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Messages - pancaketom
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2226
« on: June 22, 2009, 15:22 »
all time: 77 5 9
this month so far: 33 7 52 (some nice ELs, poor 25 a day)
last month: 63 15 0
the difference is made up with cd and video sales.
25 a day have really taken a dive for me since last year, but other sales have almost made up the difference.
2227
« on: March 31, 2009, 15:12 »
As far as uploading only your best to IS when the limits are lower than what you are producing, I find that often IS accepts what is rejected at other agencies, even some of the best sellers (and vice versa). After I found deepmeta I prepped a heap if images and just uploaded my limit every week. I didn't try to pick the best ones I just submitted them all in order. I found about no difference in acceptance rates. It does seem like there is the IS image library, and the other image libraries, and it would make sense for someone searching for an obscure image to check both IS and somewhere else, preferably one with a decent search system.
2228
« on: March 31, 2009, 12:48 »
I'd like to move up to where I am supporting both my photographic habit as well as my climbing and traveling habit with photographic income. This is actually a much more modest goal than it appears. If I could triple my income that would probably put me there. Unfortunately that means I need to knuckle down and produce some best selling images by design rather than the few I have by accident. Of course really raking it in would be nice too.
2229
« on: March 31, 2009, 12:36 »
It looks to me like the default search method is now by downloads decreasing. This means that if you have a lot of older files with large numbers of downloads you will be fine, if you have mostly newer files with less downloads you won't do as well. Unfortunately this is a positive feedback loop. I am close to a BME there though, as my older higher level images are doing well. I still think the default search should be most relevant, and it should really be most relevant (based solely on the image, not the contributors camera or acceptance ratio or country). At least DT returns the lowest number of completely off the wall and spammed images.
It does seem like they are shaking things up there, I hope it all turns out well when they are done.
2230
« on: March 20, 2009, 14:37 »
why is the first quartile (Q1) often larger than Q2?
eg: how many images do you have online?
Q1 2435.5
Q2 612.5
Q3 1500
Q4 13000
seems that Q1 should be the lowest.
2231
« on: February 12, 2009, 13:18 »
2232
« on: February 06, 2009, 23:38 »
Am I the only one annoyed by the rejections that include 2 completely opposite reasons - "too many or too specific", "edges are too feathered or too sharp", or "too much noise or overuse of noise reduction". Well, which one is it?
--=Tom
2233
« on: January 09, 2009, 14:22 »
When I put in my RPI, the RPIs listed as previously submitted don't match what I typed in for the previous month, are they an average of all previous RPI submitted or what?
2234
« on: January 09, 2009, 14:03 »
2235
« on: December 29, 2008, 14:02 »
I don't think you have to have a canon or nikon, but I think a dslr is rapidly becoming necessary for the big sites. I started with a sub 4MP point and shoot in 2006 and got a 5+MP p&s in 2007 and then a dslr. When I occasionally use the old camera or work files from it I am struck by the noise among other things. I think it would be hard to get started with just a point and shoot these days. Curiously enough, many of my old files from these cameras continue to sell well, so it is the sites, not the buyers that seem to really care.
--=Tom
2236
« on: December 19, 2008, 14:51 »
There are many good things about SS, and them being #1 in sales by a large margin for me are near the top of the list. They do however have some serious issues, #1 I think is spam. They are really bad in that regard, and don't appear to be concerned or doing something useful about it. (DT seems to be both, and IS seems to be concerned at least).
I think that SS is a bit of a lottery with similar pics, some get uploaded at a lucky time and get indexed early and get enough sales quickly to stay up in the search rankings, other very similar images don't, and never see the light of day. If you play long enough you are bound to get some winners, and at least it does appear that it is more of a random thing than who you are that makes an image take off. I am also not discounting that an image has to be good too, but there are a fairly large number of images that appear very high in the search that I think wouldn't ever get there if they were uploaded today. I like their fairly light touch on their forums, but there are some things they could do for contributors that would make things a lot easier for us that they haven't. (like some way to see how many DL and image has without wading through all the others looking for it, and a way to edit keywords more easily). I don't particularly care for the feed the beast need there, but it does help motivate me to make more images.
All sites have good and bad points, SS has more good for me these days.
I'd be very sorry to see SS get swallowed by a macro.
2237
« on: December 07, 2008, 18:24 »
As long as there are serious monetary incentives for spamming with little consequences, it is going to happen. I think the quickest little fix would be to get rid of the default CV matching for searches (so that spamming an image to the default search term brings it up first even if it isn't that term).
IS needs to report on how many portfolios have been cleaned up and how many have been booted for failing to clean up.
I think if any site really fixes the spam issue, they will get a lot more business, the only one that seems to have come close in my opinion is DT, as I rarely see lots of completely bogus returns there, and if i do, I can report them with one click.
2238
« on: December 03, 2008, 11:21 »
I think that there are a few problems with how IS search works that encourages spamming, or at least discourages what they describe as proper keywording.
Among these are the default keyword mapping. So (and this example is likely to be incorrect) if I search "border" looking for some sort of frame around a blank area but IS defaults to "border-national boundary", then by spamming a frame image as "border-national boundary" it will come up in the search, and if the buyer sees enough of the sorts of image they are looking for, they will search no further. Instead it should bring up all or none of the "border" images and ask for refinements.
IS also does a poor job of multiple word keywords, sometimes keeping them lumped together, sometimes splitting them - this can change on refining a search.
Often even knowing the keywords of an image it can be hard to find it, and the buyers don't have that luxury.
I do not pretend to be an expert at IS search, in fact I am lousy at it, but I bet plenty of people do low level default searches and as long as they get a number of images that appear to be what they are looking for, they just browse through a few pages of results not knowing that they are perhaps missing out on many more images.
Don't even get me started on all of the terms that aren't in the CV, or aren't in the CV for the meaning I mean.
It sounds from Shank_ali's example above like I should have 10-15 default keywords I put in every image (like nobody, photography, landscape (or portrait), color, etc. etc.), but then Valaaami is getting keyword rejections for just that.
I applaud IS for attempting to clear up the mess that is keywording, but they get a D for implementation.
2239
« on: December 01, 2008, 13:44 »
Now that the November results are in, I was indeed down from Oct over 50% (Oct was a BME despite the poor last week though). My November numbers were lower than my 3rd full month on IS with less than 10% of the total files up. (it did drop a lot after that 3rd month though with the first of many painful best match changes for me).
2240
« on: December 01, 2008, 09:59 »
quote:
"Maybe they didn't think it necessary to have the same key phrase in there 4 times? Huh"
That is possibly it, I think I might have originally had things like "ski-lift" and "chair lift" that all got matched to the same thing, but then why doesn't IS just kick it to one instance of their CV match? surely that is easier than rejecting a file and wasting reviewer time and pissing people off.
2241
« on: November 30, 2008, 15:14 »
oops I spoke too soon. If I could use only one keyword for this file, it would be "ski lift". Guess which keyword it was rejected for?  The following keywords used for this file do not appear to be fully relevant to the subject. {[ Ski Lift, Ski Lift, Ski Lift, Ski Lift]}
2242
« on: November 30, 2008, 15:07 »
so far they have rejected all of my images keyword rejections for other reasons too, but boy do they have a weird idea of what bad keywords are. for example this panoramic image of the uinta mountains isn't scenic or natural enough for them...  The following keywords used for this file do not appear to be fully relevant to the subject. {[ Scenics (Nature), Scenics (Nature)]}
2243
« on: November 30, 2008, 14:57 »
I've got some from Nov 17 and 18. Normally I'd say they weren't stuck, just slow reviews, except some from later have been reviewed. If it was a normal stock site I'd delete and upload again, but I am so far behind in uploading to IS with the limits, there isn't much point. The way sales and reviews have gone lately there isn't much point either.
2244
« on: November 28, 2008, 11:39 »
I ordered some stuff on the 25th so that it would get here before I took off in December, no problems with the discount (except I had to order something else to kick it over 200$ - but that is fine, another toy to play with). The package got here the 26th! wow, nice surprise.
on a second note on Adorama, a friend ordered something and later that day the price was lowered and after she called, they switched her to the lower price. Nice. It sure beats some of those fly by night bait and switch places.
--=Tom
2245
« on: November 25, 2008, 00:01 »
went from solid number 2 to number 4 so far this month, projected to be down about 50%.
2246
« on: November 18, 2008, 13:01 »
Without really going into exactly how and what they are testing, it seems that having more pixels hurts the test results. Perhaps a full frame 100 pixel camera could ace the tests, but what good would it be?
Still, it is nice to see someone trying to come up with some sort of testing standards.
2247
« on: November 16, 2008, 23:15 »
2248
« on: November 08, 2008, 22:42 »
I had a laptop hard drive die on me, and I managed to read the data off of it by freezing it and hooking it up with an external cable while it was packed on ice. I am not sure exactly why that worked, but I saw it mentioned as a possible fix online, and since it wasn't working I thought I'd give it a try. If nothing else works it is worth a try, just keep it wrapped well so moisture can't condense inside while it is cold. good luck.
2249
« on: October 28, 2008, 12:00 »
"Your file appears to have been up-sampled from its original size. As part of the standards of iStock, we only accept files at their native resolution. "
I think they just looked at the EXIF and the XXXL size of my stitched (from 8 or so images) panorama didn't match the camera resolution despite the fact that I decreased the file to fit that size. I suppose stripping EXIF will become one more stupid thing I have to do before submitting to IS.
2250
« on: October 27, 2008, 02:04 »
From what you can gather these days there is no completely effective anti dust system on SLR's.
That's one good thing about Bridge cameras-that you dont have to worry about this.
But getting a superzoonm to produce the quality needed is another thing!
I have a BIG dust spot in my powershot S3 IS. It is a pain in the butt, but I have gotten used to trying to place it somewhere it won't show up. I am tempted to take it apart, but scared too. With the SLR I get more dust spots, but so far I've been able to remove all the noticeable ones with either air or a brush. It seems to take 2-3 months to get enough in there that I start noticing them. (My camera claims to be self cleaning, but I don't know how much that really helps). It is a bit scary to reach into the camera, but if you are careful, it shouldn't be that big of a deal. --=Tom
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