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Messages - cascoly
3976
« on: September 16, 2010, 16:49 »
i'm starting to think that the strict requirements for SS ed are BECAUSE their reviewers are so varied and inconsistent - if they have a simple item by item checkoff for the caption, they can at least avoid those problems. meanwhile, they still need to train reviewers to understand the difference between newsworthy and editorial - some reviewers think the 2 are synonymous - most of my images are not newsworthy, but instead are real people doing things in places where a model release just isn't a possibility - eg, groups at ski areas, markets, etc
steve
3977
« on: September 03, 2010, 17:56 »
what ideas did you come up with? i've probably already shot it, just haven't had time to edit & upl...
s
3978
« on: September 03, 2010, 17:54 »
i've been usijng the sony HX1 cybershot for stock for the last year, and for my needs, it's perfect. the images get accepted by everyone but alamy, and the video sells on both pond5 and SS; it as a 20x zoom which is amazing
for me, the clincher is the 'low light' mode which is my default shooting setting - it takes 6 quick pix and averages to a sharper image; i have neurophathy that often makes my hands shake, and my right hand is not very useful at any time, so this camera eliminates the need for tripod which is how i do most of my shooting. i did some comparisons with my digital rebel xt when i first got the hx1 and ithe hx1 outperformed it - agai n for my particular needs and types of images
the main downside is it only takes 9MP images, so there's not as much room for cropping, etc as there is w larger cameras
steve
3979
« on: September 01, 2010, 13:39 »
i include footage sales in my SS
ss 37.39%
pond video 19.76%
dream 11.25%
foto 8.81%
big 7.90%
123 7.90%
istock 3.95%
3d studio 2.43%
yay 0.61%
stockx 0.00%
deposit 0.00%
feature 0.00%
about average for the year - better than july, but not quite up to 1st qtr
s
3980
« on: August 27, 2010, 13:24 »
any updates from those who tried these sites?
i experime nted on triond and got a lot of traffic the first few days, then it tailed off to nothing; and they demand an exclusive, so i wouldnt recommend it when there are these other possibles
steve
3981
« on: August 04, 2010, 13:48 »
tom
we're staying at home this fall, but i've added Franconia to my list - my bro-in-law lives near burlington, and other inlaws in SE harbr maine, so we wander that way
if you hit the tetons, check out the smaller roads leading TO Moose from the south - good wildlife drives in the early morning, and little traffic; also Mormon Row in late afternoons for sunset colors
most parks are eaisly accessible by car, but Olympics and North Cascades really ned to be wlaked into - and have wonderful hikes and scenery. we hiked cross country in the olympics a few yrs ago and camped in a river valley, with a herd of rutting stags bellowing across from us each morning & evening as the herd came out to browse; then they'd disappear compeletely
steve
3982
« on: August 01, 2010, 14:50 »
Editorial and newsworthy can be different things. For example, DT states, "Images downloaded under the Editorial section of our site may be used in magazines, newspapers or any other editorial context, in either printed or electronic media."
So, for example, if someone was writing an article on the history of the tennis shoe (do they still call them that?) they might want a photo of a Nike, logo and all. We all know that the sites will reject these photos for RF because of the logo. They will accept it for editorial though. The buyer could use this kind of image in their article without being sued by Nike because it was an editorial article. A photo of a Nike shoe is not newsworthy, but it is editorial.
Same thing for an iphone, Corvette, McDonalds red fry box, etc. You'll find lots of these kind of "editorial" photos available for purchase. They're easy to shoot and if you are the first one to think of selling it as editorial you will probably get some sales.
exactly! now if only we could get the SS & DT reviewers to understand this! s
3983
« on: July 30, 2010, 19:06 »
I still have a day job, but not for much longer ( 62 yrs old). We are avid travelers. Even on weekends, we are never home. Out somewhere, hiking, mt biking, four wheeling... from Maine to Fla, NY to Cali.... and even into the land of our friends in the Great White North. Looking forward in 5 weeks to 14 days in Banff, Jasper and Glacier, hiking my brains out and burning thru some digital memory. I am the type that could drive my Suburban off road deep into the Canadian woods, and where I run out of gas... i'll build a shed and live out my life... LOL  =tom
Tom... we are headed that way too ... Wyoming, Montana. Should make it to the Tetons first week in September. Haven't been there or to Yellowstone so may have to spend too much time seeing that to make to to Glacier before the cold sets in.
and yes, I spent way too many years being credited with knowing a lot more than I knew or even wanted to know. :-)
I think I've made it past the restrictions. Still can't join the Peace Corps. LOL
check out my National Parks pages http://cascoly.com/trav/us/np.asp to whet your appetite - havent been to Yellowstone for awhile, but Tetons and Glacier are excellent, and it's easier to get away from crowds, especially if you can wait til Sep or later for color. Same for Banff, Jasper area -- the Kananaskis area to the south of banff is great for hiking, and has many fewer people. Just outside banff, Johnson creek is a neat little walk with a series of catwalks over a narrow canyon  when in Montana be sure to find a tavern that serves Moose Drool on tap steve
3984
« on: July 28, 2010, 21:47 »
when this first happened, i emailed the manager, and he said to resubmit with attn to contact him; since then i've just re submitted and the good shots usually make it on pass 2
s
3985
« on: July 28, 2010, 18:04 »
you can't copyright a star, but the owners of that particular star may be able to claim copyright on images of it, and trademark is another possibility
3986
« on: July 27, 2010, 12:45 »
I have submitted several pics to SS as editorial(for example minor-league baseball players), and they have gotten rejected for "not newsworthy" or something to that effect. I thought editorial images could be pics of people you didnt have releases for, buildings with logos etc. Do they not accept editorial pics unless they are "current" news-worthy stuff?
you're correct - newsworthy is one of a number of possible editorial definitions, not the ONLY one - but some reviewers can't seem to grasp that concept --resubmit them and they may be accepted by another reviewer s
3987
« on: July 22, 2010, 13:38 »
As i said in another thread, I think the discussion is useless because the term "Royalty free" has been on for ages and I don't see a chance that any agency will stop using it.
agree completely - it's an accepted term [with many meanings], and no poll is going to change that: ("Royalty" by its definition is a payment for use). So technically a single fee can never be a "Royalty" if perpetual use is allowed. So the problem was keeping Royalty in the name "Royalty free".
wrong - NO roylty is paid under a RF license - the term rf means "no royalties ever need to be paid" and is technically correct. any other term using 'single ' or 'free' would imply the image could be used for aNything else; most RF licnese are still restricted and may require addtl payment for various uses. finally, the old physical stock agencies like getty & corbis used RF in their licenses for what many call RM now -- the alternative was not necessarily RM, but rather an intial fee to get the image, then required royalties if it was used commercially. similar termini;logy is used in software. eg, some progtams require royalties be paid if something made with the program is used elsewhere. steve
3988
« on: July 22, 2010, 13:24 »
if it goes longer than a week, just sendan email to the site asking if everythin's ok -- i had some pix sit for about 120 days at SS - turns out they hadnt uploaded properly - they showed in my Q as pending review, but in theirs as needing more info; so it took an email to get them unstuck
shift happens, as geologists say
steve
3989
« on: July 20, 2010, 21:33 »
the ebay VERO system is either a CYA scam or a joke - take your pick. basically ebay collects their fees and lets the disutants work it out; many buyers dont care whether the images are protected or not [this came up recently in acase where scanned versions of copyrighted material basically destroyed an entire collectibles category]
i've been a seller on ebay for over 11 years now, and ther basic atttitue is the buyer is always right , and screw the small seller;
it's becoeme a very hostile environement; otoh pirates an prosper thru loopholes or lax monitoring
for awhile,i t was possible to sell indiv or small collections of images for digital download; this was a great alternative to the MS low royalties, ut ebsy banned these auctions because some few people were buying cheap downloads in order to boost their feedback ratings; so essentially ebay destroyed the forest to eliminate a few minor pests
steve
3990
« on: July 18, 2010, 13:52 »
I'm noticing that not much in the way of editorial seems to sell on the Microstock sites. They don't seem to be the "go to" place for editorial images. I was hoping there was such a place.
if editorial = "newsworth, current topics", you may be right, but the longer lived form of editorial - street scenes and other non-released people pix have done well on the MS sites for me - at any site that takes editorial, i get a higher % sales of my editorial port than of my RF one. in addition, some editorial scenes can be cropped to make them RF by an alert designer - while that cropped image would probably get rejected by the MS as 'ocer-cropped' s
3991
« on: July 18, 2010, 13:47 »
Ebay let you have more than 1 account, so could you win an auction for all the items that shouldn't be on there, not pay for them and leave negative feedback mentioning the copyright abuse?
there are a limited number of reasons ebay allows multiple accts - this tactic is definitely not one of them, and easily spotted by ebay. in addition, if you dont pay, that acct gets flagged, AND no fdbk is allowed on that transaction the best way to get items removed is first to report them directly to ebay [a low % chance], or better, have the copyright owner contact ebay s
3992
« on: July 16, 2010, 19:07 »
The sad thing is that they have been doing it for awhile because they are power sellers with 100% positive feedback. That's what I always look for when buying off e-bay, those power sellers...now it makes me wonder.
yep, power seller status is no guarantee - and when peiople are willing to get pirated goods cheap, the buyers dont leave neg fdbk. i bot a rosetta stone package awhile ago, and when i reported to ebay that the seller sent me a pirated version, ebay did nothing; i reported it to the RS producer but they didnt do anything either s
3993
« on: July 16, 2010, 16:05 »
and just to ad salt to the wounds, the ebay pirate includes this BS == "images on this CD/ DVD are royalty free, however this CD/ DVD may NOT be produced in any form and redistributed and/or sold. CD/ DVD images are protected under U.S. and International Copyright Laws as a "compilation" since first published and offered for sale. "
of course, ms licenses specifically forbid such compilations in the first place.
ebay however is terrible when it comes to enforcing this stuff - no matter how obvious a ripoff is, unless the actual copyright holder complains they do nothing.
and in another great twist of logic - if you buy something on ebay with the intent of leaving neg fdbk, ebay will remove that fdbk and your acct, yet only an organized effort woud be able to leave enuf bad fdbk to matter.
steve
3994
« on: July 16, 2010, 15:50 »
123RF is once more going nuts.. what is happening there? ... the sales are ok but the reviewing is just crazy, or they accept all or reject all 
Hi Luissantos84,
Thank you for your comments. We appreciate your feedback. As you know, microstock is a very unique and subjective industry. Companies like 123RF provides a platform for photographers to submit their masterpiece and image buyers to purchase these masterpiece. Over the year, we have learnt to identify the market trends and needs to benefit both contributors and image buyers.
However, as you know, all of us are human being, we learn from each other and seek for improvement. Therefore, we welcome and appreciate any feedbacks from our contributors and offer our contributors an avenue to make appeals for their rejected images by providing us the images accepted elsewhere as a comparison. We will re-evaluate the images. However, kindly be reminded that the images were still be rejected if it does not meet our acceptance policy.
Many thanks,
Anglee
you keep asking us to do YOUR work, but you still havent addressed the BASIC uestion - why are entire batches rejected at 123 for 'poor lighting' when they are accepted at other agencies - are your standards really THAT different? and ar
3995
« on: July 15, 2010, 13:11 »
how were they delivering? cd? digital download or link? if the latter you can report them to ebay for that reason alone
can you give the user name of sellers we might want to check?
steve
3996
« on: July 12, 2010, 15:40 »
i cant find any info here or on zoonar faq tabout how to decide among their partners - the 3 have conflicting conditions:
Fotofinder. Requirements: Minimium of 10 keywords, Price category: Premium, Licence category: All
APIS network. Requirements: Minimium of 10 keywords, Price category: All, Licence category: All
Polylooks. Requirements: Minimium of 10 keywords, Price category: Microstock, Licence category: Royalty-Free
so, what's your strategy? do you set all images to premium and submit to fotofinder first? then resubmit wsith changed licensing to polyfinder?
steve
3997
« on: July 12, 2010, 15:15 »
198 ports? doesnt say much at all, had they taken the yop say 1000 ports it would have been much more interesting.
Do you really need to look that far down a list? Elections are usually forecast by asking a very individuals how they voted as they left the stations. The 198 ports represent, according to JP, over a half million of the best images. To me that's a very good sample size, especially off the top. There seems to be a desire to disbelieve any stat or indication that the micro business might be on a plateau. Which of course gives the opportunity for a decline.
right the sample size is certainly significant, but not random . an even more telling stat is "Also, in the past 14 months approximately 29% of all the downloads iStock has made were of images belonging to these 198 individuals. " so 5% of contribuimages have 29% of sales - thus confirming sturgeon's law that " 90% of anything is crap"
3998
« on: July 06, 2010, 19:05 »
>>>>Start making a log book because mileage can turn into a $10-20K deduction at the end of the year without even trying hard.
mileage deduction is about $.55 for business use, so you have to book around 20,000 miles to claim $10k - seems like you'd need to rtry a LITTLE. plus, such a high number may trigger some questions from the IRS; eg, if you take a picture a day on your daily 100 mile commute, you arent allowed to take deduction for all those miles, since there were other uses involved
any deduction must be the primary purpose of the activity
steve
I'm not talking about taking a picture on a 100 mile commute .. that sounds like you're referring to a situation where a hobbyist who works a non-photography job with a long commute snaps a frame and trys to deduct it. That would definitely not look to good to the IRS. However as a full time photographer you can say ok I'm going to take off for a few days and go take nature photos in another state (i.e. I want to take a vacation road trip) can I deduct it as an expense from my studio? No. If I upload the images taken to microstock can I now deduct it from my business? Yes. Racking it up location scouting is another great one. We scout all the time. Go for a drive, grab some ice cream, look around and log some miles.
ypu just reinforce my point -- YOU SAID one could get $10K in deductions for mileage, and that is going to be a lot of drive time! s
3999
« on: July 04, 2010, 13:52 »
The Oldhand method...
All images are keyworded to the best of my ability and uploaded everywhere, except...Istock.
The reason is simple, their disambiguation system. I have 20 upload slots per week, say 25 relevant keywords per image, total 500 keywords specifically for IS.
Now the problem, my acceptance rate. IS are picky, no problem with that, and I'll only get 10 accepted. That's 250 wasted keywords in my book!
What I have found most effective is to submit 20 pics with the minimum of keywords. Say it's a newlywed couple on a beach. "newlywed, couple, married, beach, man, woman, horizontal".. That will do for now.
One week later they reject it - no problem.
One week later it's accepted, now it's worth my time so I'll add, "two young people, 25-30, caucasian, near, daylight, looking at camera, smiling, cheerful, embrace, hugging, seaside, seashore, wedding dress, bride, groom" - etc, etc.
As a result to get the 10 images online I have added 250 keywords rather than 500, that section of my work cut in half. If I had a 90+ acceptance rate things would be different, but it's not going to happen. It's not spam and speeds up my workflow.
Works for me
Oldhand
If
there's more to the question than gross number of keywords. do you REALLY enter a new set of keywords for every one of 20 images? you're assuming unique keywords for EVERY image to get 25 x 20. most photographers are going to have similar if not identical keywords for most of a given shoot. do the editing in a batch, with no interrupted time, even if you submit them piecemeal instead, you're going to go back afterwards and re enter more keywords? that will take more time [editing accepted photos 1 by 1, even when they have simiar keywords, etc]. doing keywording all in one session should save you much more time of course if you're not entering IPTC before submitting, there's an even more basic problem steve
4000
« on: July 04, 2010, 13:37 »
You know, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics is often times referred to as the Bureau of Lies and Shenanigans for a reason...
After learning more about how the CPI, unemployment stats, and other economic measures have been purposefully fudged with over the years, I have say, don't blindly believe every government report you see, especially if it has anything to do with the economy!
If your're feeling geeky, here's a great white paper on CPI tinkering and "creative accounting" strategies at the BLS:
http://www.europac.net/whitepapers/The%20Truth%20About%20CPI.pdf
well, where do YOU get your numbers? if you're going to trash someone's refere nces, you need to at least offer some alternative. steve
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