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Messages - a.k.a.-tom
Pages: 1 2 [3] 4 5 6 7 8 ... 44
51
« on: April 29, 2010, 19:00 »
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52
« on: April 29, 2010, 18:56 »
I've got to go cruise DT now... but generally speaking, I don't disable any images. Countless times (on all sites) I have images that have been online for 2 or 3 years, never sold, and then when they finally did, they'd sell repeatedly for some time... my philosophy 'aint old till sold.... and then, it's new again' .... but I have some getting near that 4 year limit on DT... gotta check this out, thanx.  =tom
53
« on: April 21, 2010, 17:20 »
about 800 hits a day, depositphotos gets 38000, featurepics gets 28000. think I'll pass
phil, were'd you grab that view count from (800 a day)? I couldn't even pull up views on individual pix... curious.. =tom
54
« on: April 21, 2010, 17:06 »
If you go to Montana you will never move back home wherever that is. If I was in good health I'd move to Montana tomorrow. Freedom!
-Larry
I'll be visiting in September... Be shooting in Glacier, and up into Banff & Jasper. Looking forward to it very much!!! Have friends out there that wont put a foot back in Jersey. Can't blame them at all. When you open a studio in Montana, Larry, I'll be knocking on the door for a job!! =tom
55
« on: April 16, 2010, 15:49 »
just looked.... i'm still not there.... fine thanks for being opted in at both IS & StockXpert.....missing sales... =tom
56
« on: April 14, 2010, 16:38 »
sure ticks me off... I pulled a nice bit of change out of StockXpert... thru jui & photo.com... of course not a penny since StockXpert closed the door. This is our reward for being the few that opted in on the subs. =tom
57
« on: April 07, 2010, 16:39 »
The good old days, to me, are right now!
Amen, bro. The late Frank Zappa once said, "the only reason we should call them the 'good old days' is because we know they will never come back again". I think he had a pretty valid point. LOL I concur with Sharply_Done. =tom
58
« on: April 07, 2010, 16:35 »
If you want some free advice, get your keywording sorted out right now, before you have so many images online that it becomes just about impossible. E.g, a search on 'elephant' has a photo of two zebras and no elephant and an image from Cambodia (where there might be elephants tiny in the image, but I couldn't zoom in to ascertain).
amen. I'm looking... let me read the fine print. But like many have already said... most of us are a little gun shy about new agencies... they're getting like nachos. One disappears and another pops up top replace it, but, for how long. Many have spent considerable time uploading ports... only to see the "plane" go down in flames. Dominique, I wish you success!!! And, I will be watching. I do want to expand, maybe it will be with you? We'll see. =tom
59
« on: April 05, 2010, 16:21 »
to all.... thanks much for the tips!!! I'll be trying them out. =tom
60
« on: April 05, 2010, 16:17 »
I am looking for something new, to expand. I already have a personal pro site but would not be opposed to linking up... Just moments ago, I made my first visit to Cluster.. I like the site, I like most of what I see.. I decided to check out the competition, see what I'm up against. I am primarily a landscape/travel 'tog. I punched in Grand Canyon National Park.. Low and behold, on the first page, a picture of a jellyfish ..... ? ... keyworded Arizona, California, Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon National Park, Landscape, Mountains.... Humm.... Perhaps there is a aquarium somewhere in Arizona... ?? Don't know. However, I do know for a fact after spending considerable time in the Grand Canyon..... there are no jellyfish. I am not a big fan of keyword spamming. And it seems to be more prevalent than it should be. I would be interested in signing on... but... guys, this for me is a problem. =tom
61
« on: April 02, 2010, 22:56 »
wouldnt have been surprised if it were true.... wonder how long I would have had to wait to see those pix 'migrated' to some other backstreet sub-site Getty would pull out of their ...... ear. =tom meaning: still waiting to see my StockXpert & IS stuff show up on Stinkstock. meanwhile, losing all those sales I used to have on StockXpert.
62
« on: April 02, 2010, 22:49 »
i have to deal with fringe and complex chromatic aberrations. Do you have good tutorials / books to recommend on this topic?
If you shoot with a Canon, buy only Canon's lenses and convert your raw files with DPP (Digital Photo Professional), you can remove much of the problems with a couple of mouse clicks because there are "profiles" for each lens (with a few expectations). I think at least my 5D mk II can also do the processing in-camera if I shot JPG (which I don't).
-Canon 5D mk II produces clean images. I almost usuallty shoot at 100 ISO
-If I'm doubtful for some image's sharpness or noise I may downsize the image as far as 50% (that's about 5mpix from a 5DmkII file, enough for most micros)
One of the reasons I bought the mk II.... and I use ONLY Canon glass. Yet... low and behold, I'm out shooting in the snow on a bright sunny day, dark, dark blue skies......... and whoaaaaaaaa purple fringing all over the place in jpgs. Snow against the sky, snow against shadows... So bad, I could spend a month on one image and not eliminate it all.. I suppose I gotta shoot at lower ISO's.... wasted a lot of good time with those shots. I'm all about getting the best image I can out of the cam... used to be, I'd shoot crap and fix it later... Not now... just don't have the time. Besides ISO... what other reasons may be giving me purple fringe in the mk II? =tom
63
« on: April 02, 2010, 22:37 »
Believe me, I learned the hard way. They will kill you on those artifacts...
Do you use Lightroom or ACR to edit the RAWs? The vibrance slider is great for upping saturation without artifacts. Really helped my acceptance rate 
I play with Photoshop 7 and Elements 6... and do some stuff in Micrografx. I just recently started playing with the Beta 2 Lightroom (gotta upgrade to the new release).... and am not that deep into it yet.... just havent had the time to devote to it. But I'll have to try your suggestion... I must admit that I do get destroyed by artifacting... You know, as you surf IS... there is a boatload of pix that are obviously tweeked/saturated to the moon and back... there is no way many of those pix came out of the cam that way.. so whats up with that? The rejection I don't understand is 'flat/dull colors' on images that are vibrant in color. oh well.... thanx for the tip, Lis =tom
64
« on: April 02, 2010, 16:45 »
I tend to agree with Powerdroid on Istock and its standards. Istock are perfectly willing to accept saturated images with a lot of "pop" as long as you don't add artifacts in the process.
read your comment after I posted mine above... and I must admit Lisafx, you are correct.. that was a problem with some of those that they rejected in my last batch... =tom
65
« on: April 02, 2010, 16:43 »
I think you misunderstand me. I think IS and SS have *different* standards. IS prefers less editing at all. SS prefers (and sells more) with higher contrast, higher saturation, more sharpened images. It's two opposite approaches. I have a hard time getting stuff in at IS (35-40% usually) and I'm not going to do what feels like a half-ass edit to make IS take it. I want the image to look the best it can so it sells. I don't think slightly undersaturated, slightly undersharp, slightly low contrast is a good image. I know IS wants the designers to have leeway - and that's fine - but I'm not editing twice. So iStock takes what they want from what I send em. And like I said, I'm good with that.
I'm understanding you, mantonino. I agree completely. I just had a crappo upload with IS. Shot down 75% of the pix.. why? A lot of them were tweeked. With IS you dont even want to sneeze at the original file!! Curiously, IMHO, many of the pix were rich, yet not overdone. Personally, I don't like overly saturated images, they start to look totally fake... but this is the kicker for me. Many of the rejected ones were shot down for "Flat/dull colors". WTH? Made no sense at all. I'm not one to bellyache about rejections... 99.99% of the time, I couldn't care less. But I have to admit, this batch and the rejection reasons... did... tick me off. It takes so frackin long to upload to IS... and then to have 75% of it shot down, especially for flat/dull colors... kind of irked me, cause they were anything but flat & dull. For me SS & IS are about equal in payout $$.. however, my port is about half as much on IS. As far as which has higher standards??? SS takes stuff IS rejects on me... but also, IS has taken stuff SS rejected.. so go figure. Ticked as I am today with IS... I'll be back with another batch next week... "It is what it is" Rejections and even wacko rejections are the nature of the beast. =tom
66
« on: April 02, 2010, 16:40 »
.... sorry leaf, I stuttered on the enter key....
67
« on: March 26, 2010, 17:02 »
?
wow....
68
« on: March 26, 2010, 16:54 »
I started out at USPhotoStock... went right into DT, SS & BigStock... I was very nervous about IS... thought my stuff wasn't good enough... after about a year I got up the nerve and readied myself for rejection... surprised to see it all accepted on the first try. I then spread more and more... at the highest I was with 12 agencies..... .......now, looking back, a big fat waste of time and energy. Some just plain sucked... others had great potential but just couldnt survive the Great Micro War. Today I'm primarily on IS & SS...the bulk of my sales... do very little with DT & BigStock.. and am starting to upload more and more to Alamy. However, I'm still open to trying something that may have potential. =tom
69
« on: March 22, 2010, 08:31 »
I havent read this entire thread.... just bits and pieces... I do however, sit and watch with wonder and amusement in the Great Microstock Wars. Is it just my thinking or... is SS the only stable micro force left on the planet? Since day one, I have had no problem with SS. Maybe they should consider an exclusive program. The way everything is in such turmoil... I might actually seriously consider it for the first time in my micro-life. =tom ... or maybe I'm wrong....
70
« on: March 22, 2010, 08:22 »
................ I'll probably reupload ..................
that's been my argument for years... I dont know how many times I have waited a few weeks and reloaded the exact same file...... and it is accepted AND it sells. There's no hardcore science in the review process... many times it's just a roll of the dice. Accepted/rejected. Perhaps I should say, there may be a science, however, you still have humans applying it. And, they are prone to error. =tom
71
« on: March 22, 2010, 08:18 »
beauty is in the eye of the beholder blah blah blah... I've had pix rejected by SS for artifacting and then IS took them I've had pix rejected by IS for artifacting and then SS took them.... DT, BigStock, etc... what kicks me more is 'purple fringing'.... out of my 5D MkII... you can't see it at 100%... but if you push it to 200 or more... well well , there it is. ..only in super high contrast such as bright snow meets dark blue sky.... I'm not going off the deep end with this being Mr. Babyhead. I've had other photogs look at these pix too... and they agree. You cant see it... however, if you blow anything up enough, there is going to be an 'event horizon' where the colors are adulterized. ... My question is... if ya can't see any problem at 100%, why is it a problem? =tom ...in the long run, it's no biggie to me, I dont make my living on micros... they can take 'em or leave 'em. Funny thing is, I've never had any pic rejected by everyone.. one of the big four always take it.
72
« on: March 19, 2010, 16:06 »
Quick thanks to those that responded to me... much appreciated. I suppose I was looking for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow... alas... in my case as well, the only real producers over time were/are the big four. However, I may stick my nose into a couple of those suggested (with a small port).... see what happens.. ha ha ha or what doesnt happen.. =tom
73
« on: March 19, 2010, 15:57 »
I'm losing.. I had small but regular sales with StockXpert.... and I am in phase 3... this translates to... all those pix that sold regularly... are now in limbo... waiting since the day StockXpert shut down... until Thinkstock gets around to migrating me over. I have no idea what additional sales went to my IS port and my other ports... all I do know is... there's no money coming out of the StockXpert stable. =tom
74
« on: March 17, 2010, 17:32 »
Funny... I just got done asking Race this question in a private email...LOL I'm only really active on DT, BigStock, SS & IS, the only 4 where any money is coming in on a regular basis.. StockXpert was sending me checks... but no more... on 3 others but no money to be made for me there. Been down the road on many many more....some I eventually dropped, others shriveled up and blew away .... I too am looking for something new, something fresh. Anyone with any ideas, I'm all ears. =tom
75
« on: March 16, 2010, 18:59 »
well i'm opted in at both IS and StockXpert and still see zero of mine on thinkstock. =tom
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