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Messages - lurkertwo
26
« on: July 11, 2009, 22:54 »
Read the full story and see the fake photos here (China Daily, in English). Rebiya Kadeer, head of the separatist World Uygur Congress, displays a picture which she describes as "Chinese police crack down peaceful demonstrators in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region" when interviewed by Qatar's Al-Jazeera Television.
However, the picture Rebiya Kadeer displayed is actually a news photo taken last month in Hubei province.
Xinjiang separatists hold a picture which they describe as "victims of Xinjiang violence" in Ankara, Turkey, July 7, 2009, Those separatists held a demonstration in front of China's embassy to Turkey. This picture is release by AFP.
In fact, the picture shown above was taken at a traffic accident scene in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.
27
« on: July 11, 2009, 16:26 »
As regards links, I dont "hide" them - I just dont publish them - a personal choice. Well I _hide_ them and it was not a personal choice: my astrologer told me to do so. He murmured something about an anonymous anomaly. 
28
« on: July 11, 2009, 16:10 »
Not for those who don't like flash! No Flash to see, just good old javascript.  Death to Flash! And there was no referral in your link at all. Woowoo.
29
« on: July 11, 2009, 15:44 »
How about the site's Forum David? I'd rather prefer flash-multiupload or FTP, and a proper Release management first. Right now, you can only attach one single release. The "isolated" checkbox can be prefilled checked/unchecked by determining the % if pixels #FFF > 15. The "number of people" can easily be derived from the number of attached model releases. Ah yes, and there is a typo in the Categories: "chrisitan" instead of "christian".  Good thing that the keywords are not re-ranked alphabetically. For those contributors that put their most relevant keywords first in the IPTC, it's easy to determine relevance in the search algorithm.
30
« on: July 10, 2009, 19:12 »
I didn't think it as a private information as I talk to anyone about what would they wanna shoot and where, but I understand everyone is not that open handed. Mr. Locke has a very sharing personality that he tries to hide now and then with tough statements. Apart from my hints in the previous message, you could also read Yuri Arcurs blog on what sells and why. Try this post for instance, but he has more.
31
« on: July 10, 2009, 19:04 »
Do you guys any idea what I should shoot?
While we all share some info, we are not all here to educate and push our competition. I believe all the info you need is out there somewhere, you just need to find it.
Says the great educator Well the simplest way to know is go through the porfolio of the best selling artists, or look at the most populars at any site. If you have a specialty, like people, lifestyle, product shoots, landscapes - just enter some relevant keywords in the search engine and look at what comes up on the first page of the search results, and you will have a pretty good idea what, and especially how to shoot it.
32
« on: July 10, 2009, 18:48 »
3 ) The photographers could pull out their images whenever they want.
No questions here. Your content, your call. Pull that content as fast as technically possible, treat the person with respect, and hope they come back one day.
Just picking this point out. I never understood why anybody would want to delete an image from an agency. Review time and other resources have been spent on it. The only valid reason is going exclusive on one of the other sites, or an exclusive buyout of an image at Dreamstime for instance. For the rest, a relation with an agency is a long-term commitment from both sides, and only if the agency screws up big time, one can consider to bail out. High payout limits vs low sales can be a reason, but not always. If the people behind the site are nice they deserve a chance to work with the not yet paid out capital.
33
« on: July 10, 2009, 18:21 »
Like I said, not everything would be popular with the masses and this is one of the primary objections I would expect but as it would be an invite only agency dealing with pros it would be expected that they would be shooting pro gear. You can trust that the Rebels, Nikon D50, D70 grade of cameras would not be on the list. Keeping up with the list would be easy as it would only be updating the new crop of high end Prosumer and Pro DSLR and above cameras.
As I said there are plenty of existing outlets for point and shoot imagery. An agency such as this would be focusing their marketing on a different grade of client, ones who would need to be able to incorporate images in ad campaigns that would range from Web to Billboard and other forms of large format printing. Images from a 10 MP point and shoot sensor simply do not contain the pixel quality needed for these types of end use.
There are a few dangerous assumptions in this statement: 1 - pros always shoot with 3000$+ gear, 2 - the correlation with type (price) of gear and snapshot-ness [P&S cams always make snapshots, Progear always makes superior stock] - 3 customers mostly buy for billboards and large print. When I quickly glance at my latest Dreamstime sales, the only maximum sizes are sold in subscription. I need 10,000 of those sales to finance a Canon D5-MKII. Maximum is almost never sold in PPD: those are medium, small, x-small. At that reduction, it doesn't matter at all whether the picture is made by a Hasselblad or a D90. Billboard and large print is a tiny part of the market. To accommodate those customers, one could create a separate collection within the agency composed of top photographers with top gear. But the agency will miss the bulk of income if they neglect the vast majority that only needs web size or sidebars. Related to this: no agency should allow maximum size to be sold in subscription.
34
« on: July 08, 2009, 21:31 »
I'm not in SS You have money to burn. - For many (and me), it's the site that gives the most income.
35
« on: July 08, 2009, 21:25 »
Something really is happening at BigStock , since yesterday I had my BDE with 7 downloads, two of them for 2$. What's more, new and totally different images were downloaded compared with before. For me at least, the new search algorithm seems to work much better, with the same large variety of downloads as on Dreamstime.
36
« on: July 08, 2009, 12:53 »
You still get the installation CD. No. On my latest HP laptop (Vista), I got nothing any more. I got just the opportunity to write my own backup reinstall DVD once. If for some reason that DVD fails or is lost, I have nada, nothing. That's probably what Peter means. As soon as the warranty expires, I will install my good old pre-activated corporate "illegal" Win XP Pro version on it since I'm totally fed up with Vista. My desktop came with an OEM-version of XP and a reinstall DVD that never worked when I needed to reformat (once per year). My bootlegged version works fine. The problem with legal software from Microsoft is that it never works properly and all the "illegal" versions do.
37
« on: July 08, 2009, 12:28 »
I think such a pricing can work for all parties involved. Your input are welcome. We're almost there, just delete the very small sizes for EL. ELs don't happen that often and buyers don't care that much for 10$ if they can market a template e.g. for thousands.
38
« on: July 08, 2009, 12:22 »
lol, and from your avatar, it is pretty obvious Jennifer Connelly is hotter than Halle Berry , hmm??? No. He just came out as a crossdresser.
39
« on: July 08, 2009, 12:17 »
Lastly, I have a few images on Flickr (I know, I know) I would greatly appreciate very honest feedback if you have the time to have a look http://www.flickr.com/photos/toastieman/ Great artsy shots. One outlet could be DeviantArt on which you can sell prints.
40
« on: July 08, 2009, 12:14 »
To the OP, if you can't take comments an criticism from the collective knowledge, then I'm not sure why you posted in the first place in a forum where the contributors content and time are both valuable. Exactly. If the only answer is "email me", why is he coming to a forum?
41
« on: July 08, 2009, 12:11 »
Oh yes, I hadn't noticed that. What I meant was no non-exclusives at all. Ah, ok. Well that would be a great idea. Go for it! The problem for the exclusives would then be that commissions would have to be lowered, since their higher commissions are partly subsidized by the lower commissions of free contributors.
42
« on: July 08, 2009, 11:30 »
I would love to see them build a much more exclusive gallery and weed out non-exclusives from my point of view as an exclusive artist That's already there. A buyer can check the "exclusives artists" only checkbox.
43
« on: July 08, 2009, 01:36 »
my images on pixamba from panthermedia start at 6 credits and go up to 60 credits, so $4 at their cheapest. Which is interesting because it is just under $2 on panther and if you bought 5000 credits  on panther you could get the same image for $0.80 Is that an Extended License on Panther?
44
« on: July 07, 2009, 23:56 »
But if you tell me you will offer my photos for the same price structure that is obviously ok for the same files if they come via a distribution partner, that would be a different story. I'm more worried that pictures on Panthermedia will be sold as XS Extended License via Pixamba for a share of 2$.
45
« on: July 07, 2009, 22:39 »
Good as always. I'm pleased with the results. Same here. No complaints, roughly same income as Bigstock and Photolia, and not dying at all.
46
« on: July 07, 2009, 18:45 »
By the pixels treats those pixels as commodities. They aren't. The picture as a whole may or may not be a commodity, but it is more than the sum of its pixels. Or should all software cost the same, since it's all the same ones and zeroes? This is a very neglected idea and totally right. Size has been over-emphasized too much. The concept of the image and the looks are the "where to bang" and should carry a flat creativity fee. A size fee can then be added as an extra. Looking at the Pixamba size/credits discussion, it boils down to this line of thought. A given good picture is not worth double if the number of pixels is doubled. The relation is non-linear.
47
« on: July 07, 2009, 18:36 »
I think IS will be a huge winner and threaten its competitions like it never has been if it allows for exclusive contents. Many contributors will certainly allow IS to have the first pick. I always wondered why they don't do that. Rejected images are not always that bad but as an exclusive, you have let them rot on your disk, despite all the effort you put into them.
48
« on: July 07, 2009, 18:18 »
We offer extended licenses at all sizes: XS - XXXL, so you just took our minimal available size XS with EL price, which is 5 credits (which should gave you, BTW 5 * $0.4 = $2 contributor's fee, but not $1.5 - where this number came from?) I took the price on the prices page of 3.75$ and multiplied by 0.4 (40%). So, an extended license is 2.0$ and not 1.5$, not much difference when compared with the 28$ of ShutterStock. and compared this sum to Shutterstock EL price. You did not take in account that XS is 0.11MP while SS only sells ELs for sizes 3,000x3,000 and 6,000x6,000 pixels. That's an advantage for the buyer, as I said. The main thing is that a buyer can get an EL for which we only get 2$. A size like 6,000x6,000 fails into our XXXL size (20+ MP, approx. 5610 x 3740 or larger) and our EL price for XXXL is $60. The contributor's cut of $60 is always $24. Well, it's probably not $28, but SS is not the only agency which sales ELs, and the prices vary. Anyway, $24 is far from being something 'ridiculous' or unfair to the contributors. Tricky. Most downloads in general are XS and S since that's more than enough for web use. People that need/buy XL and XXL are not many, in general. Almost all my maximum size downloads on Dreamstime for instance are subscription, since there is no size limit on subs. For many EL products like mugs, XS is more than enough. It would be better to add, let's say, a flat 20$ (return for contributor) fee to any EL sale as the EL premium, then add the normal fee for size. As to the remark about iStock's sizes, that might be right but I was referring to Dreamstime that put the boundary on 10MP and not 11MP to include the popular 10MP cams. They did it to encourage contributors to upload full size. With a huge gap between 4.7 and 11MP, the 10MP people will upload downsized versions to the previous step, i.e. 4.7 or 5MP.
49
« on: July 07, 2009, 09:44 »
Nice videoclip but not very informative. The rolling staircase is a good idea in a large studio, but a couple of simple benches/tables of different height will do the trick in studios of mere mortals. The top platform is quite small and has no railing. What if you're peering trough your viewfinder and you lose your sense of balance? The skateboard is ok for large areas but I'd probably fall down and break my cam. At least Yuri Arcurs proved he is an acrobat too
50
« on: July 07, 2009, 08:00 »
meanwhile, so long as Fotolia sell enough for me , i won't make too much of a scene here  Fotolia monitors independent forums closely and some high-profile contributors have been deleted their port because they spitted out (justified) critique on them. They censor their own forums and they can't stand any critique outside of them. So better don't make a scene unless you're anonymous. Personally I don't have much to say against them. They sell OK but I would never upload video to them after this move.
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