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Messages - Jo Ann Snover
4526
« on: January 30, 2013, 12:13 »
I have heard nothing from IS or SS so far.
4527
« on: January 30, 2013, 12:10 »
Welcome - the graph is not a pretty picture  I know it's been said elsewhere, but the biggest prep work you can do is to ensure all your keywords and other metadata are in the ITPC of your images, and that they're in real-people English not Getty-CV-speak. So yard and garden not Front or Back Yard and Formal Garden. Deep Meta will read your keywords and you can disambiguate there.
4528
« on: January 30, 2013, 03:31 »
Not sure if it will stay up, but I added the graphic from my web site's blog about the mess to my iStock user_view blog 
4529
« on: January 29, 2013, 20:48 »
I've had 4 sales in January for a total of $1.70. I don't think that qualifies for any tier!
There are a few people (perhaps mostly illustrators?) who do well there, but I don't see any signs of life
4530
« on: January 29, 2013, 19:11 »
They asked if there was anything else that would make the point, so I replied with links to Paul Cowan's post in the IS forum and the list of articles that cybernesco is keeping https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/296408432616017921Not sure if they'll do anything in their magazine with it, but we'll see.
4532
« on: January 29, 2013, 01:31 »
Welcome. If you're willing to show your iStock identity, you can put your member name into the forum profile (Profile menu up top) so people can see who you are on iStock. Given that you used your name, a couple of searches lead me to this portfolio, which I assume is you? I'm an indie-exclusive-indie so I've been on both sides of the fence. You'll find a ton of perspectives here, most recently on the Getty/Google Drive stock library issue, but on many aspects of being a microstock contributor on other sites (if you're considering whether or not to remain exclusive
4533
« on: January 28, 2013, 20:31 »
Does anyone know how many images are currently available in Google Drive? I was watching the numbers continue to go up on the kga.me site until it was shut down. The last figure I saw was slightly over 12,000 images. Does anyone have current numbers?
I don't. I PM'd Kenny over the weekend to ask if he would make a text list or tell me how I could and host it so we could see that. I haven't heard back from him though. Does anyone have another way - other than PM here - of reaching Kenny? Or does anyone know how to make a list of filename, with a couple of EXIF extractions (photographer and copyright name) from the Google directory hosting the images?
4534
« on: January 28, 2013, 20:29 »
I'm revamping my web site (related to possibly leaving iStock February 2nd) and posted a blog with some thoughts on this mess
Blog
http://www.digitalbristles.com/time-of-turmoil/
Tweet about blog
https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/296013896257515520
Excellent blog Jo Ann!! Certainly like your analogy of us the contributors "Cinderella" versus Getty "the ugly sisters", very fitting, thank you. I have included your link on my site as well.
Thanks - I was thinking of naming Thinkstock and Photos.com as the ugly sisters, but decided against it Jonathan Klein is definitely the wicked stepmother though
4536
« on: January 28, 2013, 14:23 »
[I just clicked on the istock link at the bottom of the search to see what you had used as an avatar and for some reason the link didn't work. I then went to istock and put in jsnover as a search term and got up a whole load of images of cocaine sniffing that aren't your images. Tried it again and the same happened!!! I wonder why that happened unless jsnover is a foreign word for cocaine. Very strange.
If you don't accept the user name suggestion that shows in the drop box, my member name appears to be a misspelling of several possibles. If you click on the suggestion in the search box versus just typing the name and hitting return you do get the portfolio. I'm sure that's a feature even if it looks like a bug
4537
« on: January 28, 2013, 14:17 »
You absolutely can shoot against the sun and get it accepted but not with 3/4 of the image underexposed - SS doesn't much like heavy shadows and so landscapes in contrasty light can be hard to get accepted. I'd stay away from those in the application although you can take another run at it once you're accepted.
The mass of similar looking rocky landscapes with somewhat dull light and not all that sharp focus is not going to fly at SS. I think the best of that group is the one with the river around the central rock (although it looks as though there's some color banding in the sky top left)
I'd skip that dark beach with the dark rocks and dark building - it's not great stock and there's CA around the contrasty edges.
Give them some subject variety, good focus, simple lighting, good colors, something indoors - not just landscapes if you can manage it. Good luck
4538
« on: January 28, 2013, 12:05 »
4539
« on: January 28, 2013, 11:59 »
I received a reply this morning from Dreasmtime support
"Thank you for contacting Dreamstime Customer Support team. We are aware of this situation and we are monitoring for some time. The problem is that we cannot do much when it comes to Google policies. I will forward your message to our legal team. They are currently evaluating the intensity of the problem and what would be our possible solutions."
4540
« on: January 28, 2013, 11:58 »
Yes, GREAT POST. Thanks Joanne.
Are our blogs moderated on Istock? This has likely come up, but can't we all post a blog on our IS profile?
Not really moderated, but I believe they can delete text there if they don't like it. I know from personal experience that they can delete incoming and outgoing site mail if they wish to recall "intemperate" mail they sent so I don't see why the blogs would be exempt. I did a picture change on my user_view page figuring that'd be harder for them to locate - a text search can't find it
4542
« on: January 28, 2013, 11:20 »
Get rid of the two landscapes. The last two look like they have a giant sensor spot on the right side. Try another landscape in place of the ones you have maybe a better version of the cityscape.
It's not a sensor spot, it's something on the roof.
It doesn't matter what it actually is; if it looks like a blemish, get rid of it In addition to the helpful notes already given, a lot of these images look as if they were a bit soft - perhaps over noise reduced - and then sharpened. This type of technical flaw will make getting approved hard. In the case of the shot of the man in a suit - the one where he's just standing - it's not in focus. They eyes need to be sharp and they aren't. Don't do zoo animals, flowers, puppies, kittens or sunsets for your application images. These are all very well represented in the collection and unless your shots are stunners, will probably be judged more harshly than other work. Make sure your whites are white - the shot of the man with the headphones, they aren't. Clean up chromatic aberration (the man with the headphones) and any blemishes or sensor spots. Make sure the focus is good and don't sharpen. Good luck
4543
« on: January 28, 2013, 01:45 »
These sorts of discussions are akin to religious arguments and I'd recommend staying away. If there's a discussion about how to get accurate white balance, or use of a gray card, that's worth reading as you can learn about a technique you might want to use. Any of those "you always..." or "you never..." conversations are generally filled with people who do more talking than shooting
4544
« on: January 27, 2013, 17:01 »
Slightly off topic in that it isn't about Thinkstock but does relate to their parent company. Anyone know how best to remove files from Getty when you have no account credentials or contract? I didn't agree to the contract offered last year(?) which I thought would nuke my work. Certainly nuked my payments.
How about a DMCA takedown notice for the files of yours still on their site?
4545
« on: January 27, 2013, 14:44 »
I'm not sure what specific help I can offer, but I think that having a platform for selling direct would be a great thing for contributors to have access to. Dan noted that ktools leaves a lot to be desired - as did Sean Locke who used that to build AccordStock, his portfolio site.
I don't have the expertise to know whether the warnings above about using WordPress as a base are important, but I can see the appeal of a platform that has an active developer community so that new plugins come along that can be added to a running site to improve it without having to do 100% of the coding yourself. I have to believe that there are ways to secure a WordPress site, and again, the fact that lots of people are using that platform makes it more likely that if there are security problems they will get fixed.
4547
« on: January 27, 2013, 11:26 »
The zoom appeared to be working OK - it seemed to have two levels of magnification and then back to full size. Didn't look to me as if it was zooming on a thumbnail but with illustrations or 3D renders perhaps I'm not seeing the pixelization?
Search didn't find a lot of things, but when I looked at individual images, it's the keywording not the search that was the cause. I saw a Christmas background (red) with trees when browsing. I searched for christmas tree and no results. But looking at the image it's because the keyword tree isn't on the image.
In the case of another failed search for easter egg (saw an image browsing and it wasn't found searching) it was because the english keywords were in the description and the other (german?) keywords were in the keyword slot. Not sure if you're appealing to one language market or the other but you'll need to sort out your keywords
Couple of other thoughts. You have XL sizes that are 1600 to 1800 pixels on the long edge. That's a medium at iStock, between M and L at 123rf, between S and M at Dreamstime and so on. I think you're going to confuse buyers familiar with the major sites to have such small sizes with big size names
I also think your prices are pretty high - to buy credits at ! euro each you have to buy 1350 of them (which I have a hard time believing a buyer would do at a one-artist site if I'm being frank) and then I get this small to medium image for 14.3 euros.If you're keeping 100% of the take, I think you might try to help the buyers decide to shop with you - you don't want dirt cheap, but you don't want iStock-level pricing either
4548
« on: January 27, 2013, 01:41 »
4549
« on: January 27, 2013, 00:40 »
I've been learning a little about WordPress in the last day or so and when you upload content into the media manager, the original file goes into wp-content/uploads and WordPress automatically makes small medium and large sizes for you to use in the blog posts or elsewhere on a web site - but the original image is there in the directory too. So, for example, one of the images found in a Google image search for iStock is from this blog post. The image shown in the blog is downsized by WordPress. The file name for what's shown is istock_dandelionlarge-300x199.jpg But the Google image search button that says View Original Image doesn't take you to what's shown in the blog but the full size original in the same directory. That image appears if you click on the small image - I assume the fact that it's linked to from the 300x199 version is why Google has picked it up. Not sure if it was within the license terms for the full size image to be displayed like that.
4550
« on: January 26, 2013, 22:33 »
Also, I don't come to this site very much so if you have further questions please post them back over on iStock so I can reply more quickly.
Jenn, thanks for taking a field trip to make a post here I know you know what a good illustration is, and I think you'll agree that there is a lot of stuff on clipart.com that doesn't meet that test. And as for asking on the iStock forums, I and a growing number of other iStock contributors cannot do that as we've been banned. Hence lots of the chat happens here
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