For me some images get approved almost instantly, some take a few hours right now. They don't approve images as a whole batch anymore. Haven't donbe that in a while, I guess part is AI reviewed, or at least AI pre-sorted, part human reviewed, thus the different review times.

So it seems to be working differently for different accounts. I've had absolutely no delay in approvals this week. And most images get approved instantly. Zero rejections too. I find it weird because I always had some of my images rejected before and some that I submitted would definitely have been rejected. I'm not complaining but it does make me wonder if SS is doing something nasty behind the scenes...

The current wait time for reviews is around 7-9 days on average. This varies based on the number of assets in the queue.

Thank you for your patience,

Mat Hayward

Good to know. Is it usually better to submit all the images you have in one go or a few every day? Does it make a difference? Currently, I submit 5 images a day and with these longer review times am thinking if it's better to send all 40-50 images I have at the same time.

The only thing you are achieving when you add a keyword "background" is that most likely you are wasting 1 keyword. Microstock agencies are smart enough to understand your image is a background nowadays, without you adding an explicit "background" keyword there. What they are not able to understand - concepts like "sad" etc. Also from the ranking perspective using keyowrd "background" is very questionable, judging from the sheer volume. So I would conclude that with high probability it does some harm (waste) and no good at all.

As someone who only typically uses a maximum of 30-35 keywords, I have difficulty wrapping my head around "wasting" keywords. How are you wasting it when it might be relevant? And why is it questionable when it is going to work with all the other keywords you have for your image? It's difficult to understand without some concrete evidence that points to it rather than broad conjectures. Especially when I have images on Alamy and SS where I know people found my images through searches like "mangrove forest background", "indian man talking" (where all 3 in isolation are popular keywords) etc.

looks like they've done it again - released a new interface w/o user input - HUGE fonts, 1 image per row w constant refresh as they add the complete portfolio one at a time

but odder - after no sales last month, i've gotten emails for $20 over last 2 days. but the site says i've only earned $2 in last 2 days!

they are unable to coordinate anything!

That's the biggest frustration. In an ideal world, a site like wirestock would have been a godsend but so many glitches godamnit. They've even managed to make the already wonky interface much worse with the new upgrade.

I was just wondering if anyone had gone for the premium services at all. They don't seem to be doing a great job of selling it at all.

I am not saying AI will replace all art, but it will certainly cause  a decrease in artists when they have a harder time to make a living from art (which was already difficult before AI art!) as AI is cheaper and microstock photography and drawings are the easiest replaced by AIs and the first to go.

I don't think AI will ever be able to replace editorial stock photography (which is a big chunk of how I make a living out of this) simply because no one can make up a prompt to see what I see in my neighbourhood or street or a protest or a rally and come up with an image that depicts the scene accurately. It's simply impossible to feed that data to a dall-e or whatever obscene thing that replaces it in the future. That will only happen if there are actual robots on the streets taking pictures and I think we're a wee bit away from that. But generic stock photography like an apple with a white background? Yeah that crap isn't going to sell so much.

Customers can already use their mobile phone to fill most of their photography needs if they wanted to. The quality you can get from the high end models is incredibly.

And yet they still hire photographers for events and business portraits and still buy content from agencies.

There's a big difference between "still hiring and buying" and "hiring and buying like they used to".

Do you think it's easier to make a living off photography and stock photography today than 10 years ago? It's precisely because it's far easier to take acceptable images today that there's a glut of images  in the market and the agencies are racing to the bottom to scrape for ever lower demand. And with a glut of easily produceable AI images entering the market in the next few years, you're not just competing with millions of other humans but computers as well. I'll let you decide what that's going to do to the already saturated market.

"The share individual contributors receive will be proportionate to the volume of their content and metadata that is included in the purchased datasets."

This is the key in my opinion. Probably means the more images you have and the more diverse they are, the more you get.

I dunno.. It's quite refreshing to not have to delete "background, blue, green, red, color" from the auto generated SS keywords.

It's worth me saying that these keywords are based off a very brief description. If you were to describe the scene better, then you might get better targeted keywords. My aim is to use this to supplement my keywording to find ones I hadn't thought of.

I don't understand. You're going to have to delete keywords from the ones ChatGPT provides as well (coffee, snacks, water, dresses etc.) and then add more of your own to make it more relevant. In the SS keyworder, you have to select from the keywords it provides and then add some of your own. It's essentially the same process, only ChatGPT requires you to go to its site, think up a good prompt that describes your image (maybe two or more times to make it accurate) and then go through the keywording process. Maybe I'm missing something here but the latter process feels more time consuming?

When the Daguerreotype appeared and photography was born as an art form many painters turned against photographers saying that there was no such thing as an art form in photos because photographers were just copying reality. It is curious that Reality was what most painters were painting at that time.

Those are very good points to be honest. The artists who're going to hurt the most are the ones (and have always been the ones) who have devoted many years to learning and perfecting a craft only to find it obsolete one day and has been taken over by a completely different process (painting to photography, analog to digital etc.). So I can understand why people feel hurt at technological shifts in artistic process because when you've invested so much in one particular process it's too difficult to change course and learn another. Especially when your livelihood depends on it. I mean, I can understand why many people would be intimidated by having to learn to code to make art in the future because it is not an easy thing to learn at all.

I haven't heard /read of any iStock contributors who have been accepted into Getty in the last few years.
Any I've read about were told their work was "more suitable for iStock".

Maybe those who have been successful have chosen, or been told (?), not to post about it.

Maybe you know someone who has made the leap recently (in the past, it was possible and known about).

I had an invite from Getty back when they had a deal with flickr more than 10 years ago. Took the invite, submitted images, and after 5 years, had made less than a 200$ in sales. So I closed the Getty account and applied for istock, put the same images in and a few thousand more and now they've netted over 5k in 4 years. So I'm not really sure if being on Getty as big a deal (you still get a ton of 2 cent sales). Maybe it works much better for people who shoot exclusive briefs but I was doing primarily editorial and travel.

Why are you afraid to post the link to your port.

Because I saw the link to your port and thought, what's the point? What is anyone going to learn from a piddly little port like mine when they have access to the greatest shutterstock port of all time?

There's an image of an illuminated cave. I submit. Gets rejected in one second because "Content is underexposed, overexposed, or is inconsistently exposed." It's a cave, it's meant to be dark with only the illuminated section exposed correctly (which it is) but try telling the AI that. Anyway, I take it on the chin and up the exposure and resubmit. Again - "Content is underexposed, overexposed, or is inconsistently exposed." I guess there's no winning.

So it seems the world's favorite free photography site is actively monetizing all the photographic wealth they gained for nothing.

https://unsplash.com/plus