Just call it a hunch, but something tells me we still have a long long wait in front of us 

Quote from: rjmiz on June 03, 2007, 00:51
"Wow, for a non-pro you sure use high-end equipment..."

My friend, when I retired, I found all this retirement money all over the place, under my mattress, in the bank, in a jar on my dresser.
There was sooooo much money when I retired I was sweeping it off the floors, and vacuuming it out of the furniture.

Then just when I thought I had everything under control, the state of New York started sending me MORE money and wiring it into my bank.
Then I discovered stock photography. I had to get out of stock photography eventually. Every month, all the websites that I joined started
ganging up on me. They started doing the same thing the state was doing....sending me hundreds of dollars every month. I just got sick of it
and finally quit stock photography. I had to. I had no other choice.

Whaa..??.


Anyway, I really like your tuts.  Can we expect to see them regularly or are they winding down?

Verrry very cool ! 

This past week was very slow for me, but I did get downloads.  However, where before I had been getting regular sales on the weekends, now May has brought me mostly zero weekends  .  But I've still been able to make almost my monthly average.  April was my BME by a very small margin.  From the sounds of everyone's results, I think IS have definitely been tweaking the search engine.

Quote from: rjmiz on May 26, 2007, 12:14
Here's a method I use to dodge and burn images that affords me more
control and flexibility in my images, by placing all the editing on it's own layer.

http://microstockpix.com/tuts/dodburn/dodburn.html

Very useful alternative.  Thanks!!

Quote from: rjmiz on May 23, 2007, 12:50
"I just think that there isn't much to comment on, since it is well done and it is not controversial."

Well, that says it all! As those who know me, I have always been considered a border line instigator.
I miss the old me. 

Don't change back to being an instigator    .   Keep the tutorials coming.  This is a great place to post them as there are always many new stockers on the scene who are learning all they can about all aspects of photography.

Lately, Fotolia's site has been behaving more strangely than ever for me and many others.  I hope they get their act together soon and update to a dependable, reliable, modern server system, for everyone's sake, buyers and sellers alike !!   

Quote from: sharply_done on February 23, 2007, 23:16
Maybe QC isn't that important. Maybe people care more about the emotion behind a photograph than its technical prowess. Perhaps the stock industry, which has already gone through a huge shakeup, is about to go through another one ...

Great thoughts!  We can only hope.  I'm still not sure whether to laugh or cry when I have to spend hours working on noise, isolation, etc., on images that may or may not sell for 25-cents, sometimes even a whole dollar.  What drew me to photography to begin with was its ability to express emotions through images, images that left a personal memorable impression both on myself and others.  I started with film and never cared whether I was using the sharpest, most colorful, lowest-grain, or most popular film.  All I cared about was whether the images I captured moved me and others.  Wish there were good profitable venues for images that are more about substance than pixels.  Maybe Flickr is worth looking into.

Quote from: hatman12 on February 24, 2007, 21:18
I have deleted my photos from 123RF and I have asked them to close my account.

In fact, I have asked them TWICE to close my account, but neither request has been acknowledged or dealt with.

I'll give it a few more days then ask them a third time........

Does anyone know if it's really necessary for 123 to close your account if you have deleted all your photos?  Is there any potential danger in leaving the account open as long as your pics are all gone?

A significant decrease for me (probably more than -30%)

RAW.  I experimented with JPG, but the quality viewed at 100% was clearly not equal to RAW, at least not from my camera.  And supposedly the more important microstocks view our submissions at 100%, n'est pas?

Quote from: Daneel on February 19, 2007, 10:47
I currently own a Canon Powershot S3, which I succesfully use for Microstock at iStock, Shutterstock, Dreamstime, Fotolia.

How "successful" are you right now using your S3 for stock?  If you have an average 75% or greater acceptance rate over all the sites, if you're uploading a lot of files regularly, and if you're actually getting steady (if not huge) sales at the moment, then you obviously know how to use your equipment.  Do you plan to stay with microstock for a while?  If so, and if you're comfortable with the equipment you have now, then I think it's better to stick with what got you there for a while, or at least until you feel very much at home shooting microstock.  Otherwise learning to use some new gear all over again will probably just slow you down and if you're doing well now, then it's pretty iffy whether you'll do better very soon just because of an equipment upgrade.  In photography it's always been the eye behind the camera and not the camera itself that makes people successful or not.  I'd say you should get very used to this stock world first before you start fiddling with many different equipment options.   
You can take all that for what it's worth (about 2 cents  )

Quote from: Void on February 06, 2007, 11:20
....I am in it for the money, not the vanity.

WOW!   What a concept!  I love it! 

Quote from: pelmof on February 09, 2007, 11:21
39.5% with 152 accepted.

Don't think there's anything to learn from their rejections. Contrary to their introductory comment on all rejections that they follow a strict standard for acceptance, there is no standard. It really seems to be idiosyncratic to the particular reviewer and, I suspect, an unwritten standard to keep acceptance below 50% for submitters regardless of the quality of submissions.

My submission acceptance rate on all other sites I regularly use is over 90%.

P__

Yeah.  What he said.  I've struggled to get up to 70%, but they seem to accept only my people pictures, so it's slow-going getting stuff uploaded to them.

Quote from: Bateleur on February 02, 2007, 20:15
(though from the tone of their communications you'd think they were tipping out crocks of gold at the photographer's feet).

LOL LOL    Ain't that the truth!!

I love the "Oops, we goofed!" message.  Sounds so believable.   And do you really think "Lots of people were fired as a result." ??

For what it's worth, DT's rejections have gotten really strange for a lot of people (just search this forum and others).

Quote from: CJPhoto on February 01, 2007, 13:11
For the first time ever, SS in no longer in the top 2.  This also means I have to start uploading to istock , against my will, since they are selling a lot more for me with less photos.

Quote from: snem on February 01, 2007, 10:23
IS 22% (+234% )

Quote from: Opla on February 01, 2007, 14:08

IS is taking off for me, 4x december, SS about the same.

I've also seen a huge growth in my IS performance.  Apparently some folks over there know what they're doing even though they might not have the friendliest attitudes in the business.

Quote from: TGT on January 24, 2007, 17:27
I was just thinkin about all the other comments I've seen from so many others about that specific rejection  "too dark" ....  I ran into this a couple weeks ago with some shots.  None I personally thought, too dark, which I understand is subjective to the individual looking at it. And the reviewer has a right to say it's too dark, as does the outfit he,she works for.
    I took two of the shots that I had no particular passion for (simple stock shots, one was a sign) and lightened them to the point of where I thought the look was horrible. Resubmitted,  one they took, the other they rejected,  "too dark" . Fact was, anything that was 'light' in the original would be rejected elsewhere for  'blown highlights'.   
   They only reason I say anything is that ALL those pictures sell well elsewhere on 5-6 other sites..  the likes of  SS and DT, which are pretty tough on rejections themselves.  The pix StockXpert rejected as too dark yesterday,  I wouldn't even consider lightening. They're good shots. They're selling fine just the way they are.  I actually have some pix that they rejected as  "too dark" or "poor focus"  selling for me on SS ...2,3, 6 times or more per day since I put them up a couple weeks ago.
    My whole attitude is,  " you don't want 'em,  no sweat, I know someone else that'll sell 'em for me.  your loss." I don't even go back and argue with these reviewers anymore.  Waste of time, especially with outfits where reviewers are also sellers. [see the current thread on DT and their 40,000 image backup]   Talk about conflict of interest!
It's a lose/lose situation. 
    Forget about the rejection, give your pix to someone else, go out and shoot some new stuff.

.........
   Maybe it's poor thinking on my part, I'm still relatively new to the biz and I'm not going to go out making radical changes at the moment.  But more and more, I see a few sites that have done zip,  such as a half dozen sells in six or seven months and others where I'm selling upwards of two dozen images or more, a day ( i  still have a small 'folio - 200 plus or minus depending on the site).   My point,  it's a complete waste of time for me to go and check my  stats on these sites... I am really thinking about pulling out of all those sites and just concentrating on the few that produce.  Hey, it's the exact same portfolio on all of them. Generally the same titles and keywording. ...Why six in six months here and up to two dozen a day there?
    I wonder if that may have been the thinking of the many that go exclusive to one outfit or at least make certain pix exclusive to certain sites. 

    I'd invite honest opinion on this.  Good idea to be on a gazillion sites? Good idea to limit yourself to a few producers?  I'm sure there are two schools of thought on this, it'd be interesting to hear both sides.

You make some really good points.  To me, it all comes down to attitude.  Do I want to be subservient to an agency and just fall all over myself when they even think my pictures might be good enough to accept on their site?  For 25 or even 50 cents a download??  I'm no psychologist, but I've got to think there are a lot of people out there who actually have that attitude, almost a self-loathing maybe or at least a very low self-esteem?  I try to maintain a realistic view: I'm giving xStock the raw materials they need to survive as a business.  It's totally up to them whether they accept those raw materials or not.  If they've proved themselves as a semi-promising source of sales, which is why I'm even in this industry, then if they reject an image for a reason that I don't necessarily agree with, I may consider trying to make it fit their spec's if I think it may have a good chance for sales there.  If their rejection reasoning doesn't make any sense at all to me, then I see no point in trying to figure it out for literally pennies per sale.   For my own images, I need to be the judge of which sites I want to put more effort into and which ones I need to be wary of or drop or never deal with altogether.  To sum it all up, my attitude is: They're my pictures, and I decide exactly how much sweat I want to put into them; I don't let an agency decide for me.  I need to use my own judgment and stand or fall on my own decisions.  It's easy to think of these agencies as special caregivers and providers that exist to make life wonderful for us, when the reality is they are businesses and if we are dealing with them as submitters then we are business people whether we want to believe it or not.  You can love 'em, hate 'em, leave 'em, or whatever; still doesn't change the fact that if you're in this then you're a part of one huge business venture.  I never want a photo agency to be a crutch.  I think if I'm not using anyone else as a crutch, I'll force myself to become better at what I've chosen to do.  At least that's my hope.

Add me to the list of many rejections for "this is a well-covered subject in our database,etc.etc.etc.,RRAAALLLPHH!"  I've had more of those than I can remember and of course many of them were NOT well-covered in their database.  I can't complain too much, though, because they haven't yet rejected my people pictures, and whenever I upload a new batch (always small, and lately only one image at a time), I actually get some sales for a short while.  I'm not thrilled to hear about their censorship, though, as it reminds me of IS' censorship, which I despise.  Hey, they're privately owned enterprises, so they're allowed to do whatever they want.  But when they make a forum available for their members to use and then try to micro-control what their members say on that forum, well, that's just tacky and rude.  What's the point of a forum in that case?  Obviously, they and others hope that visitors and prospective new members will see nothing but ravingly positive statements like "Oh, I just love it here.  This is my favorite site.  Thanks xStock, we love you so much," and the reader will then become convinced to upload their entire library of photos based on the good comments they read.  Very sneaky way to do business, if you ask me, and I steer way clear of forums that do that.  From what I've seen, BigStock's forum allows much more freedom of speech, but alas it's poorly attended.

I have a small (42) port at DT.  What I found after my few short months in stock is that they have had a heavy tendency to reject most of my object (non-people) shots as "this is well-covered in our database, etc." I've had very few technical quality rejections.  These are images that have almost all been accepted at the other 6 sites I submit to.  What's amazing is that DT have accepted all of my people shots.  Those are mostly isolated on a white background, and more or less just portrait-style.  Out of my 42 files, 29 of them are portraits.  I'm not sure exactly what that says except that they like my people pictures better than my non-people pictures.  I have a wide variety of object pictures, so it's not as if they don't like a particular subject or other.   So to sum up, I've had many "well-covered in our database" rejections for object pictures but none at all for people pictures.

I'm an experienced photog, and I understand image quality pretty well.  I have a 90-100% acceptance rate at 6 of the big sites, having just started microstock and digital capture in late July.  However, Dreamytime still mystifies me.  I've got around 60% approval there.  What puzzles me is that they've rejected the majority of my non-people images as "well-covered in our database," etc.  The pictures they reject as "well-covered" in their database have not been well-covered in their database, and they're accepted nearly always at all my other sites. And of course they sell at the other sites, sometimes extremely well. BUT, as far as I can remember, DT have accepted ALL of my people pictures, even ones I wasn't overly pleased with.   So what gives?  For the time being I've stopped uploading non-people pix to them.  Hopefully that will bring my approval rating up.   They're really confusing.