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Messages - cobalt
4926
« on: November 18, 2011, 19:53 »
The thread is in the exclusive forum.
4927
« on: November 18, 2011, 15:54 »
Yes, you got a login to read their information.
Sorry, you cannot send them photographs. At least not yet. :-)
But you can use all their resources. They have excellent creative briefs.
4928
« on: November 18, 2011, 15:44 »
Did you get invited to submit images to Getty? As a photographers choice contributor? Or as a House contrbutor?
Or did you just get the email today that you can now access the inner halls of Getty to use the Getty resources? The creative briefs etc...?
Because the email that was sent out today has confused many.
Otherwise I suggest to post all your questions in the istock getty forum. Or the exclusive forum.
4929
« on: November 18, 2011, 15:31 »
"They must pay roughly twice the % commission on exclusive sales that they do on independent sales."
Exclusive files are more expensive and if I remember the math correctly, they still make more money from exclusive files than independent files.
I think they are just boosting exclusives as a little end of year treat. I dont mind, its been a sad year.
4930
« on: November 18, 2011, 15:21 »
They seriously suggested you license your own files with an extended license?
I never knew the ASA had a passage like that.
You have a killer portfolio with 596 files and 84 000 Downloads. What a loss for istock! This is not funny.
4931
« on: November 18, 2011, 12:57 »
I love the istock search engine. I love all the options, I dont find them confusing at all.
4932
« on: November 18, 2011, 11:11 »
My orbiculight has a built in motor and turntables in different size. But there must be other solutions.
I did the wb in camera but later played with color corrections a little too much.
A lot to learn....
By the way istock told me with one of my rejections that they have too many clips of rotating xmas stock. I presume this extends to other rotating objects as well. It is true that it doesnt sell much on istock and their focus seems to be characterstock. So I dont know if it doesnt sell on istock, if it will sell on sites with less buyer traffic. We will see.
My first 300 files will be testclips anyway.
4933
« on: November 18, 2011, 09:43 »
I too feed my family via iStock, now I shoot video and am exclusive. I see some good trends on my end. First is quality of collection, iStock still has a great exclusive collection. Next is iStock offers different collections, now some of you don't like this but it works in retail and business. My sales have been good this year and better than 2010. I don't think iStock is going to lose a lot of ground to SS.
The video market is in its infancy, all agencies will see growth in that area for many years to come. And I agree that istock has fantastic collections. However on the photo side, if you look at the other agencies you quickly realize they have the same high quality content. They just dont present it to the customer with edited collections. But how long will it take until they do? It si very easy for an editor to select images copying the "style" preferred in Vetta, Agency, or the different collections on Getty. The biggest supplier of images are the stock factories, they produce extremely high quality content in exceptional quality. They supply all agencies. istock still has many talented exclusive artists, but more and more professional photographers are moving into microstock, many even from getty, so the exclusive advantage is unfortunately shrinking. Also because istock shows visible download numbers it is easy to copy successful photographers. That is why I opened a thread here asking if visible download numbers are still necessary at this stage of the industry development. Getty is more clever - they dont show download numbers to protect the value of their edited collections. Getty has many collections - but you will never know which one of them is selling well, which style is the "goldmine". istock unfortunately makes it easy for the competition... I am an istock photo exclusive, but I have always looked at other agencies to compare where we stand and I must admit that quality has risen dramatically in the last 18 months.
4934
« on: November 18, 2011, 07:59 »
My first files are now visible: http://footage.shutterstock.com/gallery-66216.htmlMy friends are joking that my files got accepted so fast because there is hardly any movement in the clips ;-). And yes, I still need to find the WB balance edit button in my software. However I am grateful that the seasonal files are online and maybe can still find a buyer before xmas. Fast inspections is one thing, but of course sales is the other. But at least now there is a chance. It is so much more fun to shoot if you see your work go live. Much better than being told to cull down a series to bring down the queue. SS makes it clear they want to do business with me. I have a studio stand from Cambo and use an orbiculight for lighting, so stability and professional light is not an issue. And I will learn about what the buyers want, I just need to have a few hundred files online to understand them.
4935
« on: November 17, 2011, 18:07 »
My studio tripod is very heavy...but Ill keep that in mind for ss.
At the moment they are accepting my files faster than I can shoot them! No rejections so far. But I can only see my portfolio in one or two days, right?
4936
« on: November 17, 2011, 16:41 »
For diamonds RC targets were increased by 25%...we will see how many make the cut this year. The other levels didnt change, that is true.
4937
« on: November 17, 2011, 13:23 »
Shutterstock just accepted my first 10 videos in ONE HOUR! I am stunned, really! All these files have been in the istock queue for ages, most of them still are (since September)
Thank you!
4938
« on: November 17, 2011, 09:11 »
This is my first day as a video independent. I am uploading to ss and pond5. Will add feedback here as soon as my files are approved.
4939
« on: November 16, 2011, 18:55 »
1.9 mio is recent number mentioned by vcr (head of video) and also dittmar (europe) here in Germany. Somewhere on the video forum is a link, maybe I'll post it later. In September 2010 kelly posted 1.7 Mio in his announcement of the rc system on the forums. of course it is true that individual numbers are the most important, but when you choose a business partner, you also want to know how "real" they are. I have no personal experience with ss, although at the mexpo they gave a very professional presentation. I have just never heard anyone else posting a real number, and nearly 2 Million a week, is very serious money. eta: link http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=336155&page=1
4940
« on: November 16, 2011, 18:12 »
The stats wouldnt worry me at all, if the istock management openly commented on what we see and gave us their own view where istock stands in the general marketplace.
It is the fact that they ignore the subject and apparently ban all discussion about it that makes the problem huge, scary and threatening.
Every exclusive I know is following these statistics. Its been a major discussion topic for most of the year
Personally, as long as the competitors dont post how much they pay out to contributors every week, I will assume that the 1.9 Mio that istock pays out every week means that istock is still leading in royalty payouts. I am sure if anyone else came close to the 1 Mio Dollar mark, they would advertise it.
There is a lot of smoke and mirrors in a competitive market. But istock has the power to end the discussion, by either explaining what we see or simply reversing the visible trend.
4941
« on: November 16, 2011, 18:02 »
Maybe the contract for getty editorial is different than getty creative? It sounds reasonable that editorial images that obviously were approved without the tight editing of getty creative, would get weeded out a lot faster.
But christian spoke of his rm images at getty and I thought he was talking about the creative contract that now allows his rm files to be moved downstream if it doesnt sell.
getty has many different contracts, i just know the creative one, which is the one I have. And there they introduced a lot of changes in the summer that got a lot of protest, but to me personally made a lot of sense. if you look through the creative rm library you see a lot of files where you wonder who would license this as rm - I am talking about flowers, leaves, outdated lifestyle etc...
But the rm crowd defend rm with passion, many opposing rf completely. since i come from a rf background, it was difficult for me to understand why they hated rf so much. and my rm files on getty all sold within the first year, so my files wont be moved. And if my files dont sell within three years I would be glad if they got moved somewhere they will sell.
anyway, I dont think the problems of the rm world dont affect us a lot here.
4942
« on: November 16, 2011, 17:48 »
High ranking istock exclusives all have a lot files in the very successful Vetta collection. Unless someone else comes up with an offer to pay more for these files and promote them as heavily as istock does, I doubt any istock superstars will go independent.
At the microstock expo SS said, they had no plans to introduce a high end collection.
I don't know the answer but say someone had the same successful images on five sites, instead of the one site as Vetta, would they make more money from five standard downloads than each Vetta collection sale?
Say SS, DT, FT, 123RF and IS for example?
What do you think?
I doubt it. Vetta files are artistic images that only sell in low volume. It is not typical stock. Many files that are now Vetta were on istock for years and didnt sell, many even had zero sales although they were much cheaper than now. By promoting Vetta and combining them all in one collection, istock made it easy for customers looking for these files to find them. And this encouraged the artists to produce more of them and invest in expensive shootings for non generic files. istock/getty have a lot of big customers with deep pockets. They pay for the time saved by having all these files preselected by the istock editors.
4943
« on: November 16, 2011, 17:26 »
edstock is from getty, like the hulton archive or many agency images, but it is all rf.
what christian was talking about that getty house or photographers choice contributors might have their rm content moved into rf. and so far i havent heard that they had gone ahead with that.
istock is getting a lot of getty content.
edstock is the editorial collection that supposedly adds celebrities, sports events etc...that they dont want /cannot accept from the istock contributors. i dont know if the content in edstock is wholly owned by getty or just older content from the getty newsarchive (and various getty news photographers). but I have never heard that it was rm before coming to istock.
what seems to sell best in editorial are logos, cars and product shots, so personally I dont care if they add older news images for the blogger market.
4944
« on: November 16, 2011, 17:06 »
High ranking istock exclusives all have a lot files in the very successful Vetta collection. Unless someone else comes up with an offer to pay more for these files and promote them as heavily as istock does, I doubt any istock superstars will go independent.
At the microstock expo SS said, they had no plans to introduce a high end collection.
4945
« on: November 16, 2011, 16:02 »
I have never heard that edstock consisted of rm files that have been dropped from getty?
4946
« on: November 16, 2011, 13:14 »
getty now has the right to move content between all their partner sites, upstream and downstream as they please. for rm there is some kind of time frame, i think if it hasnt sold even once in three years they can put it into rf and if they want to even thinkstock.
But so far I havent heard from a single case where pictures that are on getty have been moved downstream to thinkstock or even istock.
i personally thought it was a good move, because when you look through their library there are many ordinary and old shots in the rm catalogue that are very generic or have too much modern competition from the rf collection.
and files that sell will not be moved, so this is only an issue for files without sales that might benefit from being placed into rf. there was a huge uproar about it, but to me it made sense.
4947
« on: November 15, 2011, 17:54 »
Ive quit video exclusivity. Today is my last day as a video exclusive. I only have 12 files and no sales, so this is nothing heroic.
For two reasons:
it takes them ages to accept video files, even for exclusives it can take several months. I am a total video newbie and I simply cannot learn about video this way. It is not just the technical side of video that I have to learn, but I also have to understand the video market, which usually means I have to have several hundred files online for around 18 months.
I do believe that istock has the best video library with an extremely high quality of files. istock also has files with over 1000 downloads at their high prices, which I havent seen anywhere else.
But as a photographer I can never create enough videos to compete with the quality of the pros or upload enough to move up in rank.
However, I believe the video market has tremendous growth potential and I hope it will bring balance to my photo portfolio.
So - even without the traffic stats I felt I had no choice. It was a very painful and difficult decision, but stock is the biggest part of my income, in business you have to be practical. I did wait to see what the big plans were that JJ kept hinting at, but so far...
Video is a completely new market, there is no market saturation, so there should be tremendous growth on istock video. However, even in the video threads people are reporting slow sales.
I will spend the next year focussing on Getty and video. Of course I will still upload to istock, but it is obvious I need to diversify.
It was a painful decision, because Ive met the video team and they are all hard working, totally devoted people. This is not their fault. And I truly need to learn about video, istock seems to be site that has more pro videographers.
I sincerly hope istock turns things around in 2012. They still can IMO, it is a huge site and even with fewer customers I wouldnt be surprised if they are making more money than all the other sites.
I have never heard Shutterstock or anyone announcing that they pay out 1.9 million USD A WEEK to their contributors.
I am also not ruling out that I will return as a video exclusive to istock if my video sales there are good.
This is my 7th year in stock. It is time to look around and learn about the wider industry. From what I read here on msg the other sites are no angels and istock has for many years been an extremely reliable business partner.
2012 will be an interesting year.
4949
« on: November 15, 2011, 16:27 »
They lowered prices for video and illustrations. So there is some balance.
4950
« on: November 15, 2011, 11:09 »
Its good to be realistic, but the prices have been going for a long, long time. When I started submitting to istock it was all for 50 cents. Things definetely have changed.
But if you work on the quality of your files you can get into the higher priced libraries if you really want to. Personally I prefer high volume sales, I dont like to be dependent on a small number of clients. That business model is just too vulnerable and easy to exploit by the competition.
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