You who are buying this camera, are you going for the DS or DSR version?

I'm being tempted by the greater sharpness of the DSR version, but at the same time I'm afraid of excessive moire. I haven't seen anywhere any comparison between the versions (same scene with both models)

Which version are you going to buy?

That lens is propably my favorite lens, I shoot about 50% of my pictures with that lens: Portraits, people, products, food.
For short depth-of-field I stop down to 3.5 or 4 (2.8 is only borderline acceptable and makes focus tricky).

I have always liked SS, sometimes more, sometimes less. But now they seem to be on the wrong track in many ways.

I got a sale for €0,00 !!!

Amazing... Going to send them an angry mail tomorrow, If they don't answer with a reasonable explanation.... bye bye Mostphotos!

It would be fair to split the sale 50/50 between the agency and the photographer, but with one condition: the agency need to spend the same amount of time and investments as the photographer promoting and selling the images.

The correct pricing would then be the one that is profitable both for the agency and the photographer.

* Boring flat light

* Too few cherries, the bowl should be full. The arrangement of the cherries isn't appealing. There's even a small dry leaf(?) in the bowl. You should select the most beautiful cherry and have that as a "hero" on top / in focus.

* The idea of the copy space is a valid one, but the wooden background with the uneven gaps is distracting and a bad background for text (a wooden background without the gaps would be better.

* Avocados without the "seed" look strange.

Oh I wish I had some screen grabs of old search results, it would be interesting to analyze those compared to new ones.

Does anyone have more of examples like this?

Also when you flag you should
1) use the flag in the correct distance between the subject and background. The flags should be closer to the background (with no ligh hitting them!) than you realize, do some tests.
2) not overexposure the background more than you need. You need to have the background just barely brighter than the subject.

Quote from: Beppe Grillo on March 11, 2015, 10:15
To get paid $ 0.20 or $0.50 for a sold image, is it not a kind of modern slavery?

No it's not. We all could be doing something else, if we wanted to.

Wow I'm earning 0.015% of Shutterstock's payouts

Quote from: Smilla on March 09, 2015, 15:36
I've always meant to try using the white card technique, hold up a piece of pure white card and set the white balance to this, but always been too lazy!

Use a real grey card instead. "White" is very, very rarely neutral. That includes white fabrics, paints, papers etc.

I got a "trending" email... too bad my sales suck

These are just some opinions of mine:

Quote from: Semmick Photo on March 08, 2015, 22:17
Images taken in natural light, inside a home, without any studio lights, are warm.

Not necessary. Natural light can be anything.
Warm light (from a window) might be OK, if the shadows are cool.
If everything looks warm, it looks like a WB error.

Quote from: Semmick Photo on March 08, 2015, 22:17
Images taken of people under a yellow sunshade

Yes, but then the yellow shunshade should be clearly visible in the image.
Some yellowness can also be reduced by using reflector (reflecting light from outside the sunshade), or maybe even a flash.

Quote from: Semmick Photo on March 08, 2015, 22:17
Images taken at night with orange street lights

That is a bit problematic. But night images should also be shot in the blue hour. A scene lit only with orange street lights looks terrible, it's not a very high quality light.

I always shoot RAW so I have more options in the post-processing.

The real bottom line is that stock agencies have bad taste and want only photos they feel are "right", no matter how artistic you images are.

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on February 27, 2015, 18:49
So it's just a question of what colour light is on your screen? If you have a properly callibrated screen for the light you are working in you will see overexposed blue and black (which is what I did see the first time I encountered this dress)?

Nope, it's psychology. If you REALLY saw the colors, in the image the dress is light blue and the laces are brown. I think it all depends if your brain interprets the blue tint in the dress as a white balance error or color of the fabric.

I saw white and gold. My brain said the dress is in blue light (for example a window) and the light on the dress is weaker than the surroundings.

The truth is that the dress is in stronger light than the surroundings, and is thus overexposed. There is also a brownish tint in the dress that causes the "gold" color.

But I have no idea how someone can see the situation correctly... I'm baffled...

(maybe it helps to NOT be a photographer?)

I think you are wasting your time and energy in thinking about things like this.

Just concentrate in shooting new great image. A lot of quality images will make the percentage of your old images smaller - they may even sell some times if your portfolio gets more exposure.

I have some images from 2005. They sell only now and then, but when they do I get some warm and fuzzy feelings - never thought of deleting them.

Quote from: Tror on February 25, 2015, 13:23
Personally I voted for "other"...reason: I need a bigger Studio space!!! The current one is exploding of props, strobes, etc....

Same here. I would like a bigger studio. Now I'm struggling to shoot with all the stuff and things lying around, no spare room to move, it takes time and it's sooooo frustrating. I can't get the "flow" because I'm having trouble to move things (and myself!).

Quote from: SLP_London on February 25, 2015, 08:43
I also thought I had finished with the Tax interview (several times), but keep receiving same email. So what is a TIN and where do I get one, in the UK? Haven't had this issue with any of the other sites.

This might help all of you living in EU: https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/tin/tinByCountry.html

EDIT: I found out that my country's TIN "foreign TIN" could be enough... Let's see if it works... *fingers crossed*

I also got the "missing TIN" message.

I have filled the tax form on a few other sites, do I already have a TIN?

They seem to have missed something in their tax interview, I have no idea what (?)
That combined with the fact that they are "forcing" to pay every month is a really bad thing, I can't just wait and figure out this - some action must be taken very quickly...

They just don't seem to get anything right....

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 24, 2015, 02:18
I have done high quality scans, 600 dpi, edited, cleaned and adjusted, sometimes it can take half an hour of more, to make a really clean, high quality, image. And for that? A sub now and then?

I see it more like cultural work, to make images available instead of having them gather dust.

I have gotten decent returns from my engravings, especially from SS. I propably don't have a single image that has only 1 download. It's all about having a fast workflow and scanning only the images that may interest current audiences (and that aren't already on the sites). Also accurate keywording is essential, so I have learned history quite a bit while doing this - I know the story behind every image

But now I don't do this anymore, when SS stopped accepting the images, it was the best selling site - hands down.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 24, 2015, 02:18
Yes and No.

If someone buys the company and takes over the rights, the original copyright is continued to be in force. Also correct, the time limit on a copyright does not change or extend, because someone buys a company. The term/deadline/expiration is still the same.

Yes, but in old enough images (for example 1884 and earlier) there is not any copyright, there never was, because no such thing existed (not at least in current form). If there never was a copyright, it cannot be renewed or extended.

IS Used to have their limit at 1884, that is a sure bet, it's even before the Berne Convention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention

Quote from: chrisdorney on February 23, 2015, 16:29
Yeah there has got to be some risk involved.  Even though the time-frame has passed, the copyright of the works may have been purchased by another party.

Nope. Public Domain is Public Domain.
The main risk is that when you buy old books, scan images, edit the images, keyword and upload: The image can then be downloaded by someone and then distributed freely, there is really no way of preventing this.

I have some old engravings on microstock sites, I just happened to have some books with nice images - it would have been a shame to just hide them. They make some money - but I stopped this when SS stopped accepting them. I also feel a bit guilty when someone buys an extended license to some of the images - legally they really wouldn't need to do that...

Quote from: Hobostocker on February 22, 2015, 10:58
Indie labels publishing their MISERABLE payouts from the top streaming music services ... as low as 0.001$ per stream !!

This isn't comparable at all. This was more like if we got 0.001$ every time someone looks at one of our images. (Wow - even I would be rich then!)  )

Thanks! I looked at the Easy Release app, and it looks promising... is it easy to use?