High quality HCV images for 16 cents?

yeah I mean this stuff is clearly targeting Flickrs, students, and random amateurs.
Anyone joining such a low-profit business is not a pro and never will.

so all in all i don't see it as a menace honestly, even if people gave away the images for free rather than 2-3$.

Does anyone know when the 7D mk ii is coming out? might be worth waiting for if it is a 24mp???

yes, when nikon will announce the D400 ... that means .. hmm ... never ?

And I blame Google too. Do a search for just about anything and you will find TONS of unwatermarked images with no copyright info.

you can only blame the RF licence for that.

it would be fairly easy to track down RM infringers but with RF it's impossible for the photographers especially if the same image sold dozens or hundreds of times.

Purely my opinion based purely on my experience.

I sold both my 5D MK II bodies and upgraded them both to 5D MK III bodies.  I've kicked myself ever since.

The reason I switched?  Everyone told me there was a better focus system.  The reason I'm kicking myself?  I like the old focus system.

I do like the weather sealing and the faster frame rate but for the first time ever, I find myself sharpening images in Lightroom after shooting RAW.

i would blame the new AF for that, i noticed (and it's also agreed by nikon) that these new 51 points AFs  + 3D tracking work well with sport/action images but for anything else a simple 21 or 9 or 5 points AF will suffice and is more reliable, i'm using the AF with 5 points and no problems so far, for moving people i use 3D tracking and AF-C but sometimes it's hit or miss especially in low lights while in daytime it works like a charm.

and this is the NORM for Huff Post and friends .. i'm seeing this sh-i-t since many years over there and in other AOL sites.

no one cares, and if you point it out in the comments people will even tell you that google images is fully legal and it's fair use and bla bla bla.

in the best scenario if you write to their editors they dont even reply and the image suddenly disappears or is replaced with some public domain cr-ap from wikipedia.

so these guys don't pay bloggers for the articles and dont pay photographers for images.
who exactly is getting paid at the Huff Post apart their execs and their sycophants ?

if billionaire corporations like AOL dont pay authors, who will ??

How many of those lenses do you really use? Unless you shoot other types of work, for micro an 18-200/28-300 would probably cover just about everything.

at least in daytime, yes, they're great, but forget about indoors or low lights.

you guys all seem to forget that nowadays to sell a product like hotcakes you NEED exposure, you need to be famous, popular, or at least well known in your market niche, no matter if because of a good or bad reputation.

once you're famous you can even ask donations on crowdfunding sites, you can write books, do interviews, get your BS heard and written in blogs and forums and newspapers, no matter what you actually say, it's all about getting your name known.

random readers who never heard about Yuri will believe the mumbo jumbo about him being the king of microstock, they will not double check if other image factories are bigger than him and if they keep a low profile to avoid unwanted attention by the tax office or whatever.

so may you like it or not he's doing the right thing and actually he's not even pushing his image too much as he's not updating his blog regularly and he's not posting cr-ap on FB or Twitter like so many others.

all he needs to keep his status now is to post a new press release to us villains and plebs once every 3 months, maybe coupled with an editorial article about the situation of the micro/macro market .. people will like it and write 50 pages of comments like here on MSG ...

wordpress has many addons to automate the posting to FB/Twitter/instagram/etc

for anything else, no money is going to come from this activity, only some "exposure" but just as long as you have a lot of followers otherwise it's a waste of time.

ask yourself, why people should "follow" your rants ? you must give them very good reasons to do it.

yeah, Emphas.is is ONLY for photojournalism actually, and they only accept projects by people with a decent CV and portfolio, unfortunately it seems they're financially in trouble and they're begging for donations to support Emphas.is itself !

for anything else there are photography projects on Indiegogo, Kickstarter, and many others but it seems just a way to sell you a book and merchandising, no idea if they even make money because many authors downplay the real costs involved in printing and shipping !

some will promise you a book + shipping for 30$ and then they discover they're going to lose money big time.

but from what i've seen these sites are becoming less and less relevant in bringing you buyers, all they do is acting like a platform, like Ebay .. if you don't have already a lot of followers and a big mailing list of contacts there's no way to get serious fundings.

the irony is, if i had such a big number of followers i would setup a site myself and grab 100% of the money and save the 4-5% paypal and credit cards fees and the fees for the crowdfunder site too.

it seems only 35% of the projects get fully funded and most of them are about games and electronics.

if you make photo books, hmm ... i think realistically you can expect to make no more than 5$ net profit per book but you'll have to print and ship the whole stuff and deal with complaints or people not receiving the book or whatever.

all in all .. hmm 500 or 1000$ per book in the best scenario ? yeah .. in a lucky day because if you're not famous who's gonna buy your book ? at the very least the concept or the stories should appeal to a certain niche crowd.

i think it's a great business model but it will become harder and harder because of saturation and scams and the way it's working now it's too easy to attract scammers i mean there's even people asking 5000$ to save their sick dog .. what the F ?? who can control you're for real ? a blog with photos of the dogs ? unbelievable but it says a lot more about donors than about crowdfunding.

 

and then gets the award for fastest growing danish company...

maybe in the startups category or SMEs.

for big ones i've the feeling Carlsberg is spreading like wildfire in asia, and what about LEGO becoming massive even in China ?

Looks like SS's stocks are bouncing back, so the Yuri effect, as he would like us to believe, was very temporary:

as confirmed by Yuri it seems SS has no plans to raise our fees or to launch a new expensive product line.
and frankly speaking i would do the same, their core business is being the leader in low cost so they better avoid risky adventures in news, reportage, midstock, etc

their strategy will be about cutting costs to the bone even more than now, as for their new collection i'm afraid they've something nasty in store, like all-you-can-eat mobile pics or whatever cheaper than chips.

in any case they can't stay idle, public companies usually announce something new every quarter to keep high the investors's attention span, no matter if it's all smoke and mirrors as in most of the cases, see the recent jump in FB's mobile profits, anyone following the industry knows very well the ugly truth and it will all crumble soon like a sack of potatoes.

at this point they could also find the money for some M&As .. including buying FT or DT, we'll see but it would be a logical step.





 

why not donating on http://www.emphas.is ?
at least they're helping starving photojournalists and you maybe get a book or a print out of it.


sites like Kiva look 100% scam to me, i've seen so many NGO ripoffs in poor countries to believe such operations are genuine ... lending money to ugandan farmers you've never seen in person ? no way .. probably a bunch of nigerian guys running internet scams and spending your money on booze and hookers just as they do here in south east asia.

no idea if this was already discussed but i just noticed this site which is basically a portfolio service for photojournalists, they claim to allow distribution by Getty for "selected" premium members (100$/year) ?

http://www.lightrocket.com/getty


the company seems to be a spinoff of ONASIA, a reputable travel/editorial agency, no idea how they manage payments and all, and what if you don't renew the membership ? will they remove your files ?