About working in a team - a team can generate a lot of creativity if it works well, probably more than an individual working with a single model or two can. Yuri has said elsewhere that he often plays games with his team to get the happy, relaxed interactions that are pretty evident in his photos. Many istock members say how great the lyses are. Perhaps yuri generates his own lypse environment, and it shows in his work.

I believe istock's overall rejection rate is close to 50%.

Has anyone here heard of crowdsourcing? When istock started the microstock industry it was based on the crowdsourcing model, and they still pride themselves in encouraging contributors to grow as photographers and develop their skills. I wonder if yuri had all his original submission to shutterstock accepted. I know a couple of excellent photographers who didn't.

From anecdotal evidence it appears to me that Shutterstock is only interested in people who are persistent. They probably don't want a lot of accounts of people who have uploaded a dozen images and then stopped. All of my 10 were rejected and every one of them had been accepted on istock, whose inspectors are not renowned for their leniency.

I'll be working to have photorealistic 3D models of people online within a year, and my day job is not in the graphics industry. As to efficiency - remains to be seen.

The end is nigh. There's some discussion on istock forums at the moment about the placement of 3D renders in best match. XXL images without a Hasselblad. I've been watching the portfolio under discussion (alexsl) and he's reached diamond pretty quickly. mevans there has a nice stable of sports cars that aren't encumbered with copyright issues. I have some images on one of the micro sites that consist of a human model composited into a 3D rendered office setting (I used lisegagne's studio as a basis for my architectural visualisation), and I'm very much a beginner at 3D. Photorealistic renderings of people have started to appear on the covers of fashion magazines. It may already be the case that some artists have a stable of virtual models in Armanis, able to stage endless business meetings. I'd say that 3d technology is about as mature as digital cameras were when they started to oust film.

I'm not a lawyer, but here in Australia the main issue has nothing to do with copyright. Under our Trade Practices Act using a brand name in a commercial image can imply that that company (brand) endorses the product or service being advertised - I think its called passing off.

A comparison of NA vs European movies shows strong stylistic differences and preferences. NA is a very extrovert culture.

Just been checking the istock forums on their recent best match change, and why several contributors have stated it's why they don't go exclusive there.

Not exactly true. Third party developers of both hardware and software could develop fairly easily for PCs, giving buyers greater choice. In relation to microstock, quite a few people have said that every one of their images is accepted SOMEWHERE, and most sell well SOMEWHERE. If you're producing for one brand, and an image is not accepted or doesn't fit with the search there, tough luck.

Non-exclusives on istock generally can't upload their entire portfolios due to upload caps. Hence, although buyers have greater choice of exclusive imagery, they have less choice of non-exclusive imagery than they have on other sites.

Having lived through the days of intense competition between Apple and IBM/MS for the PC market, it seems to me that the open architecture approach of IBM is what allowed it to win out in the end. istock's exclusivity program attempts to lock photographers into istock alone. Sure, the quality is great, but seems that many contributors find lack of commitment to be an advantage. While the community on istock encourages new people to become exclusive, as these companies grow and become more impersonal, the lure might not be as strong.