Quote from: john_woodcock on March 19, 2020, 13:00
"Today the UK has 103 deaths vs Germany's 31 even with Germany's massive land borders making control of movement so much more difficult"

Compared to Italy's 2978, France's 264 and Spain's 767. Let's get a bit of perspective here and stop making cheap political points out of a crisis.

I can only say that you are delusional. Reality will fall on you like a ton of bricks.

I'm hyper-critical of the people and politicians of my own country, but here we've been implementing measures with weeks in advance compared to other countries in Europe based on China and Italy examples. Compared to UK I think it measures in months...

In fact the government has been playing catch-up with the people, who by their own initiative took self-protective measures and have been demanding stronger decisions from the government, which happened and will be stronger in the next few weeks.

Proportionally, we even have more infections per million inhabitants than UK, although considering the attitude from the UK government how trustworthy are those current 2600 cases? Our number of deaths is almost nonexistent compared with the 108 fatalities in UK, which discredits the 2600 number of infected in UK.

Considering the number of deaths, either the British authorities are completely oblivious regarding the real number of infected people which will soon demolish your NHS, or your NHS is absolute crap for having such percentage of deaths.

Since I'm willing to believe that the problem is not in your NHS that leaves completely incompetent politicians. In either case it shows that UK is adrift and I cannot imagine what could happen there since you don't even have the warm weather and sun exposure to help slow down the virus.

Well, yesterday was really bad but today is appalling. Weekdays are becoming weekends apparently.

Very, very worried as this time of year my main income comes from travel images. If this does not pickup somehow I'll be in serious trouble.

Quote from: ShadySue on March 16, 2020, 11:19

Quote from: MicroVet on March 16, 2020, 09:15
I've just read the news that Donald Trump, the US president, tried to secure the exclusive for the coronavirus vaccine to the United States, making it unavailable to the rest of the world! 

The vaccine is being developed (soon to be tested in humans) by a German company, and after the refusal of the company to give the US the exclusive, Trump tried to buy the company.

How come is it that with each new bit of info which comes out about Trump, I still think, "this must be fake news".
I do apologise, it's only too real.

Quote
The German ministry of Health already commented on the issue declaring that when a vaccine is developed it will be for the whole world and that the company is safe.

This action by Trump, trying to prevent the world to access a cure securing it just for the US is beyond anything I thought possible and places Trump among the likes of Adolph Hitler.

I consider this an act of war and attempted genocide and I would completely support isolation and heavy sanctions against the US, while this monster, or another one like him elected by the Americans, is in office.

His followers will just say he's making good on his promise to keep America First (and to Hell with the rest of us).

Well the news appeared on a reference newspaper of my country (Western Europe), also in the Guardian, NYT, etc.

I've just read the news that Donald Trump, the US president, tried to secure the exclusive for the coronavirus vaccine to the United States, making it unavailable to the rest of the world! 

The vaccine is being developed (soon to be tested in humans) by a German company, and after the refusal of the company to give the US the exclusive, Trump tried to buy the company.

The German ministry of Health already commented on the issue declaring that when a vaccine is developed it will be for the whole world and that the company is safe.

This action by Trump, trying to prevent the world to access a cure securing it just for the US is beyond anything I thought possible and places Trump among the likes of Adolph Hitler.

I consider this an act of war and attempted genocide and I would completely support isolation and heavy sanctions against the US, while this monster, or another one like him elected by the Americans, is in office.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on March 07, 2020, 15:10

Quote from: Pauws99 on March 07, 2020, 08:09

Quote from: MicroVet on March 07, 2020, 07:46
I do not remember any agency back in 2006 that did not require a photographer to pass an acceptance test. Sure, some were more stringent than others but all asked a number of candidate images to pass to be approved as a contributor.

A really strange thing is happening with searches on SS on the "Fresh Content" order.

I searched for "palace interior" to take a look at what is being approve nowadays and what was being approved years back. Ordered by the "Fresh Content"option, jumped at page 1000 (out of 1091) and I see images from 2019, 2018 and other recent years in the mix. Even on page 1091 that happens. The same happens with other searches where I have mages from 2007 and on the last page I get recent images and none of mine.

Am I missing something? Isn't "Fresh Content" synonym of newest? Or does it mean unsold or something like that?

I guess it might mean unsold...I get quite a lot of old images that never sold getting a sale and some pretty poor ones at that. Which shows its never a good idea to remove your "crappy" content.

We have no hint what any of the words mean on SS. Easy example, Top Images, which just like Most Popular, is in no imaginable way, what any of us would call either of those phrases. One of my recent uploads just jumped to the first "top Image, after I uploaded about 100 other new images. Why? No downloads, the new images are a couple lines below, and almost all editorial, filling page 1 and 2, but why would a photo of bread, suddenly be my Top Image.

We can spend forever trying to figure this out, but there's no answer.

Every site in 2006 would be what? iStock, Shutterstock and Alamy? LOL 

In 2007 I already was in almost all the Microstock agencies I'm today except for a couple I joined later. I do not not remember back then joining an agency without having to be approved unless my memory is betraying me. And this means SS, IS, FL, DT, 123RF, BS and Alamy (was Macro).

Of course, not all had the same level of requirements but none accepted you just by registering.

I do not remember any agency back in 2006 that did not require a photographer to pass an acceptance test. Sure, some were more stringent than others but all asked a number of candidate images to pass to be approved as a contributor.

A really strange thing is happening with searches on SS on the "Fresh Content" order.

I searched for "palace interior" to take a look at what is being approve nowadays and what was being approved years back. Ordered by the "Fresh Content"option, jumped at page 1000 (out of 1091) and I see images from 2019, 2018 and other recent years in the mix. Even on page 1091 that happens. The same happens with other searches where I have mages from 2007 and on the last page I get recent images and none of mine.

Am I missing something? Isn't "Fresh Content" synonym of newest? Or does it mean unsold or something like that?

Quote from: pics2 on March 06, 2020, 09:35

Quote from: Pauws99 on March 06, 2020, 08:57
The root cause for me is that they have made it possible to become a contributor with zero knowledge of photography or stock photography creating an unmanagable tsumani of images. There was a time when at least you needed to demonstrate a reasonable level of competence.  The quicker in a process you filter out poor quality the cheaper it is. Can you imagine a supermarket using a supplier where 90% of their product has to be rejected as sub-standard? I'm pretty sure SS have such people.

Sorry, but that's not true. It was like this since the day one of Shutterstock and microstock itself. We can't pretend now that microstock was some kind of macrostock once upon a time. Microstock ruined macrostock and any appreciation of quality in photography years ago.

That is not true. The visual requirements to be accepted on the main microstock agencies in 2006 were very high.

The main difference for the macrosctock agencies like Getty, Corbis, Jupiter, etc, is that micro would accept images with 3 megapixels, while macro demanded 18 megapixels.

From my experience the advantage of the macrostock agencies back then, besides resolution, would be on the very creative images with high production costs. Back then very few people were in position to invest a lot on photo-shoots, and creative unique image weren't (as today) the best option for micro due to low demand and low paying sales.

But apart from that, from isolated images, lifestyle, to travel photos, the quality presented by the Macros were appalling! Truly horrible in the vast majority of cases. The success of Micro isn't based only on price. A lot of it has to do with the high quality of the images supplied in the categories best suited to Micro.

Today I get to see images on SS that would absolutely NEVER have been approved in the past. They would have failed in every requisite. Tilted images (not by choice), grainy and with a strong orange cast that kill every other colors and show an absolute lack of technical ability, and in no way are an artistic choice. These are images of the interior of a palace which I know well and demand a good quality camera, not a cellphone on auto-settings.

The worst part is that they show up high in searches, above incomparably better images. That crap is the among the first images a buyer will see on SS before scrolling down to better ones. This problem is currently transversal to all images types on SS and IS.

Quote from: Chichikov on February 23, 2020, 17:37
Yeah, what an exciting new: another almost useless feature...
Adobe, do you really thing that everybody knows the ID numbers of the own assets?
(How this people can live so far from reality?)

It's not that complicated for people who use their brain.

Just search inside your own portfolio by keyword for the image(s) you want and the image number is right at the bottom of the image. Sure, it would be easier to be able to search by keyword, but claiming that Adobe is expecting us to know each image ID like there isn't a simple way to know it is simply childish.

As a suggestion, when we search an image in the Dashboard (using the super-secret voodoo technique above) I would like to have the total amount earned, besides the number of downloads.

I was also unable to open the site for a few days. Even the websites which check if a site is on or offline gave me that it was down worldwide.


Searched info on Fakebook but nor the msg page or Tyler pages mentioned anything. It was very strange. Started to think if some agency took legal action to shut msg down...

Quote from: PZF on February 18, 2020, 09:07
Sales truly feeble recently, all tiny sums.

Just hope that decent sales aren't going to be replaced by contests, 'community' and other such 'fun' stuff like at 500px......

Not to mention refunds and the personal use scam buyers use (probably with the help of distributors) to get commercial uses but paying for micro sums.

Quote from: ShadySue on February 13, 2020, 14:22

MicroVet may be the only person who is * that trend. The only two other people who have said they do better on Alamy than they do on iS or micros in general have tiny or microscopic ports on the micro/s and large ones on Alamy. One of the loudest shouters about how few sales he got on iS compared to how many he got on Alamy, at the time I checked it out, fewer than 20, sic, twenty, files on iS and over 20K on Alamy.
There are several people who joined one or more micros with the recent commission cut, or in the past year, and they are generally astonished that they are doing pretty well, mostly better than they do nowadays on Alamy. Some of them were previously extremely anti-micro.



Despite having a larger portfolio on alamy than I have o IS, the amount I've earned in both agencies is almost a copy from each other year by year. Even in the HUGE downfall of earnings (85 to 90%) seems a copy.

The portfolio of IS is part of my alamy portfolio and the alamy exclusive images, although selling, were largely outperformed by the micro ones on alamy.

Alamy did very well in the past if you took the time to keyword well and maximize the chances to appear in the first pages. Today, even being in the first pages does not guarantee sales.

Last year, compared to my best years, I had about half the sales. On top of that, each sale (Net) averages around 18% of what each license used to earn me back then.

The rest of the stock agencies are not much better. The price war between agencies summed up with greed, plus the inability for photographers to organize themselves, and photographers submitting to every new piece of s**t of agencies that competed on low price killed the industry.

I was under the impression that only a fraction of the Alamy costumers have their searches recorded for the Alamy Measures feature. I thought it's was most frequent and steady buyers. Unless they changed it.

One of the best sellers of Alamy has a huge portfolio of nature.

Quote from: marthamarks on February 13, 2020, 03:09

Quote from: ShadySue on February 12, 2020, 22:44

Quote from: marthamarks on February 12, 2020, 21:32
Makes me very glad I never bothered with Alamy. Sometimes just keeping one's operation small and simple is the best approach.

Probably wouldn't have worked for you, Martha. Never was a great outlet for wildlife.

I alone sold more pics of African Wild Dogs on iStock in a year than Alamy had searches on 'African Wild Dog' in that same year. And there are loads of great pics of APHD on iStock that must surely have sold a lot more than mine did.

Glad to hear that, because there was a time when I thought I'd give Alamy a shot. (Or a bunch of my shots.) Never did it, however. Happy!

Just because it didn't work for you, it doesn't mean it didn't and still does for others.  I'm no longer earning $10.000 (net) per year on alamy alone because now I'm earning a small fraction of that. But it's still better than most micros.

Honestly, that is a good commercial picture. In this day and age of Social Media that image with the right advertiser will relate to a lot of people because it has a homey feeling, it's cute with the cat in a relaxed position which conveys a message, has copy space. The crop is strange though and in micro that image is lost.

Well something is definitely different. I've been uploading photos and already had sales from those batches in all agencies, including the lowest earners, but nothing on SS.

That is a first in 14 years of stock for me.

Quote from: Steveball on November 07, 2019, 07:32
Site still messed up here.

Same.

Quote from: hellou on November 06, 2019, 14:31
This means nothing.
If you visit a website it will load a style.css file in the cache of your browser.
If your connection failed for a moment or the style.css wasn`t available for just one moment it will lead to this problem.
Reload the site. If 123rf has seperate caching "ExpiresByType" you have to wait until it expires or go into the settings of your browser and delete cached files.

For the moment it seems that the site is back online.

As for your explanation, I tried to open the site in other browsers I never used to visit 123rf and the same happened on them. Even cleared the cache, etc in the regular browser too. Unless they share the same cache or resources, which i doubt, I think the problem is different.

When I say disconfigured I mean what it's seen in the attached image. Completely unusable. Am I the only one seeing this?

For the past two days the 123rf site is completely disconfigured for me. Including the buyer side. Is the same happening to you?

Considering the way the stock business is going, I think being charitable to your contributors should be a priority. It's not like we're all getting rich down here. Much by the contrary.

Quote from: alexandersr on October 09, 2019, 15:28
The Nicolas Maduro government is very ruthless with the opposition. Same as the government of former President Hugo Chavez. Something I don't understand is why apply sanctions to people who are not part of the  Nicolas Maduro government.

You will understand when random acts of highly organized sabotage, that no one can pinpoint the origin or perpetrators, starts happening to give the needed final push to a stressed population to initiate a civil war.

The objective is to create a situation so unbearable that even most of the supporters of Maduro will not be able to endure more.

The common people have always been disposable objects, to the point of physical elimination, when it comes to American foreign politics. I still remember the video of an American bomber during the Yugoslavia conflict, where he was ordered to annihilate a train with hundreds of civilian refuges. Officially it was argued it was a military train, but the US armed forces were forced to recognized they knew that only civilians were present, and it nothing else but punishment.

Around 60 refunds and the worst August since 2007 and a 33% drop from last year. iStock/Getty are just despicable. If I did not depend from stock income solely I would drop them in a heartbeat.

Quote from: mindstorm on September 16, 2019, 04:12

Quote from: Brasilnut on September 16, 2019, 03:28
Why would a buyer ever need to make a print of an easyjet airplane?

I can think of LOTs of reasons.  Maybe a travel agency? Maybe a tour operator? Maybe a local Chamber of Commerce pushing for people to come visit their island?  I'm sure I could come with half a dozen others if I wanted to spend the time to think about it...

I'm not sure why you are NOT able to come up with uses?

The examples you mentioned are NOT Personal Uses. That license category is meant for a singular person who wants to print an image to hang on the wall, for example, or make a Christmas card for the family. Things like that

Your examples refer to companies, not a person, making a commercial use of the image. Even if it's decoration of the store it's a commercial use.

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on September 09, 2019, 06:08
while the sales price average seems to have declined to within spitting distance of the micros, the sales volume has not risen accordingly. My sales volume has remained roughly static for six or seven years but my sales value has halved and the commission cut has

And that above, is the main problem. To which I may add the fact that to costumers take months to pay a $5 sale, contrary to micros where the payment is immediate. With such cheap sales there's no reason the image isn't immediately paid.

In 2013 I had roughly the same sales as in 2018. Yet the average license price dropped from $60 to $27, and my average commission form $33 to $12. And this year my average commission is even lower than last year with a big drop in the number of sales.

Quote from: mj007 on September 02, 2019, 06:05
Go to Dashboard ,it will list number of DL and ranking you have. Go to Contributor Account, it will list what level(Gold) you are at.

Thanks.