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Messages - Graffoto

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551
General Photography Discussion / Re: Pretty Funny
« on: June 08, 2009, 23:23 »
Funny, yet a bit sad as well...

552
It was indeed harder before. Big creds for that.  But was enoys me today is how photos are so sacred even today. Like a piece of art they spent a months making.  No matter if took 10 sec on automatic. 

OK, Magnum when was the last time you had a 10 sec exposure? Probably got rejected for noise I'll bet ;)
Most of my exposures are done at 1/125 of a second and 80% of them are trash.
Only the best 20% get a chance of being submitted and even they they might get a rejection.... so YES, these shots ARE my babies!

553
General Photography Discussion / Re: Timewarp-water
« on: May 30, 2009, 22:59 »
Looks like fun  ;D

554
General Photography Discussion / Re: I'm in love.
« on: May 28, 2009, 11:12 »
Congrats on the new toy & HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

555
vectors are vectors, illustration, graphic design, but not art, sorry...

Illustrations are no less art than travel photos.


I doubt that he considers travel photos art either. He sounds to me that he has more of a 'technical' mindset about this whole business.
But then again, physicians refer to their craft as the 'art' of medicine... so there ya go.

556
Oh great. "iStocker makes $10,000 on a single photo!" Story on Good Morning America yesterday. :(

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/MakeMoney/story?id=7667769

Let the next flood of applications begin...

(And get ready for all the excellent photographers to come here ranting because their perfect photos are getting rejected!!)



OMG, and it is JJRDs photo.!
ETA: I just watched the video. This was just a free advertisement for IS. Good for them. It will drive a lot of looky-loo traffic to the site.

557
...every other field. I doubt that wedding photographers are charging less because of micros.

The economics could cause greater competition among wedding photographers as more stock photographers seek outlets for the use of their time and the equipment they have already purchased for stock photography.

fred

The wedding photography biz is already quite crowded and competitive.
The Yuris of that field charge an arm and a leg, but the rest have to scrape along and just settle for the table scraps ;)
A close and frugal friend of mine had her wedding shot for a mere $500.00
I saw the results and they were quite good. They downside was, he just gave them a disk of their shots and that was it. No Album, no slideshow no framed prints... nada.

I have shot a couple of weddings. I made more on each one than i do in a month of sales in Micro.

558
"Why? Because any advantage to Berkshire Hathaway was also going to be available to each of its competitors. Ultimately he decided to exit this business altogether. It turned out to be a wise decision."


So what you are really saying is we all should quit because there is too much competition and no one has an advantage anymore?

Photography, the auto industry, the fashion industry etc, etc. All of these enterprises and many more are very competitive.
The winners are those that can innovate. Make a more interesting photograph, build a car that gets better mileage, create a garment that everyone wants to wear.... these are the challenges.

But I think the OP is correct. There is too much competition and the playing field is too even.... he should quit.  ;D

559
Yes I hate my images too, or at least about 90% of them.

After I complete all the post, I fall in love with two or three of the best ones. 

The worst part is that it's not the images I love that sells most...

That is SOOO true!

560
After shooting 300 frames of a subject, culling it down to 20-30 good ones and then post processing them, I am totally sick of seeing my own shots.

After I complete all the post, I fall in love with two or three of the best ones.  I even print out hard copies in 8X10 and 11X14 for my portfolio books. Alas, it is an ill fated love and lasts but a few short weeks or months.

Then I am absolutely sicked by the site of anything I have done before and set out to do better.

I am betting that there are others that feel the same way, yes?

561
Supply and demand... well yes and no.
An ex boss of mine was fond of saying 'perception is reality'.

Is there $30-40,000 more in parts and engineering in a Mercedes than in a Chevy?
Nope. It is a higher quality machine, but the rest you are paying for is prestige, service and the perception that is is worth more due to advertising.

Its the same thing with those pieces of sparkly carbon that most women demand on their finger for an engagement ring. It is a common element and not worth anything near what people are willing to pay for it.... except there is a perception that is has a lot of value due to advertising.

Traditional stock was kept at high perceived value.
The crowd-sourcing model has changed all that. it has also allowed many who would never have been accepted into traditional stock to sell their work. But make no mistake, this has changed the perception of the value of a photograph.

562
Careful, the pieman might be lurking nearby ;)

563
I'm so old and feeble minded that I can't recall where I first heard about it... but I do remember the DPreview bashing and also an article in Popular Photography magazine.

I tried uploading film scans at first to iStock and was throughly bashed for 'noise' (film grain).
So instead of sending them super high resolution film scans, I sent some junk I had taken with a 5 megapixel Sony digicam and got accepted!

I concluded that the punk, er ahem...young people doing the inspections had never in their lives shot a piece of film or ever looped a chrome.
Oh well. I got in and that's all that counts. 

564
If you are too angry to comment than why post at all?

By the way, in English cattle are referred to as 'Livestock'.
So your iStock (cattle) comment really isn't as funny as you seem to think it is.


565
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Gone exclusive
« on: May 19, 2009, 10:53 »
I hope it works out well for you Joseph.
Drop in from time to time and keep us udated on your progress.

566
The sole purpose of such movies, sponsored by stock agency of course, is to make all Yuri-wannabies drool and start feeling sudden urge to shoot and upload more :-) Most degenerated individuals may experience urge for keywording. Please do not exceed recommended doses of watching this material.


Really? I thought Yuri was just sharing the love  ;D

567
And this is a big part of why Yuri 'owns' the market.
He decided to take traditional stock production values and saturate the microstock market.... and it worked.

I would LOVE to have the means to jump in at this level, but there is no chance for me or most of us here.

I suspect he had a big bankroll to begin with (maybe a wealthy father?), because one does not build up to this sort of studio location in only three years without either some help or a huge amount of luck.

Oh yes, by no means do I wish to belittle his talent at either photography or his business acumen. Yuri has both in spades!


568
Off Topic / Re: Tweety turns 60
« on: May 13, 2009, 22:49 »
60??  LOL!
My mother is 86, has Parkinson's disease and a host of other stuff wrong and she STILL looks better than this old bird.  :D

569
Computer Hardware / Re: New Designer Monitor
« on: May 11, 2009, 13:06 »
[/quote]I know what u mean but I assure you that there is a quite big difference. I goes from a 500:1 to a 3000:1 a year ago or something and you see noise like nowhere before. Obviously the overall quality is as much important such as image sharpness or even the type of glass used to protect the LCD screen. Those are not calculated
[/quote]


I currently shoot with a Canon 5D Mk1 and edit on a CRT (Yes, I still use a CRT and will continue to do so until it or I die). I also have a 1000:1 LCD monitor but I choose not to use it for editing.

Prints that I make from the calibrated CRT are spot on perfect. The LCD (also calibrated) has too much contrast and if I edit to the screen, then my prints will look flat.

Here is the thing. Maybe I would see more noise/artifacting on a 3000:1 monitor. BUT I have 0% rejections as it is for noise or artifacting with my current editing style.

If I (or anyone else) were to use a 3000:1 contrast ratio monitor and all of a sudden start seeing noise everywhere, that would cause me to have to further edit images that I am already getting accepted (by iStock as they are the only place I sell). I see no reason to start chasing ghosts. If Eizo says 850:1 is good enough for a professional monitor, then I say it is good enough for me  ;D



570
Computer Hardware / Re: New Designer Monitor
« on: May 10, 2009, 21:08 »
I'm not really so sure about these super high contrast numbers either.

Eizo, which is supposedly the gold standard for graphics monitors typically has around an 800-850:1 ratio.
I tend to believe that is sufficient for graphics editing. See specs of Eizo CG241W below:

With 12-bit hardware calibration and a 6 ms response time, the CG241W displays both still and moving images equally well, making it ideal for a wide range of high-end graphics work including pre-press, digital photography, video editing, and post production.

    * 1920 x 1200 native resolution
    * 850:1 contrast ratio
    * 300 cd/m2 brightness
    * 178 viewing angles
    * Dual DVI-I inputs

571
Computer Hardware / Re: New Designer Monitor
« on: May 10, 2009, 20:52 »
Thats why I use 2 monitors , my old Samsung is good enough to have my tools on it

+ One.
I also use two monitors side by side. Its the best of both worlds.

572
why pay when you have PhotoBucket and similar... for free?

Wrong Peter, Photobucket is only free for lower resolution files. Note that the OP said that his files are around 6mb in size.

Photobucket charges approximately $40 per year to store files that are 5 mb in size.

573
Photos.com is just too good a domain name just to extinguish.

No one said that they had to get rid of the domain name.
Ever hear of a redirect? It is quite easy to make it so that when someone types in Photos.com to have it redirect to > iStockphoto.com  ;D

574
Tell a story - a picture is worth a thousand words - remember?.

Basically a stock photo is about an illustration of an idea.
Think of things that need to be illustrated (family, security, health, fitness etc, etc) then shoot something that fits the idea!
Post process, upload, repeat.  ;D


575
General Stock Discussion / Re: Second Time Round
« on: May 01, 2009, 22:04 »
I'm still very much a beginner with the painting (and 3D), but my more arty stuff can be found on RedBubble



You should be posting some of these on Flickr. I suspect you would get more exposure than you have on just Redbubble.

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