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Messages - etudiante_rapide
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451
« on: July 11, 2016, 14:25 »
personally, if you cannot make money with ss
you won't make money anywhere else.
so, i would advise concentrate your efforts on making sellable images with ss.
the time you waste uploading to every single site to the right
will be better used to making new images for ss.
until another site can market their images as well as ss, or the old istock
i would not bother.
or you can try the elite clubs like offset and stocksy
whic are doing well for those who cheer for them.
their images would not be the same as you give to ss
as their needs are somewhat a bit (or very) different .
452
« on: July 11, 2016, 13:06 »
btt, i did get a few images being deleted, but it was followed by email telling me. mostly, the change whatever to the IP issue... eg it used to be just john deere, porsche/mercedez abstract, paris by night,etc.. but lately ss is taking a bit more cautious to just avoid anything from dollar bills to flags to playing cards , buildings, etc.. even fake designer clothes or rolex copy fall prey. perharps they had issues with these and are told to remove them. soon we'll only be allowed to shoot apples and marijuana 
453
« on: July 11, 2016, 13:03 »
Yeah, especially women like to read "between the lines" even when there isn't any lines in between.
That's because there usually are 'lines in between'.
LMAO... but you can almost know who are those women in person.. you can tell by the lines on their forehead; but on the web it's hard to tell
454
« on: July 11, 2016, 12:30 »
First, they have to get past the Bigstock juggernaut.
objectively and financially speaking, every single one to the right of leaf's poll which has been around since IS and SS should all been thrown into the dumpster. technically, if you don't make an impact after the 6th year , you should pack it in. .. like dt, ft, crestock, canstock, scanstock,alamy,123,veer,even big... add your own menu... forget it... put them all in a wooden box and bury them. i am not subscribing to the new elitist flavor of the moment but i will give them 5 years to see them past IS... -canva -stocksy etc personally, i wish them well, because yes, even though i make regular payout like many here, i see a drop since oringer sold shares to the scavengers in wall street... and it would be healthy not to give ss the monopoly ... until they get out of wall street. ...and more importantly, i see 28 , 85, 102 bucks single earnings back on my daily account again. (but i won't be the one holding my breath ).
455
« on: July 11, 2016, 10:20 »
LOL, wish much??? looking to the right, 36 is not even ahead of alamy and you're already rooting that Foto whatever is going to cross SS??? last i recall, that's what they said about alamy. first get past istock, then we can talk about catching up close enough to see ss bumper 
456
« on: July 10, 2016, 10:50 »
Thanks for posting I do admire what hes done but I think SS is not quite as good as it was....software increasingly flaky and content diluted by poor qa. The competition thugh is mediocre at best It would be interesting to hear what buyers think.
repeat with 100 marks ... The competition thugh is mediocre at bestthat is the persisting reason why the flakes can keep their jobs at the new HO playing pingpong and slacking off letting the only intelligent thing in the bldg (ie. computer program) do their work . with no competition , there is monopoly like everything in business, and the service suffers till it's totally f*****up. but there is nowhere else to go for that service because like politics, the next better choice is even more f****up. until we see a new site that can match ss marketing , level playing field earnings for all, consistent payout monthly for most of us,etc... we won't see any improvement to go back to the ss we all chose to contribute to make it what it is today. as what if ss shares hit the ceiling and the vultures take profit to send it down the sh*thole like BriX to be worthless??? i don't think any major shareholders give a hoot where ss will be tomorrow, after they take profit and move to another carcass to bleed.
457
« on: July 09, 2016, 17:11 »
i wrote in 2004. "Just wait when a camera phone is good enough and the sites start Farming third world contributors that will Take and enjoy 10 Cents a Image" I got more negative response from that than anything I've written since. No software needed. Just a app to process and submit. BOOM!! done in seconds. Well....were almost there guys. The sites have been farming for a few years now.
that was 12 years sgo. anyone can predict something logical and wait until for it to come true and then say i told you so. a broken clock is right twice per day
Point was. Im sad It was correct. My crystal is just as dirty as yours. And I also come from the day when a stock shot gave us $400 US as a commission.
change will come , no matter we like it or not. rinderart you came from a 400 US commission era, i came from 250 $ for a weekend article with photos, ... and that was when i just came out from college and working as a photo assistant to a top local pro from NYC who once worked in the same dept in Polaroid as Ansel Adams. today, the local papers pays NFA and will only take free photos from anyone with a mob or the wire photos that cost them nothing either. we can all scream and cuss but like musicians, writers, painters, etc.. global economy is wonderful for lots of things, but it also broke our lifelihood as we no longer compete with just the local pros, we compete against the world. whether the quality has gone up or down the sewer, that's moot ... even though i would say these new breed of atilla who only approved of full dof and pin sharp all over the photo is something else too. must like the same breed who wants to GCI everything for perfect better than photo can dream of. henri cartier bresson would have got 100% rejection for his decisive moments and matthew brady too, for his shots with blurred eyeballs, LOL then again, who wants bresson, brady, etc... when the world is now weaned on manga and matrix? but at least david hamilton might win a comeback if mob photos like selfies become the new flavor of stock photos. time to pack it in, and get drunk and subscribe to a life of viagra and lithium... it works for rod stewart, mick and keith stones,... so it can't be that bad of a life for us old f@rts
458
« on: July 09, 2016, 11:26 »
p.s.
as i said, something is f*cking your ff up.
what i do is i go system restore to the last entry.
and it cleans up that whatever is f*ckingup my ff (no doubt a windows update)
459
« on: July 09, 2016, 11:23 »
I have been having trouble logging into my account with Firefox today, but Chrome is OK. Has anyone else had any problems with Firefox recently?
i use chrome , ff, and even the old buggy IE. i used to have f*ckups with either of them, and found out that at one time if you installed IE or Chrome and do not mark them as your main browser and you use ff, it will almost be certain ff will always f*ckup because somewhere in there IE , or Chrome , wants you not to use ff. i know it is so, because on my new computer i did not install IE or Chrome, yet, i keep getting this pop-up to ask me to install Chrome or IE. ff never spam you like that. personally, i like ff... and so long as you update to the latest ff it will work fine with uploading etc. except for certain sites which may not work with the new ff.
460
« on: July 09, 2016, 10:05 »
The key being "as long as they get what they need" yes they should care about quality of images and having a good relationship with suppliers but they don't owe anyone a living or have a responsibility for feeding their kids or maintaining their lifestyle
good point. it was like that camera store we once had in NYC during the time i first graduated and started freelancing... they had the best inventory and the best prices , but the service was like sh*t. the guys in the funny hat literally answer you when you try to make a deal for a better price, "you want it or not? don't waste time!" ss is just like that. they have the best inventory.. except for Getty.. and the best deal, even with the new garbage, the existing inventory meet the clients' needs. unless you come up with a "Stocksy/Veer/Canva/Alamy/Adobe/Flickr..whatever.." that can market their product as successful as ss,
(ie. where most contributors make money and reach payout each month)no matter if you are Yuri or SJLocke or miss zero or mister muddlehead. .. ss is still the only outlet a contributor has. hate them, like the photo store in NYC, you still go there .
461
« on: July 07, 2016, 11:53 »
-As they put USD next to the 0.40 to 0.70, I assumed they paid 40 cents to 70 cents a download -
- their "subscriptions" are so much higher than anywhere else - $650 a month for 750 images for a one-month subscription versus $249 at SS - why would anyone buy from them?
- I see YayMicro and Zoonar content in search results, so not all of that is uploaded to PressFoto directly.
-It could be that they do well in select markets (a bit like Fotolia in Germany)
-they don't read IPTC data and want a CSV file in a particular format would make uploading a portfolio to them so discouraging that I'd hold off. The time commitment would be too great.
i hold off anything that has not come into the 80 ratings on the right column before even considering uploading again to any one other than ss but i welcome a new site who shows me that everyone can make money and reach payout regularly like ss, instead of growing old before reaching the 1st payout. (i still have crestock, dt, etc which i joined at their inception all 22 sites when i first found leaf's forum, all of which as i said have not reach payout even till today. ...and i make more with ss in a single day to a single week or even a single lifetime with crestock,etc) as for the prices being higher than ss, i don't think that is a bad thing. i welcome any site daring enough to increase prices and of course offer a better percentage share with us, i shoot enough to be able to give them a different portfolio or a niche so that is not impossible for a new site to succeed charging more as i don't cannibalize my work with ss anyway. .. but i do like to encourage a new site that would be a viable tangent to ss so we can have more clout to negotiate with ss in terms of better earnings. there is nothing bad in avoiding a monopoly, except that till this day i see nothing producing anything like ss where everyone can make money, not just a handful of people who no doubt are the ones who owns or conglomerate with the agency. iow, i don't care if you have a 200 rating if only your elites handful make 90% of it ..that would not impress me much (as Shania says) as it would be like Brazil being rich by on most of the wealth coming from one state. no whoopy dink for me. give me another shutterstock and i will upload to you
462
« on: July 06, 2016, 14:06 »
Run away from 500px while you still can
so true, 500px suffers from schizophrenia... it cannot decide if they are a) a stock photo site where contributors earn money from dls of their work b) a social media site where everyone sends you a message and thuimbs up.. (like fb,etc cough) with the attachment "come see my port". ie ppl who just want a lot of poke, nudge or whatever , so they can tell their friends they had 2000 pokes and thumbs up for their amazing SNAPSHOTS me??? i will wait till 500px decide what it wants to be. as for now, they make money by traffic
463
« on: July 05, 2016, 17:18 »
When I read about the missing keywords, I had to look...
I found a relatively easy way to check it out...
(I remember someone asking about it)
Here's the link strait to it:
http://submit.shutterstock.com/review_batch.mhtml?approved=1&type=photos
In case the link doesn't work:
Home-> Portfolio-> Approval Status: Images-> Approved Photos (or whatever is you are going to look)-> Go to bottom of page-> Click "View All ..... Approved Photos"
yes, that's where i always check to ensure my new online images = approved images and it was where i got shocked to realised many of my new images of regular selling category were missing a lot of vital keywords... and even had category removed. as i mentioned before, it does not happen with the non-sellers; just the images that fall in the well-selling category. it used to be like that at istock where certain exclusives reviewing the indies would approve all the not so competitive images and if say you are doing well in lifestyle, your lifestyle new images would be heavily rejected with all sorts of reasons from poor composition, out of focus, wrong wb,etc.. sound familiar? 
464
« on: July 05, 2016, 17:08 »
What we should be angry about isn't that this stuff is low quality - it's that it was obviously never inspected, or at least not to the same standards as the work of ordinary contributors. This 'portfolio' of cr@p (let's call it a port-phony-o) was loaded directly by an insider or employee, the inspectors never looked at it. This isn't conspiracy theory, it's really the only explanation I can think of. And like someone else said above, it's likely the background images were stolen.
Whatever one might say about Oringer, he doesn't seem to be a crook. So how would he react if he saw this account? Is there any discussion of this on SS's own forum?
having been with top mgt and being in one situation where i did get to know where CEO stands, i have always said i trust Oringer , but never the floor management front line team leads. i was in these sort of front line team lead many times in my early days, and yes, there is a lot of bs going on amongst the floor mgt and their own ppl, where we team leads had to lick boots and eat $h*t while the relatives and cahoots of the floor mgt clique slack off big time (ie. extended breaks , coming in drunk, leaving early,etc) one day, i by chance got to meet a CEO , not realising who he was, in the lift, and when he asked how i like working there, i spilled the beans about all the crap we team leads were taking. oblivious to me he was one of the big guys. needless to say, the next week, he came in to reveal himself, and a lot of heads were rolling and the floor and his relatives were given the pink slip quick. once again, i found out that CEOs don't expect their floor managers to be this way, they trusted their mid management to hire the right ppl.. and never look to see what is going on down below. unless something really bad happened, where they had to come to do damage control or got someone to narc on the floor managers, like i did unsuspectingly. anyone knows anyone who is a team lead in ss??? better still, anyone knows a private line to Oringer??? reiterate - I too believe Oringer is not a crook. but then again, many of the USA voted for Nixon and he too admitted that he "was not a crook" and later on, others voted for Clinton who said he never had $*x with monica as the great Alvin Lee ( RIP)once said, i may be wrong but i won't be wrong always!!!
465
« on: July 05, 2016, 13:32 »
1) kneel down and thank the Universe for this 2) reply to the email as follows verbatim THANK YOU SO MUCH. I WON'T DO IT AGAIN. 3) log out and forget about comatosedreams time you will not regret it, as you make more in a single day with shutterstock that you will make in at best a month over here. and you will make , at best, 5 payouts in your lifetime if you are over the age of 40, 10 maybe at best if you are at the age of 20; at worst, you will reach payout and when you do you will be too old and fragile to type a message to request payout.
466
« on: July 05, 2016, 12:10 »
There are so many sayings, you could tell short stories with these images...
one question from me...
how did all of these get past the reviewer of "out of focus"i had images with only a fraction of the subject in motion eg father playing with child (hands in motion) or cyclist background in motion due to panning or a climber up the mountain with just a single head in the foreground out of depth of field and all got rejected for "out of focus". nothing got past the reviewer who does not understand motion, panning, critical focus, are all part of the impact of action... and insist everything to be in focus. the images you show are all shot closeup with a tele lens or as full aperture which emphasizes focal point, nothing wrong with that... but the reviewers i got do not want such images as everything has to be in focus and not a single sign of motion allowed.
once again showing there is one rule for experienced contributors
and another for a certain group who seems to be immuned from any or all review
by the curators.
reeks of NEPOTISM
something more characteristic of the old Istock before they got sold to the big G
467
« on: July 04, 2016, 23:00 »
We have discussed "auto inspection" at SS for the last couple of years. I think this scenario pretty much shows that they are using automation for at least keywords and titles and maybe a few main image features like sharpness, which seems to be a common rejection reason for sharp images.
definitely, mantis.
check back on your approved images, and be shocked of how some of the keywords are sliced off
... i was shocked to see how many of my images were left with only a handful of keywords
which could mean no downloads.
sharpness too. try even having a slight motion in your image, to show panning or action of the subject..and it is rejected "out of focus".
resubmit it with sharpened edge, and it gets approved. or perharps, resubmit it without any change
and find a new reviewer and it gets approved too.
hint - skip the weekend reviewers
IF WE ALL LEAVE THEM WITH NO WORK, THEY MIGHT JUST QUIT ON THEIR OWN
Totally. That is happening now. I could not believe it....until yesterday when I went back to look at my CSV file and compare to my existing files. Low and behold half to a third of my keywords on most files are indeed missing, especially my older ones that I am re-keywording. And might i say some are MAIN keywords that are missing.
Well this caused me some concern - but I have just spent a fair amount of time checking images - old and new - and I don't see any evidence of this at all.
consider yourself lucky then. we would not be just saying it for fun , would we??? i would say, if your images tend to be selling well in a certain category, and it happens to be where the factory outsourced are having their core sales, that would be the first port that would be targeted. i was astonished when i discovered as mantis did, the main keywords that gathered the regular sales suddenly went missing, and even say if you had two categories, one would be gone. it would not be across the board, since not everyone's port is a threat to the factory special treatment accounts, just certain contributors... like i found out, and now mantis and also shelma. iow, those who had a certain kind of port that were selling regularly and then for no reason suddenly see the sales and large single earnings disappearing ,... i would look back at the files to ensure your keywords and/or category is missing... if the integral keywords are gone, the clients will not find your images that they regularly look for, would they??? an easy way to shift the sales to their own buddies,etc.. no one needs to believe what we are experiencing. i only say this because of the evidences - disappearance of SOD large earnings which i used to have regularly - disappearance of earnings from certain subjects that used to sell well and regularly - drop in earnings even though the uploads of new images which are of equal or higher standard than those which were selling well.
468
« on: July 04, 2016, 16:34 »
It's so obvious that this is a business spiraling out of control. On the one hand, crude automated "reviewing" is rejecting all sorts of good stuff for crazy reasons. On the other, employees are stuffing in the spam portfolios of friends, bypassing inspection.
wala wala ... i see it in my crystal ball... oooh look, shutterstock.. the name is slowly morphing ... holy $h*t, what's that? i don't believe my eyes, it's changing it's name to ... ISTOCK???
469
« on: July 04, 2016, 16:08 »
We have discussed "auto inspection" at SS for the last couple of years. I think this scenario pretty much shows that they are using automation for at least keywords and titles and maybe a few main image features like sharpness, which seems to be a common rejection reason for sharp images.
definitely, mantis. check back on your approved images, and be shocked of how some of the keywords are sliced off ... i was shocked to see how many of my images were left with only a handful of keywords which could mean no downloads. sharpness too. try even having a slight motion in your image, to show panning or action of the subject..and it is rejected "out of focus". resubmit it with sharpened edge, and it gets approved. or perharps, resubmit it without any change and find a new reviewer and it gets approved too.
hint - skip the weekend reviewers
IF WE ALL LEAVE THEM WITH NO WORK, THEY MIGHT JUST QUIT ON THEIR OWN
470
« on: July 04, 2016, 16:03 »
That's not what I said, I have no idea of how review works with vectors.
I showed clear examples of spam, you are welcome to demonstrate that I'm wrong.
i never implied you said that. i just say that looking at all this issue(s) in the past year, it is obvious there is a double standard somewhere... no doubt targeting experienced contributors, as they are the one who is a threat to those factory producers; easing up on the newbies because they are not the ones who will take away the earning of the new entries of factory-out-sourced.
471
« on: July 03, 2016, 13:37 »
He shoots 5 days a week, all editing, key wording and uploading is outsourced. He even has people hired who find locations, models and schedule everything so that every single workday is filled.
For some people this is the way to go, but I would never want to work this way with stock. The pressure to perform would just turn it into another job and take out the joy of filming/photography.
With just 5 employees anything below $25,000 per month means losing money.
I like the idea of about zero fixed costs and my own time is what I lose.
That's what I reckon. the idea of employees and so on is all well and good, but it's easy to lose sight of the goal. Which is profit.
The beauty of this business to me is that I can (and do) make money without having to deal with people, or having big overheads. I know I don't make as much as some, but it suits me the way it works for me.
i would say that it all depends on your earnings. eg. as sean pointed out, "been there". but sean was already earning big money, so his investment on going like a movie production house for props,etc... is worth the risk after seeing his actual returns. it's like all thriving business, really. you don't go crazy and hit the ceiling with a budget that will clean you out in your first 5 years of opening a business, esp even before you know if there is indeed going to be a chance of breaking even. then once you see a thriving business, you can begin to speculate a bit as your borrowing power enables you. but lastly, unless you are someone who came in early in the game, i would not go with betting on a dark horse in microstock these days. i am sure most big earners would tell you they would not expect to make it this big if they were a newbie , say, in the past 5 years... ie. after IS stops becoming the viable alternative to shutterstock.
472
« on: July 03, 2016, 13:27 »
I'll bet you dollars to donuts that everyone who received the first email received the second as well. I'm sure they didn't do any further programming to tease real spammers out of their original email list. So all the spammers now feel there's no action needed on their part.
Obviously this port passed through review with the spammy titles in place. All in all a complete fail for Shutterstock.
I could understand if a few of these spammy images passed review but there are thousands of spammy vectors and entire ports. You just have to hover over the images on this page and see for yourself.
so now we see that perharps there is no review going on with vectors or that there is a bunch of lax reviewers for vectors while there is an extreme ANALysis of reviewer(s) for photographs.
473
« on: July 03, 2016, 00:12 »
The e-mail obviously wasn't a mistake. The mistake was in programming the bot that flagged up the "spammed" results, otherwise the initial confirmation that the warning was real wouldn't have been made. They must have thought a few dozen or few hundred serious spammers would be pulled up and receive the automated mail, but the bot made vastly more connections than they expected. That's how I read it, anyway.
But that's where one of several huge mistakes were made. The program that scoured the images looking for spam and the program that sent the email should have been separate and independent. Run the first program, evaluate the results, and only then, let the bot send the email. If they had done that, it would have been obvious that the first part of the program was buggy or the parameters were incorrect.
There was a famous chess player who said that when his opponent made his first mistake he usually ignored it because it was invariably preparing for an even worse mistake. I guess the same principle works here, too.
consider the issues that have been occuring for the past 2 years: - review of images , out of focus.. when many complained they were not OOF - mass rejection of images by experienced contributors (poor composition, WB,etc as if they all suddenly contracted alzheimer and forgot composition, wb, focusing,etc) - email sent out warning many, correction... a majority.. that their accounts will be suspended for spamming.words and phrases. i suspect all these were done by bots. it was only when Oringer came in to his corporation to find most of the work have not been done by the humans he hired and have been paying them wages while they played ping pong or use the new building facilities during work hours while their workstation were all being manned by bots. if it were not for this latest incident, a worse tragedy could have happened ie. the king bot would be taken over the whole company and bought over all the shares of ss, and we would have a new AI takeover movie in real life. and we would all be extras in the movie, without being paid
474
« on: July 02, 2016, 15:43 »
I have to wonder whether re-kewording old images that are so far down the sort order is going to make any difference to their sales. I've done it with a few old and even not-so-old images but it seems to have no effect. Time and number of sales within a short time on the site seem to be the most important factors for a good position in search.
highly doubtful, as rewording is not going to change your search position. you are better off submitting new images . also, if they are older images, you were likely to be in a mindset of what sold at that time, and times have changed since then, at least for me, and i see what was selling before is no longer selling today, except for those that were selling well initially... as they are still selling daily because of their placement on page 1 first row.
475
« on: July 02, 2016, 15:37 »
the only consolation , for me, is that this is the first time Oringer is writing us since he last emailed us about ss going public.
but this time, more importantly , is the first time that Oringer stepped into the office to address the concerns of contributors, and the f**kups of ss frontline managers.
i see this as a good sign that heads will roll and hopefully there will be major changes in how ss
treat their contributors.
in a utopian alternative reality, i would anticipate a vast drop in ss share prices so that all the vultures who bought ss (to make a killing and not caring a hoot about contributor relations and long term-loyalty), would go into a major scale panic to dump their controlling shares,
so that Oringer will come back in to buy back all ss shares at a grand profit,
and move back to ss as a private enterprise.
but i won't hold my breath for that.
however, it can happen, as in entreprise history, many is the instance where such flipping has been done.
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