|
MicrostockGroup Sponsors
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
Messages - cascoly
3951
« on: May 08, 2010, 15:01 »
DT, should at the moment and in order to keep commercial contributors try to perfect their search-mechanism, split-up all their series of 20 or more shots almost identical, make sure that on the premiere 4 or 5 pages are files according to the buyers keywords, i.e. keyword " jet-engine", then the first pages should show nothing but close-ups of jet-engine, not a distant aircraft with four jets, etc.
that would frustrate a buyer who needed a medium or full sized plane with a jet -- gotta remember searchers are not perfect. so my search engine would show some of each type of picture, and allow the buyer to drill down; instead we get neither of these 2 - just page after page after page to sort thru. steve
3952
« on: May 07, 2010, 13:39 »
Hi Jcpjr,
Could you please kindly forward us your account information to [email protected] so that we can proceed to investigate the issues further?
Thank you for your kind assistance
Regards
Anglee
i did that SEVERAL times over the past few months and never got an adequate response - just the usual 'we know what we're doing' boilerplate steve
3953
« on: May 07, 2010, 13:37 »
But it was fun. Thanks! No one was picking on you, just having a good laugh with cheesy jokes.
Just some homogenized, pasteurized, wholesome, Grade A fun! (Moo)
or to take advantage of OP yet again - the Travolta pulp fiction move - pastYOUReyes s
3954
« on: May 07, 2010, 13:32 »
it's not only a contributor violation, it's also a violation of the terms of use - assuming the new work acquired the original legally.
s
3955
« on: May 07, 2010, 13:27 »
even ignoring the lighting issues , as major as they are, there's still the logistics of shooting two different ways of thinking. i did manage a successful 2 for 1 at a civil war re-enactment - luckily the event featured 2 battles so i spent the down time in between assessing what i did on the first battle and finding better places to set up. that still meant having the video runnng by itself on a tripod while i took the stills. and inevitably there were many missed shots, poor framing, etc. http://cascoly.com/civilwar.aspif you're shooting in the 'wild' it's much harder to find places where you can do both - you really need to do either one format or the other in most cases. steve
3956
« on: May 07, 2010, 01:20 »
....
An international organization invested with the legal authority to control prices, commissions and ethicism of the agencies.
I would be willing to help fund it.
Whoever manages to set such a project up, stands in for glory, power and money.
And unlike Luther King hopefully a longer life 
But I guess, for now, this is only wishful thinking.
there are things that can be done by a group of freelancers - in the 90's i was involved with several successful groups for independents such as the game developers conference, assoc of shareware professionals and Edu Software Co-op -- they didn't set prices, but they helped newcomers while also being able to contract w vendors; one big benefit was having a forum much like this one, which was more novel at that time. we even helped design the industry rating system for video games, countering Lieberman's drastic proposals [which he made while getting funds from sony] s
3957
« on: May 07, 2010, 01:13 »
if it mattered we could run a textual analysis of new-unimproved-troll vs old-ignored-troll...
s
3958
« on: May 07, 2010, 01:10 »
i've had the same problem for months now -- i'd be more concerned if they were actually selling the ones that they did accept, so at this point i hardly care. it's simple to upl, let them take what they want and i get a payout every copla months
s
3959
« on: May 05, 2010, 18:23 »
what's your point or is this your essay in the monty python redundant statement of the bleedin' obvious contest?
everyone concedes the prices are low, and most people would like more $. but nothing in this thread, esp from OP adds anything. indies or even large players are not going to affect the market since it's already too big. if all the photogs on this forum deleted their portfolios tomorrow, who would notice?
s
3960
« on: May 02, 2010, 21:42 »
i've found editorial sell at about twice the rate of rf - my editorial are rarely timely - mostly people in markets, street scenes, shamanism, schools, etc
s
3961
« on: May 02, 2010, 13:00 »
3d studio is one, as just mentioned.
also, YAY, graphic leftovers, featurepics, deposit all have very lenient acceptance rates - trouble is, none of these have been very productive in actually producing sales
s
3962
« on: April 28, 2010, 13:54 »
I have had several editorial photos accepted, but I see that they have not gone live. They don't show up as part of my portfolio, and they don't come up in a search. Has anybody heard about when they are actually going to go on sale?
I've had reasonably good luck with selling editorial at Dreamstime and Bigstock, and I'm happy to give 123RF a chance as well. I find that there is very little rhyme or reason as to which editorial submissions each site accepts. Some of my best editorials (in my opinion) have been rejected at Dreamstime and/or Bigstock, but I'm pleased to see that they were accepted at 123RF.
Hi Danybot, I've got over 500 editorial images ready to go live on 123. I emailed them about this a few weeks back and they replied that they were "looking at May". I think they are trying to hit a balance between leaving the launch too long (and having photographers get fed up waiting and stop uploading editorial) and launching too soon (and not having a good enough selection to interest editorial customers). Either way I guess the answer is "soon". BTW you didn't mention Shutterstock - for me this is one of the best sites for editorial sales. Good luck with your sales when they do go live. Regards, David.
www.shootingstock.blogspot.com
i've had good results with editorials on both DT and SS; BigStock hasnt done much for any sales lately 123 is accepting editorials at a much higher rate than RF right now, probably to build their library
3963
« on: April 28, 2010, 13:39 »
A fair partnership is always 50:50 to me. That is also the reason I consider agencies that pay less than 50% as unfair.
 ? what if the risk, work, etc isnt split 50-50 -- similarly, a blanket statement that an agency rate is unfair makes little sense without knowing what's involved. by your method, exclsives should be paid the same % as freelancers, since 50-50 is 'always' fair when agencies offer 60-70% do you insist on taking only 50% because that's the only split that's fair? steve
3964
« on: April 28, 2010, 13:36 »
Exactly. Vacation snaps. Just because they are photos taken in a vacation trip, do they deserve the "snap" classification?
it was a snap comment and thus worth about that much consideration travel is of course a competitive field, but it's certainly worth pursuing. s
3965
« on: April 25, 2010, 14:21 »
Get real people, the world has changed. I get my money from ATMs not bank tellers these days. And pay my accounts online. With respect to imagery, I'm a very small buyer. I teach, and occasionally buy an image for inclusion in my teaching material. Do you really think I'd be paying Getty RM prices? I've enjoyed quite a few battles in the istock steel cage, and had to buy images for quite a few of them. Wouldn't be doing that either under the old regime.
Perhaps traditonal buyers are being seduced away from quality imagery by the abundance of decent cheap stuff. You may want a return to the good old days but ain't gonna happen.
As a contributor I have another full time job and no intention to work at stock (or photography generally) full time. However I have few assets and I'm getting on. I expect istock to pay my rent by end of next year, and why should I get out of the game just because some people think I'm not taking it serioulsy enough.
EXACTLY - to many it seems it must be all or nothing -- either you're a fulltime pro or you're wasting your time. some people just can't realize that there are more ways to live in the world than are dreamt of in your philosophy
3966
« on: April 25, 2010, 14:18 »
My take on it is that the majority of purchases are not for high level ads, books and product campaigns, but for scrapbookers, grade school teachers, IT websites and people writing blogs about food.
Where do these grade school teachers work that they can afford to buy stock images?
teachers have ALWAYS spent money from their own pockets to buy materials for their classes - some may even have enlightened school districts that support them. in any case, this area, as noted is continuing to grow - the elitists don't like to thinkl abut it, and it will never produce the thousand dollar unicorn sales of yore, but this is exactly the sort of market that evolves as prices drop. in the 80s thousands of people were willing to play online games for $10-20 per hour on 2400 baud modems; when the price dropped to pennies, the market exploded to the point wageslaves in china became WOW goldfarmers. steve
3968
« on: April 23, 2010, 16:08 »
.. but as far as I know he's still doing it.. and yes I think 'cowboy' is the term really, lol!!
i think you're confusing cowboys with pirates & hedge fund managers! 
3969
« on: April 23, 2010, 15:59 »
OTOH, maybe I have missed the most obnoxious comments because I have a particular individual on ignore.
you'd need to have several on ignore!! then again, any troll who thinks adam smith is the final word on economics hasnt studied any economics, and so is hardly worth worrying about when predicting the future of stock. steve
3970
« on: April 23, 2010, 14:03 »
==== You can create sets of similars (several shots included within the same image). That will help the file sell better and generate higher royalties via our level-based system. i noticed this new explanation on latest rejects for similars. i submit similars all the time, since i cant predict which of 5 similars dt will like, and sometimes they take all 5. but my question is - has anyone had success in submitting 'sets'? i see it all the time for illustrations, but wondered if anyone had luck with sets of images - mountains, food, people, doors, etc - in the past i've those rejected saying they'd rather see the individual images [and their separate sales] . similar are montages, where diff images are combined, so a designer would have to spend a lot more time finding all the individual images. dt is the only one of the majors that accepts http://cascoly.com/trav/montage.asp montages. steve
3971
« on: April 23, 2010, 13:53 »
All the ten images I uploaded for review were reject for "Poor lighting/composition". 
that's 123speak for 'we're to lazy to actually look at your images, so we're just using an ambiguous phrase to make it lok like we doing something' as others have said - dont bother w 123 until you have extra time after submitting to the other sites i just had 3 batches, totally over 250 images rejected by them after a long wait. the actual images ran full gamut from early dawn on the ganger, to saturated market shots to blue sky ski days if anyone's interested in seeing what 123 rejected - just look at my latest additions to my ss, dt and big portfolios steve
3972
« on: April 23, 2010, 13:47 »
Hmmm. I read his earlier book 'The Tipping Point' and thought it was 90% just stating the bleeding obvious. He just garnered a few, mostly well known examples of events that had happened surprisingly quickly (like Hush Puppies coming back into fashion) and decided that they were all because they'd suddenly hit this mysterious 'tipping point'.
yep - i'll read his shorter versions of the books as they get published in the new yorker - the books are just fluffed out reprints; black swan, and 'guns germs and steel' are other examples of this popularizing phenom steve
3973
« on: April 23, 2010, 13:42 »
i've been doing stock since the mid 70s - eventually ending up with both corbis and getty. i started doing digital stock in the early 90s, but got into micro only a coupla years ago.
i never approached it as a career because i wasnt interested in doing all the boring bits that go along with a full time photo job. instead it's always been a pleasant supplement [and often business deduction] that pays for my travel habit. approaching ss age, i have even less interest in flogging my stuff to art fairs and cafes - i've got friends who do that in the arts and they need 2nd jobs to pay for the first with no vacation time.
it seems there are a few here who won't accept any middle ground - either you do it full time, or you shouldn't be there. opining [fjords or not] about how an image shuld be worth so much better to figure out how to exploit the market as it actually exists - if you can do it by selling prints, fine, but profit margin there is pretty poor, esp'ly if you try to maintain a physical inventory.
steve
3974
« on: April 23, 2010, 13:26 »
as predicted, 123 has once more solved their review q problem by blanket rejections -- i had 3 batches waiting, some for over 2 wks. suddenly, within 12 hrs the entire collection was rejected, ALL w the same lame 'poor lighting ' reason -- i'm just amazed that none of the other agencies ever spotted these problems!
s
3975
« on: April 22, 2010, 13:39 »
but before or later it will stop, the number of buyers will remain the same, their budget will remain
the same, istock's portfolio will triple, and you'll start to see a sharp decline in sales and views,
it's math !
math has little to do with it - especially if your initial assumptions don't hold. you make 4 claims: ===the number of buyers will remain the same, -- why? the internet continues to grow as hundreds of millions of new computer users come online. the demand for images will continue to grow, and lower costs make it more accessible. ==== their budget will remain the same, -- again, based on what? more likely budgets will increase in total as more firms start using stock rather than custom shoots ====istock's portfolio will triple, -- ok, you got 1 of 4! ====and you'll start to see a sharp decline in sales and views,--- only if you're correct on items 1 & 2 above your doomsday forecasts are remarkably similar to what the pro's were saying would happen 20 years ago when digital stock first took hold. the same arguments were recycled 5 years ago as microstock started making an impression. saying it 3 times won't make it true. the market will change; some photographers won't make it, but overall, the direction will continue upwards steve
|
Sponsors
Microstock Poll Results
Sponsors
|
Show Posts
