in reality, 35mm has ALWAYS been for amateurs until a few decades ago.

but now we have 36MP cameras and the technology divide is getting smaller.

however, as pointed out by others the difference is in the details and dynamic range.

there's plenty of landscape photographers still shooting on medium format with film and others using Hasselblads.
they would laugh at the idea of using a D800.

I like what Stocksy is trying to sell, i will certainly apply as a contributor.

On the other side, it seems at the moment they're trying to sell as RF stuff that belongs to RM.
In plus, plenty of their images can be found for a pittance on micros.

The logo should be just "Stocksy", sorry but buyers dont give a sh-it if photographers make a living or if it's a coop or if it's ISO 9001 of if it's ethical and eco-friendly.

I can't imagine Stocksy making billions but certainly it can find its niche as "midstock".

I don't really care about anything but sales, and my Alamy sales this month are pathetic.  Wonder if the site redesign has anything to do with it?

in my experience, corny stock images that sell well on micros don't exactly fit well on Alamy nor as Creative/RF nor as editorial.

travel images are another story, but it seems alamy buyers like the "natural" look rather than overphotoshopped stuff.

after the recent tweaks in their search my sales and views are now stable at alamy but zooms and some other stats are getting more and more useless.

on the other hand the rants of their CEO in the Alamy Blog now are prominently linked in the home page, i'm afraid this is the last straw for what was left of their idea of interacting with contributors.

so, no more forum apart for the few oldies still writing there, and censorship in their corporate blog, FB page, and Twitter page.

it's funny how much all these companies love the idea of being "social" while acting 100% anti social when  the slightest criticism hits their as-s.

D7100 specs :

http://nikonrumors.com/2013/02/21/nikon-d7100-vs-nikon-d7000-specifications-comparison.aspx/

am i the only one feeling frustrated at the idea that potential buyers first look on google images rather than in the agencies sites ?

how many other buyers instead of clicking further just stop at google images and steal hi-res photos right away ?

Lobo

Posted 5 mins ago
Quote

I'll run this up the chain to see if we can make this a priority! Thanks for the great idea! I will make sure we get people on this immediately. It's comments like this that help us continue to make sure our contributors are heard!

Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule. I know you didn't have to do us this great favor but because you have I will name my new bamboo plant after you. I hope you don't mind if I shorten it's name, as it's name tag will only allow for 5 characters due to the fact that I use bubble letters for all my name tags.

is Lobo aware that such a comment to a customer would make him fired on the spot in any other normal company ?

why nobody writes to istock's CEO ? i can't believe Getty is employing such an unprofessional employee.

Talking about web site design, i'm finishing a web site for a relative of mine, it's amazing how much the use of images is the MOST important factor in modern design, i've now a very nice corporate web site up and running in front of me  and if had to take off the images it would be a meaningless unattractive unprofessional page with some text nobody would bother to read.

One would think being this the typical scenario images should be priced and valued accordingly, and yet all we're witnessing is a race to the very bottom.

Oh and by the way, i ask my relative to provide me a nice photo with him and his business partners to be used in the About Us page, he told me they've no money to pay a photographer doing corporate portraits so they will be fine using a generic stock image or a using their iPhones ? 

Now, why corporate photography is perceived as expensive and highly respected while the stock images in their web site are seen as cheap rubbish to patch holes between text and articles ?

Sorry, all this cannot go on forever, cheap buyers and designers had it too easy for too long.

Ultimately, these higher prices don't make most of us more money, they make us less.  Hence all the bitching.

Yes.
But there's an educational value in all that : buyers must realize producing commercial images is not cheap as chips.

Try asking designers a 20% discount and all hell would break loose.

It's bad, but still better than having to join hundreds of small local agencies or distributors worldwide not to mention it would be impossible and time consuming and that it could take forever and that they could ask keywording in their own language.

As bad as it looks, it's still better than nothing.

Prices are going down everywhere for editorial because there's a real crisis in the print business.
Last i've heard yesterday was the Herald Tribune changing name and being soon sold as "NYT International Edition", this is a very bad sign of the times, it smell of last straw of desperation before closing the HT altogether and it's just a matter of time.

I'm still far from an expert but the more I learn about this business, the more I realize that the real problem is that these agencies, in pursuit of short-term gains, are steadily devaluing the product in the long term - reducing its perceived value.  And once it's gone they won't get it back.  That's what "race to the bottom" really means. 

They want to sell search services, not images per se.  They don't own the images and have to pay commissions on actual sales.  So if the value of the actual product (image) goes to zero, but they make their money off of fees for search, ad revenue and other services, that's fine with them.

Bingo.
Agencies don't "own" nor produce the images.
WE DO !

They've nothing to lose if what they "resell" lose value, especially if they've no exclusivity and the same product is sold in dozens of other smaller agencies as well, and they've nothing to lose if we go broke and end up grilling burgers to pay the bills as the oversupply of cheap images keeps growing.

Pricing is also just one side of the whole business, the real deal is how to "monetize" this ocean of images, no matter if they're good or bad, now the new frontier is about monetizing the millions of images that for whatever reason never sold much in the past .. so they offer subscriptions, bulk packs, and soon nanostock or "paid by advertising" ...

Yes, it's still fine for them if images become worthless, as they play on big numbers and dont have to shoot or buy expensive gear nor to edit and keyword and upload, and when it will become impossible to sustain for photographers they will just stick with hobbyists, after all nobody ever promised contributors they could make a living out of microstock, isnt it ?

And dont worry, there will be always people telling you that 0.30$ for a photo is better than 0.00$ !


 

i agree he should have dealt on this privately, now he will get his 25000$ but i'm afraid he will be blacklisted by many fashion customers in the future.

refusing 15000 for some large format prints in a store selling clothes ?
i dont get it.

he must be really thinking his street stuff are masterpieces ... tsk tsk tsk !
they could have made it with cheap Thinkstock photos or even using public domain stuff pilfered on the web.

Tell me which company can or will drop 20% revenue? LOL. Surely the ones that are accountable to their shareholders? Dont talk nonsense.

It's a matter of TCO (total cost of ownership).
You forget that this 20% of revenue makes up for 80% of the running costs in servers, support, billing, etc.

How do you know they make any profit from this ?

In other news only 0.5% to 1% of the average users ever click on ads, 99% of your server costs are wasted unless you monetize it with other upsells or you keep it for "brand awareness" or "visibility".

The 20/80 rule holds true in pretty much any market, and many economists suggest to drop the bottom 5% of your worst clients leaving it to the competition (hahaha).

It's a fact IS can barely make any serious profits on all these bottomfeeders with 50 or 200 photos on sale.
Waste of time for both parties and potentially bad for reputation as well as they might expect to make quick bucks with such small portfolios and spreading their anger all over the web.