Quote from: mantonino on February 28, 2010, 17:35

That has to tick off John Lund who has a TON of great elephant shots! lol

lol John is a great artist!

That's the point and the lesson to learn from that elephant photo.

Artists are able to produce unique images, no matter the competition or the agency or the budget
involved.

A friend of mine over in Boston works for a printing and design company - they finish and print specs from clients....leaflets,news sheets, promotional materials, dvd covers,cd covers etc He says the number of clients sourcing their images from SS and IS is increasing every day and they are dropping (in some cases completely) commissioned shoots as a source. I've read this elsewhere but it's encouraging (for microstockers) to hear it from someone in the business.

how can it be good for business in general ?

of course it's bad, but they've no other alternatives after all.

microstock is to blame for this.
quality is actually too good over there, often better than photos
you find on RM agencies, and all this for a pittance.

microstockers are indeed shooting their own foot accepting
such low prices but who am i to judge now ? it's too late already,
there's no turning back, clients are used to micros and will never
go back to Getty or Alamy or whatever in the middle.

and the next step will be buyers sourcing from Flickr or Wikipedia (!!),
weren't you all telling me to "adapt or die" ? 

I think it was too easy for Yuri when this market was young; and now it's changing. I am sure Yuri can survive that successfully, but his rather luxury style will need to change. Of course his costs of production are high if he flies models from another countries in business class and lodges them in luxury hotels

i'm afraid that's the only way he knows about running a business.

but the important bit of discussion he was talking about was
the fall of the RPI and this could be the crucial factor soon
for many microstockers.

before or later you simply reach the point where hiring free models,
shooting, scanning model releases, uploading, keywording, etc just
doesn't cover the bills anymore, let alone producing any decent net gain.

Not quite. People who "get it" will find the info and make progress no matter what. People who don't get it will only make progress as long as someone is helping them constantly. And some people won't make progress regardless of the situation.

actually it's not that hard ... buy any photography magazine or read some online forum and before
or later you'll hear about macro and micro stock.

Most of Yuri's photos are made by Yuri himself. Last August he said that it's maximum 30% from some shoots that is made by his assistants (i.e. the average nr in his portfolio is much lower). I doubt it changed much since then.

But it's not just photoshopping all these people are doing - it's location scouting, organizing with properties, models, accessories; assisting during shoots, etc. I believe it's 1-2 doing some processing in Denmark, and it's mainly Indian people doing photoshopping for Yuri.

to me it all sounds verrrry expensive, especially if he's also paying the models.

we'll see how it goes, and we'll laugh.

Quote from: FD-amateur on February 28, 2010, 06:42

Quote from: Dook on February 28, 2010, 05:44

You can recognize Russian child? So, than Yuri is selling only in Denmark?

Ethnic Germans (the well selling blond hair blue eye types) are historically spread out over Poland, Czechia, Ukraine, and the Western part of Russia.

I'm 50% Italian blood, 37.5% Portuguese blood, 12.5% of an undefined mix of Portuguese+Dutch+(perhaps native). Yesterday a guy at the pharmacy asked if I was of German origin, as I reminded his deceased sister, and they were 100% German blood.  I believe that being white and overweight helped him make this confusion.   

With all invasions back and forth along the history of the world, it is hard to define your ethnic background.  But of course, in China they don't relate with a blue-eyed blonde, but a blue-eye blonde may apper "normal" to all Europe and America, plus some other places (AU, NZ, ZA).

i can spot people's ethnicity as long as they're european.
basically there are 3-4 major clusters, it's no big deal.
americans are all mixed, impossible to spot where they came from.

frankly i can't see how Yuri couldn't make good photos with eastern european
models, they look a bit slav but all in all they can pass for americans unless
you search for the weird ones.

there's plenty of russian female models in fashion magazines and newspapers.
argentina might be a good place for his photos, there are spanish, italians,
germans, russians ... i can't imagine him being short of good looking girls
in Buenos Aires.

i was thinking about moving there ... with 500 euro you can rent a huge apartment
and the food is great, i speak also some spanish, we'll see.

Quote from: Dook on February 28, 2010, 05:44

You can recognize Russian child? So, than Yuri is selling only in Denmark?

Ethnic Germans (the well selling blond hair blue eye types) are historically spread out over Poland, Czechia, Ukraine, and the Western part of Russia.

Sure but any european can easily spot a german from a slav.

As for "diversity" it's funny to see the supermarkets' brochures in Singapore : they're forced to put malays, indians, chinese, muslims, and the odd caucasian in every graphic design.

Russian pictures and models look very Russian. Buyers will always look for pictures that are suited for the demography they are catering to. I often browse through parenting magazines, and have yet to see a Russian name under one of the children pictures. I guess the Russian kids are just to clean and well dressed to fit into our views of a happy child.
http://www.klikk.no/foreldre/smabarn/article530159.ece (This one is quite clean compared to many other pictures I've seen)

then try Australia or NZ or Argentina, great places to live and way cheaper than Denmark.
i don't think you'll have any problem finding caucasian or "nordic" models.

p.s.
Russia is too expensive now, and they don't like foreigners but there are 300.000 non-chinese people in Beijing, a crowd of expats
in Shanghai and Hongkong and Singapore and Bangkok.

another option is Canada : living standards similar to the US, and cost of life cheaper than europe.

i mean, however we look at it, europe and especially scandinavia is all about high costs and high taxation.
no wonder our factories are all outsourcing elsewhere.

yuri's business could be a textbook case : 22 employees for shooting microstock ?? 3 studios ??
but maybe his family is rich and he owns the studios, who knows.

Quote from: macrosaur on February 27, 2010, 06:42

wow.

0.03$ for a photo, it's almost as low as a click on an Adsense banner...

it this becomes the norm soon it will be more profitable to run web sites with images and banners all around.

too late, it already is

never say never ...  last click i've got thru Adsense was 0.02$

Quote from: macrosaur on February 27, 2010, 15:21

Quote from: borg on February 27, 2010, 14:36

We can expect further professionalization of micorstock...

be careful, as the next big thing in microstock could be a sudden invasion of
chinese and indian photographers selling like crazy with very low production costs.

actually i'm surprised it didn't happened already, maybe their english isn't good enough
for keywording ? 

I thik it's not possible...

You need army of freelancers for that, that mean new generation there of children in middle class with enough money,  and lot of free time...
So, when they come into this business, India and China will bring the biggest buyers population in this market...

i lived in asia many years, there's already millions of chinese with DSLR and fast ADSL.

india is another story, but vietnam is changing as fast as china, same for taiwan, thailand
and philippines.

if they just can make 3-400$/month out of shooting microstock they're already making
more than the average salary of a doctor or an engineer.

It's all about image (surprise surprise).

oh really ? i'm afraid it's all about the price nowadays.

We can expect further professionalization of micorstock...

be careful, as the next big thing in microstock could be a sudden invasion of
chinese and indian photographers selling like crazy with very low production costs.

actually i'm surprised it didn't happened already, maybe their english isn't good enough
for keywording ?