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Messages - drugal
51
« on: May 28, 2012, 15:12 »
ok... than why on the site says 150 credits?
They are charging 150 credits and giving 13.3% of the earnings to you, apparently, which is the equivalent of what 20 credits cost.
It seems a bit of a swindle, since the "upsizing service" will simply click the button on their interpolation program and apparently that amount of work is worth 61.7 credits.
I'll upsize twice their size for the same $$  Anybody? I'm very good.. practiced it for years.
52
« on: May 28, 2012, 14:22 »
As far as I see that the agencies seldom treat their contributors fairly, I have to add that when I last checked, the ppl constantly crying about SS giving random / weird / mass rejections don't exactly have a cutting edge HQ port to be honest... and polite. 
Dear god, one of those again. Alright Drugal, I'll quote myself with a few words afterwords and try to restrain myself from answering another idiotic remark about this matter.
The worst thing is that if we check the latest imagery that has been accepted we see garbage we would not even dare to submit.
There goes your theory, right down the drain!
It's some of those hobbyists with snapshots that get 100% acceptance while we bust our .ss providing the best we can, stock imagery, not just pretty pictures. Of course there are a few complaining with low standards, but I'm not talking about them.
Open your eyes and read the forums my friend, even big players with ports you could only dream off get these out of control rejections but are probably affraid to come forward because of repercussions.
Take care all, peace and love
It doesn't go anywhere. How do you know they get 100% acceptance? Maybe their crap gets cut off, they whine, go on submitting, and then some of it gets thru... and you see those. Fits into the picture perfectly.
53
« on: May 28, 2012, 12:52 »
As far as I see that the agencies seldom treat their contributors fairly, I have to add that when I last checked, the ppl constantly crying about SS giving random / weird / mass rejections don't exactly have a cutting edge HQ port to be honest... and polite.
54
« on: May 28, 2012, 03:37 »
Also, if you are not bringing strobes and stands, be prepared for the nightmare of the available fluorescent lighting. With GOOD available light expect 400+ iso, f/2.8 at 1/60/. And still you may have to push the exposure in PS or LR and hope the noise does not kill it. And then there are color temperature issues.
Good luck
Wow, where can you get that EV? Inside a fridge? (at least in EU there usually are extra lights in fridges) In reality I think it's more like ISO 1600-3200 at f2.8 and 1/60. Not to mention that shutter speed doesn't allow virtually any movement, everything has to be shot static. Strobes are a must. Because agencies give you a hard time if you upload full res ISO 320 5D2 shots, unless there are no dark areas.
Nah, malls are well lit, and so are most clothes shops. 400 iso - 2.5-2.8 - 1/80 works well.
55
« on: May 27, 2012, 14:50 »
1) Would I need a property release for shooting in the mall/store?
Yes. Even if it's a kinda' generic place, they most likely will ask for it (i mean the agency).
1.2. What to be the best way to obtain one?
The best way is to already know the people managing the place, and to be on good terms with them (friends, friends' friend, etc) If not, just ask if it's possible, if they resist, you may offer some benefits, like a few photos to be used by them... there probably ins't much else you can offer, but that's a pretty bad deal for you compared to being commissioned for that kind of thing.
2) What would be the best way the contact the store/mall?
Phone, they are likely to trash emails
2.2 Is there some kind of a email template for doing things like these?
Generic formal - polite - casual approach...
3) I'd like the shoot to span a lot of activities - such as buying new shoes (I'd need a shoe store), buying groceries (so, a supermarket chain) etc., that's why I thought it would be best to shoot in a mall where all those things are nearby. But who to contact for things like these and how?
...
That's a different issue, if you go that way each shop will need all of the above. You need to contact the owner of each shop, who will probably contact their brand / retail managers. It's messy.
56
« on: May 26, 2012, 16:02 »
Yes, a different world where there is no financial benefit to any artistic endeavor. Seems like that world will be pretty barren of creative works. People will be too busy making a living in areas that do pay wages.
if you come in asia you will see that world.
here piracy is dominating any field where the product can be digitalized.
and products that can't be pirated will get copied anyway, statues, paintings, designs, t-shirts, clothes, concepts, ideas.
i've met many artists but they're all starving, unsurprisingly.
either they sell to the few local rich guys in town or they go for rich foreign tourists.
vietnam in particular might be the worst scenario i ever seen, with plenty of art galleries employing dozens of painters paid to repaint exact copies of famous western and asian artists, no space for anything else almost and i wonder if these guys would be ever able to paint something original from scratch !
one i asked a gallerist, "w-t-f is actually invented or created in vietnam ? you guys are now almost 90 millions, why i can't see a single vietnamese piece of art worth of being called original ? all i see are copycats of chinese and western artists, books are also a joke, clothes are made in china or outsourced by chinese companies as well, motos are all japanese Honda, movies are hollywood, chinese, japanese, korean, and zero from vietnam" ... and you see, as anybody else i asked the same question they laugh and they can't see where is the problem in all this, it's the most normal thing for them, they barely distringuish between original and copy and imitation ... if tomorrow everybody stop producing art they could care less, they would happily go on pirating and copying old stuff forever and listening 50-yrs odl songs over and over for the umpteenth time.
i mean look at their buddha temple, not to generalize but they're ALL the F.. same with minimal radical design differences, i've been in maybe 500 or more temples so far, we have 5-6 main architecture styles in east asia for religious temples, very nice by the way when done right, and yet, made photos in all of them, front view, side view, indoors, outdoors, golden buddha inside, some paintings, some carvings, monks, etc i'm so F... sick of seeing the same sh-it once again and ask the monks and they absolutely love it ! never heard a single complaint, never ! to made a new temple stand out from the crowd is unthinkable for them, they will happily built the same stuff even for the next 1000 yrs.
sorry to go a bit off topic but i can tell the skeptics that a world where art is not paid well or recognized as something worth its money is a world where art is merely a cheap product like it was fast food .. go in japan instead and you can literally stop at every step to see art on display and sold for crazy money !
what a racist slur.
57
« on: May 26, 2012, 11:18 »
Please forgive me if that sounds to me like whistling in the dark. To paraphrase the Godfather, if history has taught us anything it is that rights once lost are difficult to get back. Especially if the usurpers have enough money to buy congressmen, judges, the even whole legislatures
copyright will never go away, the problem is for photography is quickly becoming unenforceable.
It's not the copyright. Since internet became commonplace there are several things with a pricepoint curving towards zero. This is one of them. Adopt or drop out.
58
« on: May 26, 2012, 11:14 »
Photoshop helps remove watermark. Thieves!!! Ps must be banned immediately!! Oh wait there are other software, multiple new ones will coming out!!! These thieves are lined up against poor microstockers!! They must be banned!! Ban sofware!! This software is based on math thievery to alter watermark pixels. Ban math!!! Mathematicians are crooks!!! They should pay taxes to microstockers for learning a watermark altering science!!! ...and all this software can downloaded from teh internets! By people!!! An army of thieves hunting for my $0.3 picures!! Let's ban teh internets and the people!!! : ))
I'm sorry but most of you people are a sad joke. Head in the sand & pi%*ing against the wind at the same time, a real circus act. While talking about law and rights, you also managed to call just about everybody using the net -except you of course- a thief. Just wait till they take notice of that and get a lawyer to shove it down your throat.... rightly so.
So lets recap:
1. Most of us are a sad joke - but not you
2. Most of us have our heads in the sand - but not you
3. Most of us are pissing against the wind at the same time - but not you
4. Most of us are a real circus act - but not you
5. You can't wait until we have a legal remedy shoved down our throats - but you are pure as the driven snow.
Since water seeks its own level, why are you even here? This seems to be your modus operandi in nearly every post you make. You are not constructive, everyone is always wrong and you are always right and you like to belittle members instead of constructively disagreeing with them and sharing a well crafted response. Immature is all I can say.
"everyone is always wrong and you are always right" thats the pot calling the kettle black. you are not everyone. you are handfull of confused ppl... who think everyone else is wrong, while you'r pure... dude you just described yourself. There are at least 4 lengthy threads of useless whining showing exactly that attitude... Starting make yourselves look not just a fool, but more like crazy self-righteous cult libeling everybody else. Snap out of it.
59
« on: May 26, 2012, 03:59 »
Photoshop helps remove watermark. Thieves!!! Ps must be banned immediately!! Oh wait there are other software, multiple new ones will coming out!!! These thieves are lined up against poor microstockers!! They must be banned!! Ban sofware!! This software is based on math thievery to alter watermark pixels. Ban math!!! Mathematicians are crooks!!! They should pay taxes to microstockers for learning a watermark altering science!!! ...and all this software can downloaded from teh internets! By people!!! An army of thieves hunting for my $0.3 picures!! Let's ban teh internets and the people!!! : ))
I'm sorry but most of you people are a sad joke. Head in the sand & pi%*ing against the wind at the same time, a real circus act. While talking about law and rights, you also managed to call just about everybody using the net -except you of course- a thief. Just wait till they take notice of that and get a lawyer to shove it down your throat.... rightly so.
60
« on: May 25, 2012, 02:33 »
Btw this 'site' will have it's own stock library. That for independents is basically the same port as all other sites... but it removes duplicates. : )
61
« on: May 25, 2012, 02:29 »
This is great! Finally, something revolutionary! It's a little pricey for the average contributor but it will help weed out the serious photogs from the hobbyists, who have been the ones driving down prices. I can't help being excited about this. I imagine Yuri taking full advantage of it. Imagine the negative effect he'll have on the agents. GOOD! $40/month is nothing to him and he'll drive all the traffic to his website, undercutting all the agents. This is the future of stock. Something like this is what I've been waiting for. It's probably not a perfect model but it has potential and what's to say other similar sites won't spring up charging photographers less than $40/month.
Finally, something new and positive to look forward to.
How do the hobbyists drive down prices?
62
« on: May 24, 2012, 04:05 »
Could be a good idea, but it's likely to be filled up mostly by ppl stubbornly pushing stuff that is... just junk, to be honest. I say that because if you look out for the similars thing, DT hardly rejects anything. Standards are anything but high, and if you think reviewers are unreliable, so are contributors since reviewers are picked from contributors. Look at their keyword reporting - I got my models standing in jeans noted of the keyword jeans. People are.... you know... lets be polite... 
63
« on: May 23, 2012, 15:59 »
It might be great as a show piece for the IPO crowd, however I would be willing to bet it will kills sales. The large 1000 pixel images make it unbelievably easy to remove the logos.
I heard that nonsense here about flicker (with a burst of very questionable hate speech about the site and its users). They said something like: 'yeah upload your stuff to flicker like that, and watch your sales tank you fool' So... I have a pretty darn frequented flicker stream, millions of views. I upload there at decent size, 1200+px longer side, dimunitive logo. I tested. I uploaded few batches of stuff made for stock to flickr first (20-30 pics), even put them into groups, lots and lots of views. Absolutely nothing happened to the sales. Tried it without uploading anything to flickr. No difference between the two. This stuff is fools' myth... nonsense. Stuff like this doesn't make any difference. I also started to see my stuff popping up on allday.ru and sites of the like in packages after a while doing stock. Those were full res, they were not from flickr: they were BOUGHT from the stock sites... so if this really does bother you, you should know that the biggest threat to your stuff IS YOUR OWN LOW PRICEPOINT my friend. But no change in sales from that either, except for growing sales according to a growing port.
64
« on: May 23, 2012, 14:45 »
just for fun - max kesier, rt, and his guests way ahead of the crowd and spot on as always - and more insight of course...
65
« on: May 23, 2012, 13:59 »
What really makes me sad is the fact, that there was a HUGE talking about SOPA/PIPA and later ACTA, all the politicians full mouth of IP protection and blahblah. Megaupload was taken down partially illegally and tons of absolutely legal data and backups were deleted illegally and without any hesitation, just because someone got feeling megaupload is damaging intellectual property.
And then we have BILLIONS of illegal shares, likes, downloads etc. on Facebook and now Pinterest and because we are not a photographers union or music studio or Hollywood studio, nobody gives a s**t... And as a bonus, the agencies which should in their own interest make their best to get as much profit as possible are the first in line to make "pinning" (read abusing) of our images easier...
Thats why anyone from these parts supporting SOPA / ACTA was a total idiot. They would have kicked down your door, cuffed and dragged you out of your home face down, and threw you in jail for a random mp3, while your pictures get stolen left & right without anybody giving a sh%=t. Megaupload was raided because it was giving most of its ad income directly to the artists uploading, so they were getting rid of the copyright cartel middlemen taking 70-80-90% of the profit just for sitting around on a monopoly based on political connections. It's a small death for democracy that these guys can use the state, the police as their personal mob style enforcers to wipe someone out because they put up competition as it's supposed to happen in a free market capitalism... they really hate the free market. By the way I heard they are free to delete anything from any user without any consideration. Thats millions and millions of users. Wasn't USA about the sanctity of private property? What a huge failure on that notion... and some people applauded this.. unbelievable.
66
« on: May 23, 2012, 13:33 »
I would buy FB at 7-8$.
67
« on: May 23, 2012, 11:38 »
It didn't take long for trouble to brew over this one. From the Daily Telegraph;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/9284832/Facebook-founder-Mark-Zuckerberg-sued-by-shareholders-over-IPO.html
I don't get this. Does the Goldman, Morgan, JP, Henry Paulson type bunch need an introduction to anyone? They have been screwing everybody for decades now, their middle name is fraud. I used to shy away from this, but nowadays I have to agree when they talk about them as financial terrorists... it's not an overstatement at all. Oh yeah, of course it's the 'smaller guys' getting screwed again (which by now includes the mere millionaires) My take on this is that just about everybody knows by now how fraudulent these evaluations are, and they too wanted the quick, free and easy speculation-scam money, because suddenly they thought they are in business with the insider elite by taking part in this IPO. OF course the real elite screwed them, as always. They deserve this.
Almost ashamed to say that before life as a photographer I worked at one of the aforementioned banks doing company valuations for mergers and acquisitions (M&A)... Do I trust bankers or anything that say? Nope. Usually these valuation exercises start out by determining with what value you want...then you just work your way back from that. There isn't ANY honesty in it whatsoever.
Thats exactly what more savvy financial and news commentators like Max say, that there is no price discovery mechanism anymore, it's the opposite, the big player sets a price target and manipulates the market to reach it, then sells, shorts, etc... It must be cool to have a job like that, you can't really loose. The bad part for the Joe bag o' donuts is that this isn't capitalism, it's feudalism.
68
« on: May 23, 2012, 11:30 »
Istock's upload is marvellous piece for the IT museums, straight form the 80's. It's dysfunctional at every step and turn. Even one of the menus rolls down if do a natural circle with the curosor for the upload button, and blocks it. It's as if someone made a detailed effort to annoy the users. In short: it's junk.
69
« on: May 23, 2012, 11:24 »
I don't think it has really started yet. I'm expecting FB's price to fall by 90% of the IPO valuation within 2 years. They have no means of generating the revenue to even remotely justify it. The emperor truly has no clothes.
Zuckerbeg has been victimized by these bankers, imho. They trapped him in this scam. I hope this won't destroy FB, beside the IPO fraud, it is a decent platform to advertise yourself a photographer, and to keep connected with (possible) customers.
Hi Mark, it must be Mark right? Who else would post this.
Mark what? Mark my words, maybe
70
« on: May 23, 2012, 09:48 »
Zuckerbeg has been victimized by these bankers, imho. They trapped him in this scam. I hope this won't destroy FB, beside the IPO fraud, it is a decent platform to advertise yourself a photographer, and to keep connected with (possible) customers.
Victimized? You surely must be joking.
No I'm not. They met this young fellow who was a bit too self assured, and they saw a great opportunity for an enormous scam that probably means destroying his reputation. I'm not saying he is gonna end up in the poorhouse or anything like that. I'm not feeling terribly sorry for him either... but I think they scammed him too.
71
« on: May 23, 2012, 09:32 »
I don't think it has really started yet. I'm expecting FB's price to fall by 90% of the IPO valuation within 2 years. They have no means of generating the revenue to even remotely justify it. The emperor truly has no clothes.
Zuckerbeg has been victimized by these bankers, imho. They trapped him in this scam. I hope this won't destroy FB, beside the IPO fraud, it is a decent platform to advertise yourself a photographer, and to keep connected with (possible) customers.
72
« on: May 23, 2012, 09:17 »
It didn't take long for trouble to brew over this one. From the Daily Telegraph;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/9284832/Facebook-founder-Mark-Zuckerberg-sued-by-shareholders-over-IPO.html
I don't get this. Does the Goldman, Morgan, JP, Henry Paulson type bunch need an introduction to anyone? They have been screwing everybody for decades now, their middle name is fraud. I used to shy away from this, but nowadays I have to agree when they talk about them as financial terrorists... it's not an overstatement at all. Oh yeah, of course it's the 'smaller guys' getting screwed again (which by now includes the mere millionaires) My take on this is that just about everybody knows by now how fraudulent these evaluations are, and they too wanted the quick, free and easy speculation-scam money, because suddenly they thought they are in business with the insider elite by taking part in this IPO. OF course the real elite screwed them, as always. They deserve this.
73
« on: May 23, 2012, 09:03 »
It just occurred to me...the share button on DT may explain why my sales have taken a dive. Since the pics are free on pinterest, who needs to buy them? 
My sales have been way waay up in the last 7-8 days
74
« on: May 22, 2012, 16:59 »
Funny this! all of a sudden this entire forum is full of half-assssed financial wizzkids and accountant. soon we dont have to take pics, we just invest, right.
Sure beats working for a living. Thats what the richest ppl int the world do too.
75
« on: May 22, 2012, 16:56 »
As I and others have said, that's hardly the issue. The target market is women in the 20s and 30s. They suggest using it for "planning weddings, decorating homes and sharing recipes". How many of the target market using the site in the suggested ways are going to go to a stock site to find images? They're going to look at wedding dress sites, home decoration sites, recipe sites, or women's magazine sites, and that's where they may pick up 'your' (=someone's) unwatermarked pics, not linked back to the agency.
I don't actually use the site at all, but say 'I' was going to use it to 'pin' some hairstyles I wanted to show my stylist, so visited some magazine sites to research hairstyles, then I realise the copyright implications (most people would not give this a thought). How likely is it that 'I' (=most of the relatively few people who considered copyright) would then do a GIS to see if I could find the legitimate source of the image, then buy credits or pay money to license the image? If it was me, I'd just go earlier to the hairdresser and flick through the mags in her waiting area.
we are talking about a scrapbook on line not pirating stolen music or stock images - besides, there are a zillion blogs out there that do the exact same thing. Anyway, I think we will have to agree to disagree on this one
How is a "scrapbook on line" any different than a playlist online? Except of course, it consists of images rather than music.
If you replace the word "Pin" with "Grab" when speaking of the site features (because that is in effect what it does) you may see it from another perspective. To grab, with permission, a watermarked image image that links back to a microstock site is very different than to grab a licensed image from a blog -- even with the blogger's blessing. Perhaps the blogger holds a proper license, but the pinner/grabber does not.
If you are a photographer, and own a website, or have produced slideshows for customers, would you consider grabbing copyrighted music without proper license to use in the background? If your answer is "yes", you will likely never understand what we are concerned about here.
Whats your problem with a playlist online? grooveshark has been doing that for ages.
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