. (That's about 6 hours from this post)
Ok, here's my feedback on the "best match" i see today
I'm looking at one search at this point since I've been watching it since Monday when one of my images was in the first 20 images and got 8 DLs in the 12 or so hours it was on the front page on Monday. The search was on "palm tree"
Monday, my image was #18 on the search
Tuesday thru the new version announced by Bitter, my image wasn't in the first 1000 (and got no downloads)
After the new best match, my image is #284 (which isn't bad out of over 4000 images with "palm tree")
Comments on what i see tho:
#1 - The number one (as far as i know) most downloaded beach image on IS is shown as #2 which is good. However, the artist of that image also has 5 other images on the first page (of 40 displayed). (also has 3 images on page 2 - making 8 images in the top 80) - his image is also in the top 30 most downloaded in the past 3 months
#2 - another artist has 6 images on the first page of 40. (also 4 images on page 2 - 10 in top 80) (also has 8 on page 3 making 18 in the top 120) (also has 4 on page 4 - total 22 in top 160 images for "palm tree")
interesting side note (which is a topic all to itself!) - this same artist has at least 4 images in the "Highest Rated Files (last week)" images list... is there a connection?
#3 Another artist has 3 images on the front page -- yet another artist has 3 images in first 2 pages.
#4 - it appears that (at least on the first several pages of the search i didn't go on forever) only images with ratings can appear at the beginning of a best match -- random checking on the first 6 pages shows every image seems to have at least one rating.
#5 - i didn't check all the images, but there's a mix of exclusive and non-exclusive photogs on the first page
#6 - in the first 6 pages, one artist has 4 very similar images of a girl lying on the grass with a wine glass and a palm tree in the background.
#7 - searching for 'palm and tree' gives about 70% of the same images as "palm tree" the phrase.
#8 - i notice there's this parameter on the URL (not sure if it was there before so i don't know if it is new) "&Cache=46137854" -- so maybe some searches are being cached to improve speed (which would be good) - don't know if that would impact best match at all just thought it was interesting 
#9 - a random selection of 8 images showed that 6 were uploaded in the last 3 months (note tho it is hard to pick randomly without looking at download numbers - if you see a flame for example, odds are it is an older image (especially with the subject matter and the volume of images that are tropical). Not a scientific result i'm sure.
So, to summarize, at least in this one search, way too many images done by the same artists are getting to the front page to be "fair" to the others and if you don't have any ratings on an image, you don't get to the front.
I'm not saying that is true for all searches, but it is interesting.
218
« on: October 18, 2006, 06:35 »
Non-photoshop expert question... why are you suggesting LO's watermark is bad when I've seen several sites where they only put their watermark in the center of the image one time. Seems to me having luckyoliver spread all over the image about 20 times would be much more difficult to remove as compared to one time in the middle?
219
« on: October 17, 2006, 07:08 »
Seems to me those who do mostly illustrations get far more $
220
« on: October 17, 2006, 07:07 »
Berryspun, I saw that same posting and after having an image at the front of the search on 'best match' yesterday only to see it completely disappear and at the risk of getting in trouble, i sent this note to my IS creative network this morning... y'all are free to try it if you'd like (yes i'm spamming) Hi y'all would you please indulge me for a bit? To tell you the truth right up front, i'm asking for a favor - to have you rate an image for me - if you don't want to take the time, that's fine you can stop reading and delete. There's been lots of discussion about the new "best match" searches on the forums. Yesterday, I had an image that is new suddenly start selling a ton... so i went and did a search and low and behold, if you did a 'best match' search for "palm tree" it was on the first page! So, i was enjoying the new found sales on an image (one that is also selling pretty well on other sites too so it was good to see it pop up here too). Anyway, I changed ONE tiny little keyword yesterday afternoon and now it has dropped off the chart on any search (and so have the downloads). Someone this morning suggested that ratings are now playing a part in Best Match (and they probably have all along too) but he said he checked his image and since it had no ratings it wasn't appearing until after all the images that had ratings... well guess what, my image doesn't have any ratings either... so I thought, maybe it would change things and get my image back toward the front if I had some ratings. here's the url: http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=2117180I've not asked my CN to do anything like this before and I honestly don't blame you if you don't want to do it, but if you would, would you please go to this image and rate it? I'll post any changes here.
221
« on: October 16, 2006, 05:24 »
I track all my photos in excel. So if I have a photo of a door, and I have previously uploaded a door, then I start with the key words from the previous photo and add and delete as appropriate.
And that's the joy of something like Apple's Aperture... All of my images are in Aperture, and to get the keywords from another image, i use the "lift and stamp" tool - which is just 2 simple clicks to copy all of the metadata from one image to another... and i get to do my image management visually based on the images themselves, not names stored in a spreadsheet.
222
« on: October 09, 2006, 08:57 »
... I read all the time in the forums about how surprised people are at which image is their best seller. So who could really know what the right price is? ...
You've said it there, Maunger. That's why I'd never sell all rights for $100. You think 'Wow! Why does they want to buy this image?' You sell it for $100 and then you see it used in a major advertising campaign and realise you could have got thousands for it.
That 'bird in the hand' proverb is a dangerous one as far as artists go (and I class photographers as artists. We're creative people)
Can you bargain with them? You can bet that any buyer is going to want to get the picture for the lowest possible price. See how high they'll go. How they really value it.
Well Bateleur, just think of the people who are getting $0.25 for an image over at SS or less than $5 at any other site only to find their image on the cover of a magazine. Same thing holds true, couldda gotten $1000 for it. There's a thread right now in SS about a guy who found his image on the cover of a magazine and he's thrilled - yet he got probably $20 tops (if he got an Extened license for it) but most likely got $0.25. You just never know
223
« on: October 08, 2006, 18:04 »
JEEEZ! I would never, ever, sell all rights to an image for 100 measley bucks.
1. It shows that I don't value my work at all
I have to disagree with you a tiny bit... I value my work and I'm willing to sell some of my images for $100 (net). All depends on what I think the image is worth and what the customer is willing to pay. In my one buy out - I thought the price was good for me and I am pleased with my deal. If I set my price too high, the buyer might not buy. Too low and i might lose out on revenue. That's a hard thing to figure out! And remember - hindsight is 20-20!
224
« on: October 08, 2006, 17:52 »
It all depends on the image and the offer and what you think the image is worth.
Yes, I sold an image on LO (and i was the first by the way) - and I was glad to sell it for what I got. It had sold 2 times on the 3 sites I'd uploaded it to (and it had been online almost a year), so I felt it was well worth the cash I got for it! I don't think it would have gotten anywhere near the money in 10 years here or at the other micros so I honestly was thrilled to get the money for it now.
Would I sell my best sellers? Sure, for the right price - but that would be much much higher than what I got for that one buy out.
And no, I wouldn't make fun of anyone who got even $100 for an image. Who's really to know how many times it really would sell??? I read all the time in the forums about how surprised people are at which image is their best seller. So who could really know what the right price is?
Would that image have sold for big bucks on some other traditional site? Gee I sure don't know.
A bird in the hand...
225
« on: October 03, 2006, 16:30 »
Lenspen $9 - can't beat it. Why mess with liquids and all that other muck?
Because it wasn't designed to clean micron sized particles off of a charged surface. Sure it will get rid of large particles but it will leave a lot of the smaller particles on the sensor. It is something to use in the field when you have to, but if you want to get it really clean the only proven method is the wet method. It probably takes less than 10 minutes to complete and most people only have to do it every 4 months or so. Is ten minutes 3 times a year all that horrible?
Mark
Well, ok, they have a sensor cleaning lenspen now (i thought they were working on it last i looked). http://www.lenspen.com/?cPath=1&products_id=SK-1&tpid=146I never said 10 minutes several times a year was horrible... but then again, the 2 minutes it takes with the lenspen is fewer minutes (and less expensive) and I don't ever see any of the smaller particles you say it leaves on the photos i take... so thanks, i'll stick with my method
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