Noise and artifacting is dead easy to spot on it.  I wonder if a pro monitor would show me more?  I certainly know when I'm likely to get a rejection (and I'm usually spot on for that sort of technical problem too).

I really should get a mouse and a desk though.  I'm going to get RSI from editing photos in bed one day!

Me too.

But I assumed it was my rubbish work computer.   

I guess I must have been caught in both a best match change and my lowered rankings due to lowered d/l per month!  Double Whammy!

Quote from: rustyphil on February 25, 2008, 20:08

all the I need is $3000 airfare

Nah, there are many budget carriers in Europe now. The real problem are hotel prices in Moscow and safety concerns.

I've been looking to staying in Moscow for a while now.  I found accomodation in the old olympic village for around $10 a night including breakfast.

The Rebel is already on it's last legs, although it's only had 10,000 or so shutter accutations.  Perfect candidate for time lapse!

Thinking about compacts, I wonder how my panasonic lumix lx2 or whatever it is compares to my video recorder?  My video recorder is about four years old now, so it might be comparable!  I'll have to investigate.

Also posted to shutterstock:

I'm planning to shoot some SD with my video cam and see if it gets accepted, but I've got some ideas for some wacky time-lapse type stuff shot with my 5D.

From a Canon 5D, to make footage, what software do I need? I'm running a mac, could I do it with iMovie?

Will I be able to create HD footage with this sort of method?

Any help appreciated!

So if you submit your first two images, and one fails, you can't submit anymore?  Sounds peculiar.

Once you get below the 50%, how do you get it back up to start submitting again?

I've got loads of CF cards, so I use a cardreader.  CF cards are fairly indestructible, I don't think you've got too much to worry about!

I do the same thing when I remember.  Nobody is a good descriptive keyword.  It's a good one to search on.  Say you needed a city scene with nobody in it - would you really want to trawl through even city picture that didn't specifically mention it had people in the scene?

More relevant keywords can only be a good thing.

Seren,

What was your reason for dropping your exclusivity?

Loads of reasons.  Mostly because I was building up a portfolio of images that iStock didn't want ("not suitable for stock" or things like, kayaking images shot at ISO800 to noisy, but of course there is no other way when shooting in a gorge in Wales...) so I wanted to offer these shots somewhere else.

I'm also not really happy with getting such little per usage on my better shots, so I've started offering my best other places for higher amounts.  I'd rather it was bought once for a large amount, than several times for a smaller amount.  I don't care about exposure and crediting, I care about the money.

Royalty Free images should demand a higher price than your average rights managed image, and something didn't sit right about me offering my work rights managed and undercutting it by so much for a royalty free sale.

Plus I was getting some really, really silly rejections that I really couldn't be bothered to send to scout.  For instance, I took my new Canon 5D out shooting, early one morning.  Took some sunrise shots where I live.  Clear, deep blue skies, and deep blue water from the reflections in the harbour.  All rejected for overfiltering.  I didn't bloody do anything to them!  They were great straight off the RAW file, no contrast bumps, no saturation bumps, that was just how they were!  All marked no-resubmit.  Just stupid.  I think I'm going to chuck them on Alamy, since they're fairly unusual shots of where I live.

Plus they screwed up the business cards I ordered from them.  Cropped really badly.  How do you crop an isolated on white shot badly?

And the constant tweeking of best match.

And the culling of images that is such double standard.  Either get rid of everything that is a trademark, or get rid of nothing.

And loads more I don't have time to type at the moment...

I must have been lucky before.

But after my enforced three week break from iStock and coming back non-exclusive my files have sunk like stones.  I had a few files that I could guarantee would sell most days, or at least a few times a week.  They had really good search positions, several on the first page (I view twenty at a time, as I suspect most buyers do) and quite a few on the first two or three pages.  Several times I had the first "non-vector" image in the search, due to working with kids doing sports at stuff and basically finding a niche market!

I wondered why I'd only made a fraction of the sales I usually do in the week since I've been back, so I just looked through my search results.  I can't find any of my good sellers on the first twenty or thirty pages!  They're been knocked so far back in the general search terms that it's not funny!

Surely if they were good enough to be on the front page of the best match (clear images, good "stock" and good keywording) then they're still good enough to be on that page?  I mean, iStock even makes MORE from me than from exclusives!  Surely not being exclusive doesn't make a file bad?  The thing that is bothering me though, is my search positions aren't even as good as before I went exclusive!  Must have had a few shake ups I didn't notice.

I guess this is my punishment for making a mistake about the contract, but it's frustrating.  If these sales don't pick up to where I was last August before I went exclusive (and I've doubled my portfolio size since then, at least!) then it's just massively set back my need to go full time in September.  Actually, that's not true, I have to go full time in September by any method possible...

Anyway, rant over.  I feel a bit better!

No idea what you mean.