I've noticed the number of views at Fotolia climbing rapidly over the last couple of weeks.  Initially I thought this was due to new uploads, but then I noticed others commenting on it in the FT forum.

Anyone else seeing a rapid rise in views at Fotolia?  Anyone know why? (go to your statistics page to see the views history)

Edit:  we're talking here about views suddenly climbing by 50% to 100% ie. a significant and very strong change.

Well I think it's lovely work and very likely to appeal to Stocksy.  However, they might prefer to see a bit more variation in subject matter.  I'd try to add some more work of a similar style but with different subjects.

Some pretty awful stories here about falling sales.  I understand completely how becoming Emerald or Sapphire with higher prices might affect sales, and of course it's always possible that Fotolia changed the search because it didn't want to pay out the higher rates of commissions to the higher ranking suppliers. 

I did, however, read a note on Fotolias forum recently where someone mentioned the 'database crash that happened three or four years ago and affected sales for a lot of people, including many bronzes'.  Apparently they had a database crash and 'lost' or corrupted a large part of the keyword ranking system, which resulted in a sharp fall in sales for previously popular files.

It's a long shot, but I wonder if that database crash is a contributing factor in some of the decline in sales for previously successful suppliers.  It must be worth checking some files using the manage files - indexing feature to see if the keywords order is complete nonsense.  I suppose it's also possible that many files have keywords missing, or perhaps none at all.

I mention this because although I'm aware that Elena and some others are at the higher levels, I don't believe Sharpshot and Mellimage are Emerald or Sapphire, yet they are telling the same story, which suggests some other factor might be at least partly to blame.

That's some scary chart Sharpshot.  Any idea why that happened?

Depends.  If you want to blow out a white background to 255 with full length models you are going to need four flashes just for the background - you won't get an even 255 white background with just two lights as they won't cover the entire wall.  You might get away with just one light for front side lighting but then the hair will likely look dull - most pros will use an overhead light to add sheen to hair.  Also one front light might not give an even light full length - you can imagine the need to have two flashes one above the other to give even lighting full length.  You can try to do it all with just three units but you're going to have problems with uneven lighting, inability to blow out the background completely, and possibly inability to fully light a standing subject from the front.

640W units might be enough, but bear in mind the square multiplying factor of distance - if your current units give you F11 shooting small to medium size objects in a home studio situation, those same units might only give you F5.6 when you move them back a few feet to light a person.

I won't be buying one of these new 50mp Canons.  I've seen the sample images and the full size quality looks rather disappointing to my eye - similar to APS-C with much more noise than my 5Dii.  Perhaps there will be an intermediate camera somewhere in the 32/36mp area, and I'll wait for that.

No, not inspiring.  A English language photo service based in Hong Kong, without connections in the US or Europe looks like a non-starter to me.  In addition, although there's a suggestion of marketing spend, the more I look at this the more it looks like a 'storage, shop front' service, rather like Photoshelter but not as good.  I suspect the developers expect suppliers to do all their own marketing, directing customers to the shop front where SIM takes a 20% facilitating commission.  I wish them luck and success, but I'll spend my time elsewhere.

I did the 'stock photo gavel' search.  Yes, Shutterstock dominates the result, although 123RF and Deposit are also there, and Getty (to a lesser extent).

What I found interesting was when I clicked on a Shutterstock image to go to the web page - it didn't do that, but instead took me to a Shutterstock search results page for "stock photo gavel", which of course then gave a wide selection of choices.

Somehow, Shutterstock has been able to get search result pages indexed, which explains why they get so many images in the result.

I remember having a conversation with a Shutterstock representative a few months ago, who said - "we're not a photo agency, we're a technology company".  It's clear that Shutterstock has invested heavily in technology expertise, and they know exactly how to get the best search representation.  Not by asking their suppliers to rewrite millions of titles and descriptions, but by employing tech experts who know exactly how to get the best result.

You know, it's rather a shame that istock seems to be scraping around in the dark in so many areas.  They take up to 85% of the revenue from the work suppliers produce, and one would have hoped that they would want to invest in the right technology people to help the business grow and make it a success.  It's rather insulting that they now ask suppliers to spend days, weeks or months rewriting titles and descriptions, when what they really should be doing is spending money employing the right tech experts who would have in-depth knowledge of exactly what to do to generate the best SEO.

"2.4 Under this contract you must:
　　2.4.1 Be the Copyright owner of the Images or have authority from the Copyright owner to enter into the Contract. You must have a written agreement with each copyright holder of the Images if you are not the Copyright owner of the Images. Once we ensure your images have actual infringement of copyright, you will be fined $ 10,000 USD and deducted 50 points. When your account balance is greater than or equal to $ 10,000 USD, we will deduct the fine from your balance directly; if your account balance is less than $ 10,000 USD, you need to submit $ 10,000 USD within 3 days, otherwise, we will freeze your account, including your account balance."

Nice article.  Informative.  Thanks for posting here.

Shutterstock are very clever people.  The best in the business.  You can be absolutely confident that if they make a change like this they will have researched the impact very carefully indeed.  They certainly won't do anything that reduces their profit margin.  If they are removing the daily limit, it is either because they believe it will make no difference, OR because their detailed research suggests it will result in fewer downloads.  They certainly will not be doing it because of anything iStock does.  iStock's basic monthly subscription only gives 250 downloads per month (if paid monthly).  They are a declining business and it's very unlikely that SS sees them as a threat.

Nice move by Fotolia, gently increasing prices, testing the water step by step.

Now that iStock has exited the S,M,L part of the market by eliminating 'price by size' and charging $12-$15 per shot, the market is wide open for FT, 123 and perhaps DT to capitalise on the enormous gap.  FT now starts at $1 for XS, and $3 for S (I believe) compared to $12-$15 at istock.  Istock has thrown away (again) the smaller customers, thousands of whom will no doubt have migrated elsewhere (and resulting in Getty's 'profits warning').

However, the prices at FT appear to be too low.  Probably they'll resist increasing the basic XS price because that will move them away from 'dollar a shot' marketing.  But on the other hand they've got DPC for that.

So it looks like iStock has given its competitors an enormous advantage AND the chance to increase their own profits through some modest price increases.  Hopefully they won't make the same mistake istock has made over the years and simply scare the customers away.  There's certainly scope to raise the smaller size prices by a decent amount.  Slowly slowly catchee monkee.