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Messages - fotoVoyager
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476
« on: December 06, 2012, 15:03 »
I don't know, but if it's India I don't think they'd ever knowingly make fewer rules!
477
« on: December 06, 2012, 14:45 »
I've been offered an opportunity to help organise a photographic tour to Everest Base Camp in Nepal. At this stage I'm just seeing if there's enough interest to make it viable - it needs eight people to run and more than fourteen brings the cost down a little bit. The cost will be around 1500 from Kathmandu for 20 days in April 2013. This includes hotel accommodation in Kathmandu, transfers, internal flights to Lukla, shared rooms in teahouse lodges, food on the trek, cooks, guides, porters and an itinerary that focusses on getting pictures at the right times at great locations up and down the Khumbu valley, culminating in a hike up Kala Pattar (5600m) for sunset (and sunrise if you're feeling keen!) shots of Mt. Everest itself as well a walk across the Khumbu glacier to the climber's tent city below the ice fall to meet an Everest expedition at Everest Base Camp. You cannot beat the Himalayas as a mountain photography location. The air is perfectly clear, there's no light pollution, the stars are too numerous to count, the local people are friendly and the weather is (almost) predictable. I've been there four times now and it's the only place I return to regularly. You'll need to be reasonably fit, happy to walk for several hours a day and carry a daypack, along with your camera. The porters will carry everything else and you'll be reunited with your kit each afternoon at camp. It can be cold at night so you'll need a warm sleeping bag and clothes and comfortable hiking boots. Anyone who walks and shoots for pleasure can do it if you take it slowly. It's a wonderful place to shoot breath-taking landscapes, colourful temples and prayer flags, smiling local people and high altitude mountaineers. To give you an idea of what you'll be shooting, here's some I prepared earlier: http://www.istockphoto.com/search/lightbox/7298188I have no idea whether there are enough photographers here that would like to do this, but I'd though I'd test the waters and see. Reply here, site mail, email or call me if you want to express an interest and we'll see if we can get this party started!
478
« on: December 05, 2012, 12:10 »
Several of you are getting the point of PicturEngine and seeing that the forest extends beyond the trees. Its very difficult to start a new agency/platform (or whatever) without breaking through the critical mass barrier first. Before reaching critical mass, its not worth the time and money advertising (for 100 niche photographers or even 500,000 niche images) because the biggest bang for the buck in advertising is NOT niche, its general, its everyone, and its BIG! PicturEngine solves this critical mass problem, from day ONE. With PicturEngine there is no need to target advertising to a highly specific group or niche, such as home related or travel related buyers, as we do with my other two agencies. Every image buyer is a prospective client to use PicturEngine. PicturEngine just makes image buying easier. Many who are asking about our advertising/marketing plan need to remember we already have a sizable image buying client base (over 40k confirmed image buyers and growing daily) from our established agencies. Many of our image buyers do specialize in houses/home lifestyle or travel/scenic, however, most of our buyers work for advertising agencies and have multiple clients. Weve been doing this long enough to know what effectively generates traffic and licenses images, and are also smart enough not to share our knowledge with potential competition (that is surely monitoring these forums).
PicturEngine is a brand, just as Google is a brand. We go to a search engine to find what we need. We are not new, as I personally come from the background of both creating and licensing stock, and know the holes that need to be filled. We have studied other platforms, where they succeed and where they have failed, and are bringing PicturEngine to the market with eyes wide open knowing what needs to be done to succeed.
The purpose of our recent push for the PicturEngine photographer platform is to get content onboard that is NOT currently at agencies, bringing our image buying audience truly unique content, right alongside the same ol stuff they can find repeatedly at agencies, but with duplicates removed to make the search faster, easier, and just better. Our advertising campaign will be unique and insightful, not only advertising for the same agencies people already use, but image buyers will regularly return to see what new and wonderful things our photographers and smaller agencies are adding to the mix.
The PicturEngine photographer platform is not for everyone, just as stock photography is not for everyone. Studying years of hard data tells us PicturEngine becomes cost effective with collections of over 1,000 unique images. If you dont yet have 1,000 unique images in your portfolio or collection, keep us on your radar for when you do. Some of you mentioned image storage as a factor. Storing 1,000 10MB Jpegs at Rackspace is about a dollar ($1.00 USD) per month. For the speed and peace of mind, $1/ month is not a high price to pay.
One last point I want to clarify, PicturEngine is NOT an agency. I am posting on this forum because some microstock photographers showed an interest and registered for the platform early on. They were tired of the current direction of the microstock industry and decided to do something positive about it. Thats what PicturEngine is all about.
Sorry for the repeat post, some of these questions were asked on the other "main" thread "Check Out PicturEngine"
Best,
JB
Good luck to you - I hope you pull it off and we can all benefit. It's certainly a positive step forward and we watch with interest!
479
« on: December 03, 2012, 15:42 »
There's no doubt I made a mistake putting all my eggs in one basket, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. It could have gone differently. I coulda beena contender.
Ah well, the beauty of this business is I still own 10,000 stock photos that I'm free to put anywhere I want. There's always next year.
You, sir, have an amazing portfolio.
Thank you very much!
480
« on: December 02, 2012, 15:30 »
The only redeeming feature in these numbers is that despite downloads dropping by 86%, mostly I imagine because of the huge growth of libraries since then, they've managed to limit dollar losses to 36% because of the increased prices and collection diversification.
Not that I'm defending them; someone, somewhere there is making greedy, even immoral business decisions, but their approach of raising prices has saved me and others from even worse times.
It's quite a different picture, if you'll pardon the pun, at Shutterstock. My downloads there last month were 37% higher than Nov 2008, despite the even larger increase in the library at SS. My income at SS last month was 127% higher than in Nov 2008.
SS haven't increased prices since May 2008, if I remember correctly (or lowered commissions either, come to think of it), so it shows that there is more than one way to grow a business. Or maybe not. We don't actually know if iStock have grown their business since Nov 2008. Maybe, if IS hadn't increased prices and added all those expensive 'collections', you might now be earning a lot more money from many more sales __ just like contributors at SS.
One thing that I am absolutely certain of now is that your money, as an exclusive, is on the losing horse. I believe that iStock's policies of ever-increasing prices and ever-reducing commissions by stealth (via the RC system) can only accelerate the demise of their business.
There's no doubt I made a mistake putting all my eggs in one basket, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. It could have gone differently. I coulda beena contender. Ah well, the beauty of this business is I still own 10,000 stock photos that I'm free to put anywhere I want. There's always next year.
481
« on: December 02, 2012, 12:43 »
The only redeeming feature in these numbers is that despite downloads dropping by 86%, mostly I imagine because of the huge growth of libraries since then, they've managed to limit dollar losses to 36% because of the increased prices and collection diversification.
Not that I'm defending them; someone, somewhere there is making greedy, even immoral business decisions, but their approach of raising prices has saved me and others from even worse times.
482
« on: December 02, 2012, 07:10 »
iStock exclusive.
Compared to previous Novembers:
2011: $ -33% DL -47%
2010: $ -50% DL -70%
2009: $ -33% DL -78%
2008: $ -36% DL -86%
483
« on: December 01, 2012, 16:14 »
The 'View Mode' button allows you to choose where the info is displayed and to turn the auto-eye thingy off. I guess you've already worked that out.
Also, get a thumb lever that fits in the hot shoe - helps the ergonomics of the camera no end. I bought one off eBay and it's fine.
484
« on: November 30, 2012, 06:07 »
Sorry, I was overly sniffy there.
What I meant to say was it looks to me from reading here about people's experiences with ktools that it's a dark art getting a good result out of it and Sean seems to have done a really good job with it.
485
« on: November 30, 2012, 05:30 »
Calm down guys, its not freaken magic ... 
Feel free to link to your site that looks as good as that.
486
« on: November 30, 2012, 05:27 »
Good work! Let's hope it helps.
487
« on: November 30, 2012, 03:06 »
Very nice work. Sell us the code so we can do it too!
488
« on: November 29, 2012, 06:45 »
there's 2 things I don't get:
1) you steal a CC and go and buy..... stock photos?  ! seriously?
Yep. 2 years ago I had over $2K worth stolen from iStock and some people had more. It's a major problem.
490
« on: November 25, 2012, 18:13 »
Yes. I've switched to doing that with my DSLR too and it's a much better system.
491
« on: November 25, 2012, 17:38 »
My only tip is to set up back button focussing with it, make it much more practical.
492
« on: November 25, 2012, 17:03 »
I've got one and have had shots accepted with it. Lens flares if you point it into light sources, but otherwise pretty good quality. Too slow for stock work I found, but a good back up camera for when a DSLR is too big. Hybrid viewfinder is a good development, I'd like to see that in bigger, better cameras.
493
« on: November 24, 2012, 12:59 »
I would have thought the best and fairest way to do it is to have rising price stages depending on the volume sold, starting cheap to encourage participation and increasing to the $50 per month level when a reasonable return is being made.
494
« on: November 24, 2012, 03:17 »
I've got one. I've just used it for shooting in Shanghai and carried it to the top of a Himalayan peak in the Annapurnas. I use it with a 14-24, 24-70, 70-200 II and 1.7xTC. As reported elsewhere, it does show any flaws in your technique or lenses. The lenses I use work perfectly with it, which isn't surprising as they're on Nikon's recommended list.
The 24-70 is the lens I use most and the one I would buy first. It's an excellent lens, great focal length range for walking around cities and landscapes, I heartily recommend it.
The only downside is the weight and bulk of course. You need to be pretty dedicated and / or stupid to carry all that kit to high altitude or round a crowded city all day. Luckily I have no common sense whatsoever.
I've found the dynamic range / details in the shadows / highlights to be the same as the D700 I used before, but now you've got 36MP to play with. Amazing achievement by Nikon.
The biggest problem is file storage. I produced about 8000 images in the last two months with it and have had to upgrade all my HD and backup systems. Also, I had to buy six batteries which adds a chunk onto the cost. SD cards are cheap but really, really slow compared to CF.
Overall, great camera, well worth the money. I was in two minds and dubious about the quality at ISO more than 200 but have been pleasantly surprised.
Don't bother with the 20mm 2.8D, it's useless on a full frame, horrible around the edges, very smeary. I had two examples to try, both the same.
495
« on: November 22, 2012, 12:27 »
Good luck to you, I'll be following your progress with interest.
496
« on: November 22, 2012, 02:41 »
Great book - I bought it in Namche Bazaar when I was stuck there last year because it was the only second-hand book that wasn't about mountaineering or new age nonsense. Killed a couple of days very nicely.
Gave it to my 11 year old daughter and she loves it too, though there were tears when Richard Parker abandons him. I'd never of thought they could make a movie of it, but the trailers look like they've done a wonderful job. We'll definitely be going to see it!
497
« on: November 21, 2012, 18:04 »
Is it worth for exclusivity?
No. Biggest mistake I ever made. Don't do it.
498
« on: November 18, 2012, 06:30 »
Agreed - at a time when returns from iStock are crashing the last thing I'm going to do is spend $89 on a bit of software that won't help increase sales, sorry.
499
« on: November 14, 2012, 12:28 »
Do other libraries tend to have a 50 keyword limit as well?
500
« on: November 14, 2012, 12:26 »
I've got 9000 exclusive images and my downloads have nearly stopped too. It's a complete disaster for me and other full time exclusives.
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