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Messages - Zero Talent
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2126
« on: October 06, 2015, 15:22 »
I found some of my photos sold as prints on Amazon. I wonder if that is even legal.
Anyway, you can probably do the same, with your own photos, yourself.
2127
« on: October 06, 2015, 09:38 »
Yesterday's Daily Show with Trevor Noah was very funny and very to the point in addressing this huge american hypocrisy:
Enjoy this clip, in case you didn't see the whole show:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/daily-show-guns-abortion-trevor-noah_561380b9e4b0368a1a60e477
I know. Good post, read it this morning. Mind you about hypocricy. Show me one single country whose politicians isn't.
It may be so, but this is no reason to turn a blind eye to their double-standards and especially no reason to vote for such hypocrites. Their pro-life rhetoric "begins at conception and ends at birth". This is a good one  On the same topic, here is an attachment from viral post I came across.
2129
« on: October 05, 2015, 19:58 »
I think it makes sense for all of us to change the extended license price from 30 credits to 100 credits. Fotolia will be happy too.
I had set at 100. Never ever got any ELs. Cut them in half to 50 last year. Still never ever get ELs at FT. Does anyone get them there on a regular basis? ?
I wouldn't call a 1-2/ month "regular" but: I maximised all my ELs to 100 and I already had two ELs this month. And I have a tiny 350+ files port!
This is more or less in line with the "regular" SS ELs, considering the SS/FT revenue ratio.
2130
« on: October 05, 2015, 15:53 »
If you don't do it, you have no right to complain about low royalties!
Some of us are not at the level where we can do it. So I guess that means we still do get to carp about low royalties. 
Yes, please go ahead with your "carping"!  But don't forget to maximize your prices as soon as you get that promotion, if you don't want to lose your "carping" rights!
2131
« on: October 05, 2015, 13:50 »
It only makes sense as an exclusive. I am exclusive so my sales are better as is my rate. Couple of points to note is I don't have to do any extra work for my clips to go to Getty. The upload system is much better and 4k is coming. 4k at non-exclusive rate is crazy!! I average $50.00 per sale so that is ok by me. I don't know how many exclusive artist are left but iStock is trying to force to go exclusive in video. Interesting times.
Yeah I agree. I'm going to wait till January to evaluate my decision but the most likely choice will either be to go exclusive at Pond5 or iStock and drop SS. My last bunch of sales at SS has been at a pathetically low RPD, even lower than I'm getting at iStock so in all likelihood I'm going to drop SS and iS in favor of Pond5.
This is very, very weird. It is almost hard to believe! My SS footage RPD for the past 2 years is $27.9. This is more than 350% better than IS. Hard evidence to boycott IS royalty insult.
2132
« on: October 05, 2015, 11:42 »
All valid points.
I would add: It take longs hours to record a timelapse and even more hours to process it right. The camera wears-out very fast after so many thousands of actuations. Think only about how many 60s clips your camera is able to do before its shutter breaks (fyi, this can be as low as 66 videos for a 5Dm3).
For only $5-$9/clip it is not worth the effort nor the price of a new camera.
It's time to boycott their lousy royalty scheme!
Stop uploading your footage to IS!
2133
« on: October 05, 2015, 10:20 »
Is there somewhere to go to set all of your extended license prices in bulk?
You can send me an email and I will put in the request for you. I have experimented with EL pricing in my personal portfolio and found very few sales when maximizing the price at 100 credits. Customers are very price sensitive as many that buy extended licenses are buying multiple images. For me, I decided that 60 credits was the right price. I still don't see a large volume of EL sales but definitely more than I did when set to 100. If the price is lower you will probably find more sales. You'll need to decide for yourself of course if you think the volume will counter the lower price.
My email address is: [email protected]
-Mat
With all due respect, Mat, I beg to differ!
I maximised all my ELs to 100 and I already had two ELs this month. And I have a tiny 350+ files port!
Everyone should maximise their EL's.
These are not licenses for casual bloggers, but for big businesses with big budgets!
I think Mat is just being honest and giving opinion based on his own experience without any agenda/conspiracy to keep the price low. The price point that the contributor makes the most money will give Fotolia the most money as well. I may price some at 60 and others at 100 to see what happens. I with I can batch change the price rather than doing it one by one.
I believe Mat is only expressing his opinion and I respect it. I like Mat. This is not about hidden agendas or conspiracies. It is about the constant complaints on this forum about the "race to the bottom". By maximising our prices, we have the chance to better value our work. Let's take it! I believe everyone should do it. All in! And WE, as a community, will not undercut our better paid ELs from other sites. If you don't do it, you have no right to complain about low royalties!
2134
« on: October 05, 2015, 09:43 »
Is there somewhere to go to set all of your extended license prices in bulk?
You can send me an email and I will put in the request for you. I have experimented with EL pricing in my personal portfolio and found very few sales when maximizing the price at 100 credits. Customers are very price sensitive as many that buy extended licenses are buying multiple images. For me, I decided that 60 credits was the right price. I still don't see a large volume of EL sales but definitely more than I did when set to 100. If the price is lower you will probably find more sales. You'll need to decide for yourself of course if you think the volume will counter the lower price.
My email address is: [email protected]
-Mat
With all due respect, Mat, I beg to differ! I maximised all my ELs to 100 and I already had two ELs this month. And I have a tiny 350+ files port! Everyone should maximise their EL's. These are not licenses for casual bloggers, but for big businesses with big budgets!
2135
« on: October 04, 2015, 05:39 »
... I am SOOOOOO HAPPY I am no longer with them.
Same here. I am also happy you are no longer with them
2136
« on: October 03, 2015, 09:59 »
No but your point amalgamates to the same old philosophy " ban all firearms" that argument have been beaten to death and it will never happen, simple as that.
Its no point getting uptight about, not worth it. Just when the anti-gun squad comes along with the same old argument nobody takes any notice anymore.
Instead they should get all the lunatics off the streets. I mean this is not just somebody waking up one morning and decide to shoot people.
Get lunatics off the streets? Define lunatic. Is a depressed individual lunatic? Is an angry individual lunatic? This has never been an exact science. And what's next? Being crazy has always been the excuse used by dictators to "take off the streets", lock away and silence their oponents. Owning guns is only a hobby, despite all the old arguments revolving around an obsolete constitutional ammendment. Defending private property and human life are among the few duties to be delegated to a government. If I have to trade off civil liberties in order to defend the unalienable right to human life, I would rather give away a hobby, instead of the freedom to "walk the streets" or the freedoms of the first ammendment. Owning guns is only a right, not an unalienable right, like human life. The unalianable right to human life trumps the right to enjoy a hobby. Sent from my SM-N910T using Tapatalk
2137
« on: September 28, 2015, 21:18 »
It is weird to intentionally add noise to an image (processed with the noise reduction slider at 0) to get it accepted, after an initial rejection, for "too much noise reduction" Sent from my SM-N910T using Tapatalk
2138
« on: September 28, 2015, 09:51 »
I thought I had a decent computer. It's an 6 core i7 3.3Ghz with 16GB memory. It is choppy reading these files off an SSD or RAID5. I'm trying to view them in Adobe Premiere Pro 5.5, QuickTime or even the built in Windows 10 viewer. It starts off choppy, but not too bad, then gets worse, leading me to think the disk read is the problem.
Any suggestions? Do people still use RAM drives? Better or newer software?
Thanks for any help
I had a similar problem with W7 Pro, when attempting to check 4K files (with all players). The only way to make sure everything was right was to produce an HD version. On the other hand, the new W10 viewer is great, all my 4K videos run smooth! Major improvement! (my VLC player improved as well, but it is still choppy) FYI, the video files are on a RAID 5 unit, I'm running W10 Pro from an SSD, [email protected], 32GB RAM, and no dedicated video card.
2139
« on: September 26, 2015, 01:33 »
So you don't believe what I quoted from your own post
 "Even more, I believe that it is a governmental duty, indeed, to ensure public safety and a proper operation of such courts of law."
I thought I clarified this matter: by public safety, I mean police/national defense, and not interference in economy or rules about how big a cup of coke must be in order to keep me healthy. But maybe it is better to go back to that iStock video boycott.
2140
« on: September 25, 2015, 17:10 »
"Even more, I believe that it is a governmental duty, indeed, to ensure public safety and a proper operation of such courts of law."
Except when it comes to chicken farmers and toxic emissions from vehicles?
As explained above, the regulator has not done anything to prevent food poisoning or automakers like VW to limit toxic emissions. Why paying taxes and support their inefficient activities? The answer is: No, the government should not interfere with these economical matters. There are much better and more efficient ways to deal with risks in life, than trusting a bureaucrat to take care of you. Since when a bureaucrat knows better than you, what is good for you and what not? All human activities involve some degree of risk. Every individual must be allowed to decide how much risk to take and how much extra to pay to avoid or minimise a specific risk. No government nor regulation will make your life risk free. How many people died because an FDA bureaucrat didn't approve fast enough a new life saving drug? Nobody is counting those lost lives. If you want regulations you should ask yourself: who regulates the regulator? Who is protecting you from errors made by the government?
2141
« on: September 25, 2015, 14:25 »
So we should have no police cos one person gets away with murder? All regulation will fail to some extent but it doesn't follow we should have none!
Oh and do you think everyone should be allowed to copy and resell your work - how does the "market" cope with that?
Of course not. Free market and liberty have never meant that everybody is free to do no matter what! My liberty stops where your liberty is impacted! All human relations, transaction, interactions are exclusively based on mutual agreements. A free market has the life and property rights, the pursue of self-interest (read happiness) embedded in it. These are axioms. These are "unalienable rights". Free market never meant chaos. Free market doesn't exclude courts, where such disputes can be addressed and penalties imposed. Even more, I believe that it is a governmental duty, indeed, to ensure public safety and a proper operation of such courts of law. Copyright thieves as all other property thieves are obviously prosecuted, since they break the "unalienable right" to private property. What is excluded is the involvement of the government monopoly in economical matters. This will always lead to ever more authoritarian governments and crony capitalism.
2142
« on: September 25, 2015, 13:06 »
I'm guessing you're unaware of the peanut butter executive who was just sentenced to 28 years in prison for knowingly distributing tainted peanut butter.
Very tragic, indeed. Again, where was the regulator when needed? What has US FDA done to prevent the killings? Nothing! Regulations were useless in this case. A conviction for murder would have happened even in the absence of regulations These things happened to even a greater extent in societies where the government controlled everything (especially because no government employee cares about a business more than an owner). Think only about pollution in China and other former communist countries. We do not live in a perfect world. It is noble to try to make the world perfect and I understand this ideal. But one must carefully choose the way to perfection and make sure that more good is achieved than bad.
2143
« on: September 25, 2015, 12:48 »
I wouldn't mind if there were regulations requiring stock agencies to pay a fair royalty rate. Independent artists' reps take a 20-25% commission, not 50-85% as taken by stock agencies.
And of courses, individual consumers do not have the knowledge, expertise or resources necessary to check the safety of everything they buy. You'd be requiring them to test every piece of chicken for salmonella; every car to make sure it doesn't have software installed to outwit environmental regulations (not that there would be any regulations) and emit 40x as many pollutants as claimed; every toy to make sure it has no lead paint or small parts for children to swallow; every house to make sure plumbing and electrical is up to code (not that there would be any code, of course).
Of course you wouldn't mind! It can be in your interest to have such regulation. But it will not be in favor of the consumers, since they will have to bear the extra costs. You have to understand that ALL interest groups apply these tactics. Even if you get more from microstock, you already have a net loss from the other regulations limiting competition in too many domains. The only clear winners will be the governmental bureaucrats, happy to expand their control over microstock and justify higher taxes needed to finance another regulating agency. It is in taxi driver's interest to have regulations preventing Uber to operate cheaper than licensed taxis. This works against consumers who have limited choice, being forced to accept smelly cars and rude drivers who have all their certifications in order. The same goes for all your other examples. No government will ever test every chicken you buy to make sure you stay healthy. This is impossible. Despite all regulations, you might still buy bad food. It is not the government who protects you, but the self interest of the chicken farmer, combined with your own decision process. The chicken farmer has a very strong incentive to keep you a happy customer. An unfortunate event can become a death sentence for his business. I repeat, the VW cheat has not been discovered by a governmental agency, but by a private non-profit organization. Where was the regulator all these years? Private certification companies like Zagat, Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc do a much better good for society, than such impotent but expensive governmental agencies. But you must give credit to these agencies for doing such a great job in convincing you and so many others, that everything they do is in your interest, not theirs.
2144
« on: September 25, 2015, 12:00 »
Zero Talent, I imagine you thinking that Volkswagen's recent problems are fair game as well.
Of course not!
What is interesting is that it was not a governmental agency who discovered the cheating, but some non-profit association with interest in promoting "green cars".
One more time, big government bureaucrats from all these over-dimensioned regulating agencies proved themselves useless.
They only suck capital out of the market and form us, the consumers, to justify their own existence, while being in bed with lobbyists and big corporations (who are always looking for special laws, exemptions and favors, in exchange for election funds)
Now, in a free market environment consumers can decide to penalize such practices and stop buying VW cars or pay the extra costs if they want drive greener cars, or not (I drive a small Prius C, btw).
While never perfect, the market forces fueled by the consumers freedom to chose will always be more efficient and smarter than some artificial regulation.
A good market relies on consumer knowledge while imperfect as they may be without regulators consumers would have to rely on the manufacturers to tell them the truth or do their own testing.
Governmental agencies have no way to check everything and enforce mountains of regulations. Consumers can. Consumers are everywhere. When I buy something from Amazon, choose a hotel, a restaurant, hire a contractor, etc, etc, I trust much more reviews from my peer consumers, than any other governmental specification. I bet you do the same. Technology makes this feedback loop faster and easier than ever. It is more than ever the age of crowdsourcing and sharing. Look at Uber, look at how cheap and mutual beneficial, both for consumers and contributors, such a modern enterprise is. A lot of governments fight the progress trying to impose regulations (under the pressure of special interest groups, like taxi unions who obviously fight for what's best from themselves) against what's good for consumers. Look how microstock has offered the possibility to hundreds of thousands of amateurs to make an extra buck. Do you think microstock must be regulated by some governmental agency, to make sure no crappy photos are sold to consumers? Do you think photographers must be licensed in order to contribute to microstock? I hope not! As long as it is let to operate freely, the market will deal with this issue much better than any governmental bureaucracy.
2145
« on: September 25, 2015, 11:35 »
Politics and ethics apart, this CEO will have been appointed to boost Getty's fortunes.
Exactly! And there is nothing wrong with that! She will push the limits as long as contributors will tolerate such behaviour and continue to be interested in an iStock collaboration. If she is smart, she will know where to stop. If not, she will alienate most of us and further sink her ship. For starters, boycotting her video business is definitely something to be encouraged.
2146
« on: September 25, 2015, 10:20 »
Zero Talent, I imagine you thinking that Volkswagen's recent problems are fair game as well.
Of course not! What is interesting is that it was not a governmental agency who discovered the cheating, but some non-profit association with interest in promoting "green cars". One more time, big government bureaucrats from all these over-dimensioned regulating agencies proved themselves useless. They only suck capital out of the market and form us, the consumers, to justify their own existence, while being in bed with lobbyists and big corporations (who are always looking for special laws, exemptions and favors, in exchange for election funds) Now, in a free market environment consumers can decide to penalize such practices and stop buying VW cars or pay the extra costs if they want drive greener cars, or not (I drive a small Prius C, btw). While never perfect, the market forces fueled by the consumers freedom to chose will always be more efficient and smarter than some artificial regulation.
2147
« on: September 25, 2015, 08:16 »
-1 
Nobody can stand a chance against you in a debate! You are a thoughtful individual, indeed! One more +1 from me!
2148
« on: September 25, 2015, 07:30 »
I also stopped uploading videos to IS, for the same reasons.
That Merriam definition means nothing. Define excessive? Is it the average world income or what?
If yes, do you make more than $18.000/year from all your activities? Probably.
Then you are "greedy" if you keep for you anything in excess of $18.000, instead of donating it to those in need across the world.
Sent from my SM-N910T using Tapatalk
Well that's a stretch. You really have no clue what I donate, what my charitable activities are and how I greedily spend my money. I do make way more than $18K. But I also put a wife through college, put a kid through college, bought a home for my family, used my income to care for my now deceased mother, and still manage to give some of whatever I have left to animal and children's charities. I would say that, for me, I am far from greedy.
It is not a stretch, it is logic. See? It is not easy to define "excess", therefore it is not easy, if not impossible, to define "greed", a word you easily juggle with. $18.000/year is a fortune for some poor African farmer who can only dream to see the kids of his kids go to college someday, etc. WE are never "greedy", only others are. Sent from my SM-N910T using Tapatalk
2149
« on: September 25, 2015, 07:17 »
I also stopped uploading videos to IS, for the same reasons.
That Merriam definition means nothing. Define excessive? Is it the average world income or what?
If yes, do you make more than $18.000/year from all your activities? Probably.
Then you are "greedy" if you keep for you anything in excess of $18.000, instead of donating it to those in need across the world.
Sent from my SM-N910T using Tapatalk
2150
« on: September 25, 2015, 06:23 »
Gosh! How I miss the minus button :-
-100000000000000000000000000000
Wow, what a powerful argument! What a deep understanding of the complex world we live in! +1 from me! Sent from my SM-N910T using Tapatalk
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