Kai means "The Earth" in Japan and "The Sea" in Hawaii.  Best of both worlds!

He's very, very, very cute, I want a print of him.    Can't wait to see what you do with him!

Yup, no packet mixes or cans of stuff allowed...

Here's one for all you guys state-side.

I'm after your best recipe for Sloppy Joes.  I've never had them, but I have a burning desire to eat them.  Can someone send me a recipe for them?  You Mums best home made type...

While we're at it, I love trashy food.  Any other favourites?  Tex Mex stylie is good, I'm about to tuck into a whole Tex Mex platter for dinner...

Yup, just saw that!  I'm going to spring for the 100mm Macro.  Might also update my Mums printer with that �22 all in one they have, Canon printers are supposed to be pretty good.

If you look at each site, you'll find a section about referal program or affiliate links.  Take a look at them, they'll give you all the info.  Some you have to activate before you can use them to make income.

I thought there were stock agencies with more than 11 million images.  How many does Getty and Corbis have?

Phone them and ask?  I wouldn't have thought they have 11 million "creative" images though.  Their "newsworthy" side perhaps do, since Getty went though that phase (and still do) of buying war zone photographers copyright for �20.

Why does Jimmy Choo sell his shoes for over �1000 a piece, yet you can pick a pair up at an outlet store for �100?

Two different markets that will pay two different prices.

Quote from: Seren on February 27, 2008, 14:16

While your explaination makes sense teorically, the hard facts are that on many agencies you can't sell an image as RM if it has been sold as RF before because some (not all but many) of the RM licenses include exclusive usage relative to time, space and medium. I saw on some stock sites lines like "image not available for the US till 31/12/09" or "image not available for book covers till 31/12/10", etc...

And on Alamy this concept goes to the extent that once you tagged your image as RF you can't switch it to RM anymore (while the inverse is always possible).

Yes, like I said, it's not a good idea to sell RF images as RF on agency websites.  However, I was challenging the fact that you said it can't be done - because if you know your collection then it can be done.  I have done exactly the above - licensed an image to someone for one use that had previously been sold RF.  As long as the person is aware it could be used in a competing market.  What they don't need to know is the prices you sold it for.

But it's interesting you say that about Alamy.  In fact, they categorically DO allow you to switch your license on the site from RF to RM.  Because they recognize you can make a mistake, and will change it even if you've had sales.  I believe that one guy actually took his whole RF collection there and sold it through them exclusively as RM.  It's in the forum somewhere over there.

So it can be done, but it's fairly unusual.

I didn't know that was how it worked!

Thanks for the info!

There is another factor that influences the placing in the search; it isn't best match but the faster approval times.  Let me explain: the main component of best match is dl/month.  This is calculated not from the approval date but from the upload date.

I've just been thinking about this.

I quite often set pictures to upload on iStock to fill my upload quotas for the week, then finish uploading them (keywording etc) like a week, two weeks later.

So I wonder if the upload date is when you first upload them into the system, or when you push them forward into the inspection queue?

To be more precise you can't manage the rights of an image already sold as royalty free because you can't grant exclusivity anymore.

If a customer who boughts the rights of your image through Alamy (or Photoshelter or whatever else macro agency) discover that the same image has been sold royalty free elsewhere you can be legally sued.

Not strictly true.  For instance:

I can sell an image royalty free to "company A" for $1000.  This gives them the right to use the image over and over for anything.

I could then sell the same picture to "company B" for use on the front cover of their magazine for Feburary's issue.  Since they're only using it once, and they're a smaller company, I decide that they can pay just $250 for the one time useage.  That would be a rights managed (or Licensed) usage.

The problem occours when "company B" says to me "have any of my competitors used the image in their magazines?" and now I can't answer that question, because I don't know where "company A" has used the image.

But if "company B" want to use the image anyway, even without knowing the history, then that's fine.  I can still sell them a managed license.

At the moment Alamy check a random sample of images from EVERYTHING you have waiting in the queue.  If you send them 4 DVD's totally 1000 images, and they check one image and find it's not acceptable, then they reject the whole lot - all 1000 images.  Same if you're uploading them to the site.

The difference between macrostock and microstock is the price, and also usually the usage rights.  For instance, at iStockPhoto you can't sell rights managed images, at Alamy you can.

As for the quality issue...  photos do not have to be technically perfect to sell.  Often the photo is so good, the actually image stands the test of noise etc.  For instance, I have kayaking images published in magazines that were shot at ISO1600.  No agency would touch them, bar a specialist sports agency.  In that case, the picture was more inportant to the magazine than the technical flaws.  Alamy generally lets photographers set their own standards, as I said before only checking random samples.  So theoretically you could get some technically bad stuff through there, but you've got problems if a customer decides to complain.
It is considered bad practice though to sell an image at a microstock agency for $10, and at a tradtional agency for potentially thousands.  People still do it, but you're potentially sacrificing sales on the traditional agency.

Also, most traditional sites don't like you selling images as rights managed that have previously been sold as royalty free.

These aren't set in stone rules, but they're the generally accepted "best practice".

Totally agree that the best match is no more "unfair" to exclusives or non.  It's unfair to everyone.

The thing is, it's a bad system.  Full stop.

Take my picture of a little girl doing archery.  Not a great picture, but it illustrates a girl doing archery at a youth camp.  A subject in demand I guess by the downloads it had last summer.  Now, if you do a "best match" search for it, it's miles back.  It's behind loads of crap that isn't archery.  So therefore, if a customer does a search for archery, and finds other files that aren't relevant, what's that saying to them?

This isn't a best match at all - it's a popularity contest.  With downloads per month and ratings still being in that equation somewhere it's a sheer popularity contest.  That's not what the best match should be.  For instance, if I had a really high positioned file in the "vegetable" search, and added "bouncy castle" as a keyword, it would show up high in the second search, even though it is not relevant.  Wiking doesn't help, I've had two files with their keywords under review for 14 months now.

To get a true best match, iStock need to introduce some way of determining what the best files are.  Such as picking one or two keywords as your "subject".  So in the above example I could pick "archery" and "youth" as my subject, which would mean that theoretically a search for archery would only yield pictures of people doing archery.  Not hundreds of pictures of vector targets (that look nothing like an archery target btw), or even totally random stuff that shouldn't be there.

But then again, I'm sure most half decent designers don't actually use the best match, I'm sure they use things like age and downloads to find the file they want.  It's the multitude of uneducated buyers that use the best match search, the ones we need to cultivate into bigger and better buyers, that we could be putting off with the search algorithm itself.  "Best Match" gives an illusion of some sort of hand sorted search, which of course it isn't.

Anyway, that was me thinking out load.