Just saw this in a forum:
alfonso gutierrez: I�m glad to see that photographers are making their voice to be listened and are acting upon. http://boycottfotolia.org/

Alfonso Gutierrez is a photographer and the founder of Agefotostock and President of Cepic

Why invent the wheel? Cepic seems to do interesting work.

The text below should perhaps be given its own thread, but for the purpose of context I'll leave it in:
Cut from http://www.cepic.org/join_us

"What is CEPIC?

CEPIC stands for the Coordination of European Picture Agencies Stock, Press and Heritage. It aims to be the centre of the picture industry.
As the Center of the Picture Industry, CEPIC federates nearly a thousand of picture agencies and photo libraries in 20 countries across Europe, both within and outside the European Union. It has affiliates in North America and Asia. CEPIC's membership includes large and smaller stock photo libraries, major photo news agencies, art galleries and museums, video companies. CEPIC has among its members the big global players such as Getty and Corbis. Through this membership, CEPIC represents more than 150.000 authors in direct licensing. The annual CEPIC Congress is the largest global gathering of the international photo community and extends CEPIC�s network on all five continents. CEPIC has been a member of IPTC since 2005 and of ICOMP since 2009.

Our members are producers, collectors and distributors of content � moving and still images. They are well versed in dealing with rights issues such as the right to reproduce, moral rights of authors and the global distribution of assets for commercial and non commercial use. Our members have been digitising content for over 15 years, and making the resulting digital asset available for commercial use, such as to newspapers, magazines and broadcasters, off and on-line, as well as in non- commercial environments for the purposes of research and education.

Alongside the need for access comes the need to support the creative economy that produces and delivers this work, namely the artists and those that make their work available. CEPIC�s imperative is to ensure that the creators are the beneficiary of direct payment. We believe that based on its professionalism and IT experience, our industry is in a position to propose solutions to the challenges of the Digital Age.

The aim of CEPIC is to be a united voice for the press, stock & heritage organisations of Europe in all matters pertaining to the photographic industry, including, but not limited to the following:

(1) To consolidate copyright protection for photography and ensure that it not be weakened by the process of the harmonisation of copyright laws in European countries. Also to advise on copyright protection as new technology develops.

(2) To fight for comparable trade regulations in all European countries. The now existing different copyright laws in single countries and the lack of a "droit moral" for photography are serious trade barriers which cannot be accepted.

(3) To support the exchange of information between European picture sources and diverse associations with similar interests worldwide.

(4) To develop and fight for ethical standards which will guarantee the protection of rights for all photographers, copyright holders and agencies.

(5) To develop guidelines for a fair business competition between photographers, picture agencies and users."

Unfortunately CEPIC and similar organisations have shown little interest in the interest of artists like us, originally perceived much as a threat rather than the huge pool of talent waiting to be represented that we are.

Collective action is the only way we've achieved change in the past at places like iStock and now Fotolia - the efforts of those who drive it are greatly appreciated.

I am also continually amazed that people think it is any of their business to speculate on a public forum about some else's contract or how much they earn.

Good job the feminists of the 20th Century didn't think that or they still wouldn't have equal pay.

Businesses would love to keep everything secret, a mature society realises that is no good for anyone.

I clean my sensor every couple of days when I'm working in dusty environments with one of these and a rocket blower:

https://www.lenspen.com/?resultType=category&params=17&tpid=0&tpid=323

The blower should shift dust out of the mirror box if you've got stuff in there. I've seen insects crawling around in mine before now, so it's not uncommon.

Keep your sensor clean you dirty boy!

Quote from: fotoVoyager on April 16, 2014, 06:06

FWIW, someone I know with similar portfolio to mine is now making more per image per month than I am on iStock.

Are you counting mirrored GI sales in that?  Are they just on the micros?

Yes and yes.

The problem with going independent is getting out of the 80%+ income drop trough, not that income can't be replaced as far as I can tell from talking to people whose experience I respect. That takes quite some time and a huge amount of work, but it looks like it can be done.

I was hopeful that GI sales would make up for the crash in iStock exclusive downloads but the killing of the E+ programme prevented that. It appears that the GI best match is heavily weighted towards new images so a portfolio that can't be added to sinks heavily quite quickly. My returns from GI have dropped to 20% of what they were because of this I think.

Good luck to you.

No doubt more of us will join you in due course given the current trends there.

Probably better for artists in the long run. Painful to start with though I imagine.

Two key issues that affect suppliers (and there are probably others that haven't sprung to mind) are falling market share, given the ever increasing number of suppliers generating material, and falling perceived value of images as their range and availability continues to expand and everyday camera-phones are seen as adequate for their creation.

Combining these factors, we seem to be in a situation where the value of images sold by the industry has multiplied three or four times over in the last decade, the actual number of images used has probably multiplied ten or twenty-fold and the number of active suppliers has multiplied from probably just a few hundred a decade ago to tens of thousands now.

Consequently, the prospect of rapid market growth is very good for agencies (perhaps explaining how SS's share price took off) but is much less likely to translate into earnings growth for suppliers, who are victims of dilution between an increasing pool of suppliers, the falling average value of a download and the rapid growth in the number of available files.

This is true now and is what many of us have been saying will happen for a long time, but we're just about to get to the next interesting stage of crowdsourcing where the likelihood of any return for occasional contributors is so small they will no longer bother. Crowdsourcing is a input-reward system after all, whether that be money in this case or compliments on 500px. No reward, no input. Presumably the agencies will have to improve the reward to continue receiving content before we recycle back to oversupply again.

I think the model agencies like iStock want now is millions of contributors with a few images, rarely reaching payout, not expecting their agency to be a proper business partner. This equates to maximum profit for them, zero responsibility to their artists.

Anyone who is investing a decent amount of money for shoots in this arrangement and expects to return a profit in a reasonable timescale is not looking at their figures closely enough or just plain kidding themselves now.

We'll all come to this conclusion in the end, it'll just take longer for big studios  and high-end production artists to get there. Upping the quality and editing the collection is the only way for this business to work for both agency and photographer, but iStock and others have no interest in that at the moment, they just want to swell to enormous proportions and flip it to the next debt juggler.

Seriously, thirty large would hire a fully kitted out studio with a floating ceiling, vehicle access, mock home living areas and a changing/makeup room for 3-4 months. Or one night in Monte Carlo with Beyonce.

*, she charged me 60K.

I am constantly amazed how many people and tourists carry DSLRs nowadays when I'm wandering around cities, especially in Asia.

Seems like every man and his dog is toting a massive DSLR in these places, so I'm not sure they're losing popularity even if the market is becoming saturated.

Expensive mirrorless systems are crazy popular in Japan too, so I can't see that market dying either.

Quote from: cobalt on March 14, 2014, 11:40

And that gives you the chance to pick up all his sales tickstock. Let us know when you earn more than him on istock.

I'm already earning more than him at iStock, remember he's not there anymore.

I'd be amazed if you were earning more than him now, never mind when he was at iStock.

who told you that Ron? FAA moderator? a lawyer? FAA doesnt know anything about this, they enjoy the risk of staying borderline, actually they might dump us all the responsabilities, how would you feel if I was seling prints of you without your consentement?

creepy subway 'photographer'

http://bullettmedia.com/article/daniel-arnold/

Why is this guy creepy? Seems like a photographer producing interesting work to me.

He's certainly less aggressive than the critically acclaimed, world famous Bruce Gilden.

Last thing we need is other photographers bad mouthing a perfectly art form - photographing other people in a public space.

In the end the market forces will handle it.

No they won't.

That's the kind of woolly thinking that's got Western society into this mess where the rich are hundreds of times better off than everyone else.

This is one of the cases where governments need to produce legislation to enable producers to live off their work in the 21st Century and beyond.

It'll be howlingly unpopular with industry lobbyists and dumb consumers who think they want everything free, but it will be necessary in the end to prevent massive greedy players destroying everyone else and themselves in the long run.

Capitalism is the best system we've come up with so far, but business needs to be run for the benefit of society, rather than society run for the benefit of business - which is what the rich and foolish currently espouse.

Anyway, rant over. Back to the subject in hand...

The genius of it is that they don't have to share any revenue with the content creator for money generated by the valuable data and information extracted from embedding those images into other sites.

They hugely increase the value of their company without having to pay royalties.