I'm completing microstock year #8.  Working hard to avoid the proverbial wall.  Not burned out at all.  Enthused to be building a supplemental retirement income (hope it lasts).  Enthused to have a place and purpose for my travel shots. 

Artists deserve 50% or better from all sites.  I wont sign a petition that asks for less. 

I will add my name to the list of artists who no longer supply Getty companies. 

My existing port remains for now.  Though I'm likely to remove it when the return per download numbers become clear in a couple months. 

Seems I'm becoming another artist exclusively supplying agencies not named Getty.   

All sites should be fair trade sites and pay artists 50% or better.   I wont sign a petition that accepts less. 

I am not leaving the rest of my port up for the money, I think it is less than 100 dollars a month now.

For me istock and my time there is part of my identity as a stock artist. Removing my port completly would feel like I am trying to erase myself.

istock and getty don�t care either way and since my stuff hardly sells, there are no buyers to affect.

But it is still (the rest) of my portfolio, even if the good files are long gone.

For a while I was hoping the company might be sold one day and then an old port could be reactivated. But now I guess istock will die when Getty goes bankrupt. I don�t think anybody will buy them, Adobe and SS have their own content, they don�t need anything from Getty.

So for good or bad, the rest of my portfolio will stay until istock goes up in flames.

Visual China Group might buy them... 

Found my work at another "free download wall paper site"...  wallpapercave.com  Seems to be a growing problem. 

Noticed 123rf is showing my full name and city on my portfolio page despite selecting do not show in the privacy settings...   Anyone else having this issue?

DepositPhotos base changing in time:

I see they have 31 days in September...   

You're not an employee. You're a commodity. Nobody cares what the cow says about the farmer.

Sadly at the end of the day.. all cows get rendered. 

The trials of a submitted image to Shutterstock in September 2016:

Attempt 1: Rejected for not having a property release. No property release needed for this shot. Re-submit.

Attempt 2: Rejected for focus and poor lighting, as well as potentially infringing on "intellectual property" this time. Nonsense. Re-submit.

Attempt 3: Rejected for not having a property release, again. Now it's a just a dumb game. Do I write a note to reviewer in the description and edit it out later? Who knows what they want anymore. I re-phrase the description in an attempt to alleviate this incorrect property release concern for their robot reviewer. Re-submit.

Attempt 4: Rejected for focus, composition and overuse of effects. Gettin' pretty silly now. Re-submit.

Attempt 5: Rejected for poor lighting. That old chestnut again? Re-submit.

Attempt 6: Approved.

All the same image, never re-edited. This whole process occurring in about 20 minutes. I was really just curious what would happen.

And yes, I really should be doing something better with my Saturday night.

They used to threaten to suspend accounts for uploading previously rejected material.  Is that rule gone or are you clicking the previously submitted material notification? 

Five years from now.... it will be half a billion images or more...

Envato's decision to 1099 us for their portion of sales is why I no longer upload to Envato. 

Quote from: ShadySue on August 19, 2016, 03:55

IIRC, Getty has long had a no individual image deactivation policy.

Because Getty is for adults who submit an image without the intention of removing them on some emotional whim because of the illusion on this forum that everyone else is removing their images.

Who has the time to micro manage single images?

I have time to micro manage single images.  I didn't get to go to art school... and it shows in my early work.  Occasional culling of unsold aging crap in my portfolio should be allowable.  It should be encouraged.  Could even be considered a community service. 

 

Reminder:  Only two days left before image deactivation is banned.