What kind of an ego do you need to set up an awards program in your own name......then give yourself an award....................a very large one!!!!

Yes, no doubt it takes a huge ego.  Perhaps compensating for shortcomings in other areas?

  for anyone who don't know that was a joke.

I can't see how anyone could spin a dropping of standards for new photographers, and the acceptance of tons of repetitious junk, as positives for a photo agency.  If you're thinking your photos will then look better by comparison, well, a needle looks nice and shiny compared to a haystack too.   

I so agree!  Totally baffled anyone thinks this is a good idea for current contributors.   My money is on the quarterly report motive.

Quote from: PZF on December 08, 2015, 08:42

I can't see a search option either.....

Loads of my photos - even those from ages back - are still showing as Processing. Any idea what that means?

I assumed processing In, but maybe processing Out!

Early on there was a bug in their system where a large number of images fell into a black hole titled "processing."  Even though we had continued assurances that our images would eventually be moved out of this black hole and into review status, it never happened.  In my own case, after a year of waiting I eventually disabled all my images in this category and re-submitted them.  They went through fine after that.  Whether or not that bug is still around I do not know.  I haven't had any images fall into that black hole since the early days nor have I heard of anyone else who had.

Have any of your accepted images been deleted?

I agree about keeping our own personal bar high.  I am not afraid of competing with the quality of the new entrants.  I worry that the mass quantity of largely dross will make my higher quality and more expensive - for SS - images much harder to find.

On the high bar issue, while I will keep my quality high, I can no longer afford expensive shoots.  I forsee a future of shooting more food and objects and way less pro models or paid locations.

Quote from: cathyslife on December 05, 2015, 22:11

Quote from: stockmn on December 05, 2015, 18:11

Quote from: Rinderart on December 05, 2015, 17:00

"It sends out a clear message that they are not interested in pro photographers at all. iStock seem to be coming to the same conclusion that pro's will migrate to Macro and the rest can be sold off cheap."

+1

Maybe that's the way it should be? In my opinion, microstock should never have been anything other than low to medium quality images. Using thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment to make pennies per sale has always been unsustainable for photographers. It's reality time.

Exactly. I dont think the microstock model was meant to support pro photogs using high end equipment and costly studio/model shoots.

Microstock did support pros producing high quality work until recently and you can bet the SS sales teams chasing the profitable corporate clients are showing them exactly these high production images. They won't be closing sales from backyard shots.

Completely agree!  I am also thinking that in the very near future your screen name will have to become Stock-has-eaten-itself.

Quote from: Nikovsk on December 03, 2015, 09:37

Very sad news. SS has been corrupted from within.

That's the elephant in the room.  There's no way these thousands of junk photos made it through the 'official' inspection process.  They were back-doored.

Beginning to think we are all being 'back-doored'.

*Sigh*

All of our work is available through Premier. The high prices those buyers pay through their special large-enterprise portal is what gives us our large SODs, up to $120 or more. We are not compensated for free comps, which are used for presentation purposes to convince clients to license an image. They're only available to certain large customers and have been for a while now.

This is all old news. The only thing new is the ratio of free comps to paid images, which is higher than I expected but not earth-shattering.

Getty has been providing the same service to large enterprises forever.

Thank you for explaining this Shelma.  I thought it was another bit of disastrous news.  If this is where my high $ sales is coming from then fine.  Volume was down Nov. but big sale on the 30th helped.

Does this mean they are going to lower their review standards or why would they let people that can only get 1/10 submit? 

Ding, ding, ding!  You are correct sir!!

Quote from: everest on November 26, 2015, 07:42

Since the introduction of the 10 images subscriptions my credit sales have gone down the drain. Right now I have many days with only 5 sales with a port of over 10.000 images (used to get +100 daily with a port of 3000 only a few years back). Of course subscriptions have increased, but the income is a joke compared to what credit sales mean to my income (around 10$/sale).

So it definetely seems that credit sales are trending to 0 and that is the final nail in my istock exclusivity coffin. Are other exclusives and independents also seeing this credit disappearance or is it just me?

It's not just the subs and the new 'credits disguised as subs packs' - the removal of similars from the search (or the burying of them) will have a negative impact on sales of both credits and subs for most people.  As I understand it, those similars will now only be seen in the similars carousel and not in the search itself.  This of course is potentially disastrous for anyone who has had great sales from sets of images over the years.  It seems that istock has absolutely no interest or commitment to maintaining sales and income for any suppliers, including those who have supported the business over the long term.

I predict -or hope- that they will abandon this idiotic hiding of similars soon.  I always used to sell several of images in a series every day.  Even better when thay showed the series links I spent many hours to add to my image descriptions. 

This is so stupid cuz it hurts istock,  denying them multiple sales, just like it hurt the contributors.   Maybe someone with a clue will figure this out and sh*tcan this terrible search that leave us all poorer.

@nuno, I just realized that the max number of keywords allowed by 500px is 30.
The industry norm is 50. This is why most of my files have ~50.
If 500px is only using the first 30 keywords, then I have a problem, since my keywords are not ordered based on their importance.

Could you please propose your developers to align the site with the 50 keywords de-facto standard?

Yes!  This is a dealbreaker for me.  Not going to rekeyword several k images to get on a new site.

So if you scroll over a few  similars on this image on iStock you can see how great the non-exclusive match is to my file.  This is bad for everyone  https://jjneff.smugmug.com/IStock/IStock/i-RDMwwkn/A

Jeez!  Those arent even a little bit similar to yours.   Funny thing is I seen indie files that are similar but it don't show them in the carousel.   Total madness!

I almost never get more than 2 downloads a day on any photo.  My daily sales are more spread out across the whole portfolio.   Maybe this is because I only have photos and no illustrations.