Quote from: cdwheatley on June 01, 2008, 05:01
IS- 55% (BME 1953 downloads on 448 images  )

That is some pretty good money you are making at this. Apparently it is still possible to make a six figure income at microstock even if you are not one of the top three contributors.  Especially if you live in some tropical part of the world with a nice beach and beautiful women.  Man, I need to move! 

My sentiments exactly, in fact, I have decided to pull an allnighter and prepare a bunch of images for Alamy that I have been procrastinating doing. This is just the motivation I need. So you had 6 sales on 173 images? impressive. Most people there, including myself so far, do not have sales like that with from so few images, not on photos anyway.

I didn't get the newsletter, but from my understanding, if $.23-.30 a download is true, this is ridiculous. I submit a lot of vectors, and I especially hate to see my work sold for such low prices.  Since vector art is mostly a microstock product, these subscription plans make it no longer worth the effort to produce vectors unless the vector artist becomes exclusive to IStock. Selling vectors this low is simply an insult. If this subscription plan is how I read it, at the very least I will  reconsider submitting any new vectors there, especially if there is no opt out option. This also cements my decision to put more effort into traditional agencies and other markets.

What is especially stupid IMO is that Fotolia is trying to pull this off at the same time IStock is apparently planning on making it a better deal to go exclusive there. With the drop in revenue at other sites due to subscriptions, coupled with this announcement, and IStocks latest announcement that they plan offering more incentives to people to go exclusive, I would bet that the majority of vector artists will either go exclusive with IStock now or quit contributing to the micros altogether if they cannot get more for their work. I cannot go exclusive there for at least six months even if I wanted to due to commitments elsewhere, but I am sure many will. I am sure many other vector artists feel the same way as I do.

I don't really see it as a good thing one agency dominating the microstock market, but that is the way it looks things are going, I think in the long run the agencies are  shooting themselves in the foot.  Remember when many of the traditional submitters were saying that this is a race to the bottom? Perhaps they are right after all. I have also been working with some  more traditional agencies, ones where you know the owner on a first name basis and they work with you individually. The difference in mutual respect and how they treat contributors compared to the micros is like night and day.

I am looking to make a professional looking website to display my photos and probably sell prints, of both custom work and general artistic photos.  I have my own url that I would like to use, so I was looking at various options since I am not that up on how to design my own website from scratch. I was thinking of going with a Smugmug pro account.  Smugmug seems to fit the bill and cost about $140 a year for a pro account and I get to use my own web address, except they don't do paypal and people on various forums have complained about their buggy copy protection that doesn't really work. Are there better alternatives out there for what I want to do?

I know I am not the first to ask about Smugmug on here, but no other alternatives have been discussed in the other two posts on here. So that is what I am curious about, if there are other alternative ways to conveniently set up a photo website out there.

Quoteyou dont need a teacher to learn - contrast this to what we should expect if this talent was BORN -- you could hand your camera to someone who'd never taken pictures, never seen an archer, and knew nothing of basic physics and they'd still get the shot you did - how likely is that?

The technique was learned, what wasn't learned was getting the idea to shoot something unconventional in the first place. He said that no one else there thought to try to get a shot like that. This is an example of original thinking.

Ever notice how it is always artists who ask this question? Then usually many of the artists will insist it can be learned. After all, they learned how to do what they do, and if they can learn it, and they know what they needed to do to learn it, surely anyone else can learned what they learned with effort, correct?
Perhaps, but maybe not. It is a really difficult question to answer and it is mostly being asked from the perspective of people who have successfully learned an art. It would be interesting to know the opinion of non artists, whether they would have the same opinion as most artists do. I agree that no one can just pick up their artistic tool of choice and be a master, but how many people can become a master with practice? That is almost impossible to answer, but I think having some talent gives one motivation to continue to develop that talent, where as it is much harder to motivate someone who does not learn as quickly. Therefore it could be a self-reinforcing process.

Quoteit's especally iteresting t consider something like photography which didnt exist 200 years ago -- what selective pressures could there have  been to select for an aptitude that had no selective advantage?

Interesting observation, but the same could be said for art of music, or story telling, all of these having been in existence since the first cavemen started making ochre drawings and telling stories around the campfire. What selective pressure was there for these attributes? How does being a good artist help you find food or outrun a sabre tooth tiger, or become more alpha than the guy in the neighboring cave? None that I can think of, and yet they exist.

Quote from: Carla on April 24, 2008, 09:00
Last thing is the great idea itself. That´s where artists are different. They think beyond the norm. And the ability to do so seems to be mostly inborn. So thats 2:1 for the genetics.

I agree that originality and uniqueness is what makes a great artist. There are many photographers who IMO have the same level of skill as Ansel Adams or Galen Rowell, or artist who can draw and paint as well as Leonardo DaVinci, but that in itself doesn't make them great. These guys were great because they were originals, they were the first to do what they did.  Originality is what makes greatness.

One thing to consider is that IStock probably does not want to alienate their exclusive contributors. If contributors really do get the short end of the stick IStock may risk losing a substantial number of their exclusive contributors, and hence lose a major advantage they have over other sites. My prediction is the subscription packages will be slightly less than the equivalent bulk purchase but not by a whole lot, just enough to make it look superficially like a slightly better deal to accounting departments.

QuoteFor now I don't shoot too much but I will try this Lo1 the next time for sure.

I went to the coast and shot some sunset photos(using a 4-stop graduated ND filter), I tried Lo1 and it seemed to me there was a slight loss of dynamic range in the highlights, and it tended to overexpose the sky more than it did with ISO200(however the shadows looked like they actually had slightly more dynamic range with Lo1). Fortunately with bracketing and the incredible latitude to work with in a raw file I was still able to get some good photos out of it. Capture NX wouldn't be all that bad for this reason if it wasn't so slow and buggy on my computer. Windows Vista is horrible to begin with but even Photoshop CS runs a faster and more smoothly than Capture NX does. This evening the first time I opened Capture it crashed on me, the second time I tried it took what seemed like a half hour to save a file to tiff! I think I may need either more ram memory or that windows service pack to get it to run smoothly. If I could get my computer to work correctly and everything had a fast instant response I actually wouldn't mind using Capture to adjust raw files.
That stupid program even seems to mess up my OS even worse than it already is, I had to wait to see these words I just typed because it is now running so slow, time to reboot again I guess

Thanks for the info, I guess I will try it on mine and see if it works

Is there a way to process D300 raw files in Photoshop CS2 without having to first open them in Capture NX?

QuoteSome might see that as a negative (I suppose we have come to expect big leaps every couple of years) but on the other hand Nikon have managed to produce the same quality at 12.4mp from the APS sensor.

I think the D300 uses a CMOS sensor like the D2X does, whereas a D200 uses a CCD sensor, if this makes any difference. It seems that the D300 is more like a D2X then a D200.  It appears to me like Nikon repackaged the D2x in a D200 like body, gave it many of the features of the D3 minus the full frame and D2x like body, and they made a D300.  I have never owned a D2X or a D200 so I have nothing to compare it to, but when reading the specs on a D2X, other then the built in battery drive/grip I really don't see anything better about the D2x, in some ways the D300 even appears to be a better camera.

QuoteAm I right about that, or are there Ordinary Joes out there with a copy of Illustrator (and presumably personal style)?   

I am an ordinary Joe with a copy of Illustrator, but I am still working on improving my skills with it.

thanks for the reply, didn't know there was another post, I looked at the top couple of pages, I guess I should have done a search too, sorry.

Has anyone here tried Fluid Mask? Can it do cutouts/background replacements that photoshop cannot do, or do it better or faster? Is it worth the $239.00 price tag? 

was wondering if anyone else had this problem-I keyword in photoshop, and it saves as semicolons. Then when I upload to Panthermedia it only accepts commas, so I have to delete all my semicolons by hand and replace them with commas. I can't be the only one with this problem, as I am sure others keyword in PS? Anyway, that is a HUGE pain if I am going to have to do that with thousands of images I think I am screwed.

QuoteThe $50 bid for yahoo could be positive for SV, there is a lot of yahoo services that might be used to buy cheap images

For $50 that is a pretty good deal, maybe I will call up Yahoo tomorrow and ask if I can buy them. Perhaps if this deal goes through Snapvillage will change its name to Yahoo Stock Images or something. I think that is a better sounding name anyway.

QuoteI had a wonderful idea....
.... I thought IS might like an image taken from the little town in which I live called Kerhonkson.

It's located 100 mile North West of NYC as the crow flies. Let me see them reject this!

1. It's got no noise at all.
2. It's in super sharp focus.
3. There are no release forms to deal with.
4. I am the copyright holder.
5. Perfect depth of field.

It was an relatively difficult shot however. I had to wait for the light to be just right.

I don't know if IStock will take it, but I am sure some art museums will. It represents the darkness and utter blackness of pure form, a stunning visual depiction of the nothingness of mind, or something like that...

Probably CanStockPhoto and Albumo if they don't start selling. I thought since Albumo was paying people to upload they would also have serious money for marketing, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I would also say SV if it wasn't backed by Bill Gates/Corbis. I hope I am wrong, but I am concerned that Featurepics may not make it either.
I have actually had several payouts with CanStockPhoto, but I have only managed to get less than half my portfolio up there because of their buggy site, whenever I try to upload more it crashes and has various problems so I decide it is not worth the effort to upload the rest as long as sales remain low. I have had a couple payouts with LO as well and they are as slow as Canstock, but I think that they need to be around a couple years longer to really see how they will perform, they are still relatively new compared to Canstock.

Not sure yet. I have been frustrated so far that my new uploads do not seem to be increasing my overall sales at Shutterstock much at all like I expected and hoped, IS was doing great until a couple of days ago and today would have been horrible if not for an extended license sale. Hope they didn't change the search engine there again last weekend. StockXpert a little slow but hoping it will pick up, DT seems to be picking up the last few days, the rest about the same I guess, I will know more at the end of the month but I am crossing my fingers and hoping my 50 new uploads this month, and the 100 or so I will have ready by next month(all vector illustrations) will raise my sales everywhere enough to make it worth the effort. Looking forward to getting my D300 on order and then I won't have to upsize so much for Alamy

QuoteIf you are correct with your understanding of the subscription model and its profitability, this would explain why the other agencies (DT, 123 and StockXpert) have been so keen to jump on that bandwagon.

I don't know how long many of you have been doing microstock, but FYI 123 didn't jump on the bandwagon, they actually started out as a pure subscription site like Shutterstock. Since they started selling on a per picture basis as well, my income on 123 has increased considerably there,  and most of it is per image sales. If 123 can do it I wonder why  Shutterstock hasn't been successful with per image sales?

My guess is the reviewers are checking a few photos from each batch, and if they find more then a few they don't like they will check a few more, then if they don't like those they will reject the entire batch. Don't know for sure that is what they are doing but I think some agencies may do this with large batches if they get backed up with too many files to review, and in fact on Alamy it is their stated policy to do this. Not saying I agree or disagree, but that it is possible that is what is going on.

People doing macrostock are still reporting sales. I also thought it would die but it hasn't quite happened yet.
One of the reasons Corbis has not been profitable, besides the fact they have been buying a bunch of images, is because the premise of their business was based on a futuristic prediction that has so far failed to pan out. They wanted to be the main provider of home based digital images of many vintage and famous photographs. Basically digital screens that can project images and pretend to be artwork hanging on your wall. They could charge a subscription fee to a database of images and the customer could change the digital image on the wall when they got tired of looking at the previous one.

I think the problem with this idea is that generally people still prefer original or paper/canvas prints of artwork on their walls. Not everyone is a is a techno enthusiast like Bill Gates and Ray Kurzweil. Those two may think the idea of digital wall sized images is really cool, but I think it will be awhile before the general public catches on to this, and in the meantime it will be seen as kinda deClasse to have computer images on your wall instead of originals. Now if they could make animated digital images for your wall, like a running waterfall  for instance, that is something that a hard copy print cannot do and may have more mass appeal IMHO.

well, today was a little better, but nowhere near where I expected to be last March, much less last summer.

The reason I am apprehensive about it is because everytime so far there has been a dramatic drop in sales it was also the beginning of a trend, not just a fluke occurence.

If every other day in June ends up like today is for me, that will be a 95% sales drop over March. that means my June sales will be about 5% of my March sales.