Quote from: topol on May 28, 2013, 08:10

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on May 28, 2013, 06:20

There's no need to be rude, it's just people trying to make some money and show off what they can do. It's not another "elite" stock collection.

You know whats rude? Insulting other people's intelligence with outrageous claims. Of course, there's nothing wrong with trying to make money, and doing a little show

Outrageous claims are the stock-in-trade of advertising. Look at how iStock hypes Vetta and the supposed wonderfulness of exclusive images, now Bruce is telling us the Stocksy is going to be like nothing that has ever been seen before (while hosting images that have been deactivated from microstock sites) etc. etc. etc.

I really think you should have guessed that it was going to be hyped before you saw it (being an FAA link rather gives the game away).

Two wrongs don't make a right. This rube - hype attitude is turning our culture into something that's a mix of a junkyard and a circus. I don't want to live in place like that.

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on May 26, 2013, 11:10

Quote from: aspp on May 26, 2013, 10:51

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on May 26, 2013, 09:03

the policy on gritty realism.

Policy of gritty realism ?

From the Bruce Livingstone interview: " Bruce Livingstone has set out to produce a collection of �authentic� stock images unlike anything customers will be able to find anywhere else. When he uses the work authentic he means a photograph that doesn�t look staged, pretend, forced or unrealistic."

really!  well he better go for editorial work then. dirty workers with filthy hands and real female models with pot bellies and double chins.

Notice they never say real, just 'authentic' stock : ) It's tired old phoneyness. A real shot of shoppers on a street would be: dirty sidewalk with overspilling trashcans, all kinds of cars everywhere, and tired looking people in mismatching clothes holding on to wrinkled, disgusting ugly plastic bags. NOBODY wants that... and if it isn't that, it is a shined up stock shot. If you choose to process it with some film emulation filter, etc, it will be so new and so different to handful an virtual infants, but to an adult who has seen things it's just another, even older and more worn cliche than the micro-style. There's nothing wrong with selling stuff like that and they can even be really nice photos, just don't try pretend it's new and real and revolutionary... pls... it's just sooo exhausting... it's the home shopping network style.

You must be joking, some of these are downright poor shots.

...While we are not legally/contractually obligated to list copyright holder names, we would never want to disappoint or anger any copyright holder....

Yes you are...  but it seems like you desire to learn the hard way.

Quote from: topol on May 21, 2013, 11:06

Quote from: Xanox on May 21, 2013, 10:03

he might be a photographer but he'll go down in history as the photographer who killed the value of stock photography thanks to his bulk subs deals.

seriously, who's worse ? getty acting as a monopoly or SS selling images for 0.30$ ?

kudos to his coding and entrepreneurial skills but i see no reason to see him as a positive figure in our industry, SS is nothing but the Walmart of stock.

I got the lowest ever comissions, 9-7 cents from the getty/istock crooks... and getty is into nanopayment now, with that 'connect' junk - which actually is the final rock bottom everyone feared they will hit: the ad-space revenue model. Getty is the worst by far.

Fair or unfair, Connect is not for selling photos, just for showing them.

In case you didn't know: you don't sell photos on stock sites, you sell licenses (which basically means you allow someone else to show them around.) so this is another license, the puniest yet.

Quote from: topol on May 21, 2013, 04:33

So.... those shots got rejected on the basis of looking too staged.

There's a rejection for 'looking too staged'?!!!
LMAO, as they say. 

That wasn't the exact wording, but it was something very similar. It wasn't a regular micro agency.

Yuri has gone with IS. The Getty corporation looks after IS and pretty much do what they want. Their global turnover makes all the rest including SS seem poor and microscopic.
Well Yuris decision do not seem such a bad deal to me. He has chosen to go with size and money. Had I been given the choice I would probably go the same way. Getty have a proven track history of 25 years, never mind investors and morals on this one. They still have 25 years on the neck. The micro industry has what? nine or ten years? to me that would not be enough.
Thats  me though I am sure the majority here have other thoughts.

No they don't make look others poor, because they are shrinking, loosing against the competition. If this wasn't the case why did they bother buying istock, and squeezing contributors? Anyway, even if that was the situation, it was the same years and years ago, so why wasn't Yuri wit them already?

WOW... I mean WOW.... Yuri is the first high volume producer who gets tired to receive $0.38 for a high resolution image. I hope this is a wake up call for the entire industry.

Yes and he went to get cozy with the people who gave away pics basically for free, making backroom deal(s) on the copyright owners property without't even bothering  to tell them about it...

Yep, actually if you think about it, yuri bacame 'exclusive' when it won't matter much anymore. 

Quote from: Yuri_Arcurs on May 18, 2013, 01:31

Hi Guys.
We have found a good distribution partner (Getty Images) for the kind of content we produce. We will be removing all images from microstock doing the next few weeks. Microstock, especially subscription sites, are not suited for the kind of high production cost images we produce.
Best Yuri

You're going to have to come forward with some more information, especially about your multi-million dollar personal website.

I'm not so sure getting in bed with the "evil empire" is actually a good move for the industry.  Giving Getty more "power" is not in anyone's best interest, except Getty's.  Not that what anyone here thinks is really important to your business.

The expensive site might just be the main reason.

As people start to network up with each other, I have one little fear that I thought I would get others opinions on.

The beauty of selling direct is we set our own prices. The fear of selling direct is that we set our own prices...

Eg: buyer comes to my site, sees a nice isolated apple, thinks 'yep, $20 for large size, thats what I'd pay at iStock, if not more' adds it to cart. Then he notices one of my network partners also has a nice isolated apple. Checks that one out, virtually same image, but it only costs $5 for the large, $1 for small.

Why on earth will he buy my one?

I guess what Im saying is I think we need to look out for eachother, not just ourselves when we choose our pricing, so that we don't go too low. Or there will be a lot of networked partners dropped and hurt feelings etc etc. I know I will be highly reluctant to add a network partner if I see their pricing is way too low.

What do you all think?

This is what they call free market capitalism. The market will sort this out over some time. Participate / influence the system by adjusting your prices, and see how it works out for you...

That idea is partially addressed in the plugin I'm making which creates a "hub" site - which in turn creates a central search area for a number of network sites.

The problem with a central database is what you see now - overly centralized systems create imbalances and a lot of unhealthy (and often unfair) competition.

Nature tends to have things right - although nature has plenty of "super-societies" they generally balance out and fragment when they get too big. They are also made up of smaller worker units all of which are perfectly self-sufficient in their own right. Symbiostock attempts to emulate those sorts of relationships because they tend to be foolproof and actually supply everyone in a balanced way. So really its not even my idea ...its just an honest look at nature's success.

People tend to create overly-centralized systems with a lot of overly-dependent workers and subsystems and pretend it somehow emulates nautures design (as they say, survival of the fittest, eat or be eaten! Get big, take territory...that nonsense). Those systems "break" easy when problems come up. They are top-heavy, expensive, eat up resources (often from the bottom-line workers). Also the search engines most agents use must find a way to take 10,000,000 images (or products) and give them a place in the first 20 pages of a given keyphrase...and minding the attention span of the average human probably does not make it to page 20...its an impossible game and everyone just loves playing it for some reason.

But there will be a "network hub" plugin which creates a sort of central farmer's market for quite a few network sites. Also hub plugins will be able to aggregate other hub sites as well...combining hubs... so this idea of doing the impossible (making a huge central database) is really up for grabs for whoever has the time but I don't think overly centralized systems are ever really able to be successful in the long-run. At least not when they are responsible for providing in a balanced way.

Its not possible to explain all this stuff in just a few lines, but at least it gives you an idea of where things *may* be headed as long as they are successful.

I understand some may feel like the 'previous system' is creeping back into this project if they create a central search site, but that's not the case. The main search site wouldn't change anything at all in the way ppl run their own site, it would be just an addition on top of everything else. Anyone can get their own traffic and sell on their own site separately from the main search, as if it didn't even exist. As for competition on prices / merchandise.... well, it's just always there anyway. I don't insist this being implemented in the symbio system, but I think it would help this project compete with / kill the big sites... and there's very little doubt in my mind that we need to show that we can go for killing the big sites, or you will see your work handed out for free based on 'ad-space revenue'. Just look at getty connect.

This whole symbiostock project is pure brilliance. This is the real game changer not some new agency or collection, stocksy, offset,deposit,  whatever... this is the s**t When I watched this develop, I saw and I still see one basic technical advantage that big agencies have over various symbio sites: customers there have a huge amount and variety of stock accessible with one search, and that is fundamental to most of them. Maybe symbiostock should have a main search site, where they could search just about every simbyo collection with one click. Being searchable through that site would be voluntary, but not joining in wouldn't make much sense I guess . Operating that site supposed to be pretty cheap, since it wouldn't host any files.