If your images are being accepted then they are good enough for stock, established collections do reject on not suitable or to many like this, so if yours are being accepted then there is a place for them.

Nature as said often is a slow moving category, so you will likely not get rich overnight, while still photographing what you like try to fit in a few other incidental shots that you would normally not take and try them.

I went to a garage sale and brought a peice of coral 50p ($1), and shot it on a black background, and it sold a few times 10 - 20, so you never know what sells.

I had a look at your portfolio on two sites, and maybe while shooting landscapes, more of natures close up objects, patterns and textures are everywhere and might add interest, the one that caught my attention was the life jackets, becase I had to look twice.

David 

I would agree that these are not the same Image, it might be the same location and possibly the same photographer but there is a shift in the jacket folds / pose, so it is likely to be two different frames / images from the same set, how often do you get Images that look the same, as the model and photographer only moves slightly

As you Licence a specific Image and not the Image and all variants / similars, there is nothing really wrong, the photographer may have uploaded similar images to two different sites, or would that be legally wrong?

I used the Istock release, scanned it as jpg and in Photoshop cut and removed the Logo and the location text "saved it as" with a new name, then it was accepted at DT.

Less messing about than asking for a couple of releases

David

This just proves the fact that there is no gap Macro to Micro in quality and the cost of the Image is way down the list, and that top buyers shop everywhere and there is no stigma in shopping on the Micro's, this image was not really $28 to TIME, there was the research, the photoshop work etc:

They would have likely not even considered the source and price, it was the image they needed to tell the story and grab the attention of the readers, so they would have paid $20 or $1000 for the right Image, as a commisioned shoot would have cost a lot more.

How often do you read threads of doom when a Micro increases it's prices it they increased the price by 50% and sold 50% less, they would still make more profit as the overheads would be reduced.

What is the difference in selling two licences for a $200 net return on Alamy or 600 to 800 downloads for a $200 net return on Shutterstock, its the same return but the the amount of overhead to the Micro photographer in taking the images keywording and uploading is far greater.

I moved from Micro to Macro when one single Alamy download returned more revenue than 40 to 50 Images on the Micro's, this was when I saw the true value of my work, which I had thought was not good enough for the Macro site buyers.

David 

From the WIKI : A photographer is a person who takes a photograph using a camera. A professional photographer uses photography to make a living.

Me I am an IT finance consultant (Freelance Professional) and a part time Freelance Photographer, now if I add these together 

Nah I am one of the dreaded noobs that are wrecking the lives of the professionals, but I have no fears and you are welcome to come and learn my day job 

David

Great to hear you have a Macro sale 

I gave up the micro's two months ago for the macro's and these type of posts help justify the choice.

I started with Alamy and I have had a RF sale there $133 netting $86 for a 1640x1094 image, and when I had a portfolio of only 10 images, and I have just this weekend started with PhotoShelter.

I know these are small steps but don't they sure feel good!   

I have seen some threads about how good TinEye is for finding your images in use on the web, thats good, or is it?

On reflection for RM images that is great, however if you have RF images that have had a lot of downloads, it could be a tool for the web developer that does not want to pay.

They could go to the top macro / micro sites look at Images with a lot of downloads and then use TinEye to find the image in use online and then one click they have a free websize download, as they are RF the contributor has no way of knowing if they have paid, on the Microsites they can only get a comp, with TinEye they could get selected xs web size Images free.

So credits or subscription on the stock sites, or purchase TinEye when it's out of Beta?

I wonder if there will be a way to remove your images from the database, this is also true of google, if I google a stock photographers name I wil get lots of thier images, but TinEye allows me to find a specific Image.

Just another perspective before I say "Yippee TinEye is great for finding My Free Images"

David

Sharply is this not more a business / moral dilema

There have been posts when buyers have done just that, asked for a rebate as they found the exact same Image on a micro, one guy was even contacted by the buyer and removed the images from the micro's, so the buyer had to buy them from the macro site.

If you spent $200-$400 on any item and a day later saw the exact Item from the same supplier in another store for $10, how would you feel and would you shop there again, I would be back in the shop asking for a refund, we are not talking a few cents on a tin of produce or a litre of fuel are we, this just makes everyone look un professional, contibutors and agencies.

David

RT

Thanks for the update, If I get a sale on PSC then I will just send in the tax forms anyway and see what happens, as you cannot apply until you have a sale.

Working as an IT contractor in the UK, I know some Companies have "special Tax arrangements" like the umbrella company I work through.

So the T&C's from both sites could be right for thier arrangements.

It would be nice to hear from anyone in the EU / UK that has sent in the Tax forms and had a payment since.

David  

To be fair it does not say "no microstockers" it says no images offered on other sites at <$50 a download, some macro's might be close to that with thier discount structures.

We consider 'microstock' to be any image provider offering licenses for less than $50

On that basis you could, just like a lot already do, have a different image portfolio for different sites micro and macro, then there is no conflict of interest as they have different views on the images they want and sell.


David

This is missing the point the buyer is not buying an image for it's quality but for its content and message, an article in a free paper can often be more interesting than in a paper you paid for so it's the content that matters most.

When a buyer looks for an Image they are looking to find an image to tell a story, grap the viewers interest and they have to do this in a split second, so if we take the example of any sport or urban activities, which will catch the eye of a person interested in that activity, a slightly out of focus real action image, or some fake isolated over white, cheesy smile image?

As for the students not looking for pin sharp quality then there could be a simple answer, they see that the image gets across by content the message they want it to.
When one of my daughters sends a "blurry" text message in text speak like "r u k txt bk", it is not a quality message, but it gets across what they want it to "are you ok text back"

It could well be that the Quality Control on the stock sites are doing the buyer a miss service by rejecting some images for quality that could get across a message better than anything they already have.

So for the "Buyers of Tomorrow" will we still be uploading pin sharp isolated fakes, or real images with real backgrounds that have the message they want to get a cross to thier peers, or do we already have that on the macro sites?

B.T.W. most people cannot do the most stylish jump or wear the most stylish ski suits, that might be why they find this image a good option as it will appeal to the average Joe, rather than the elite! 

Look for external Storeage and move a couple of drives, I purchased one of these on Ebay second hand quite reasonable, and it is mirrored so if one drive fails I plug a new one in and it recovers, I also keep another copy of all images in another location, in case of fire or buglary. 

I only have working files on my PC which is a laptop, and archive the others off to the external store.  

Having so many drives in one box, what would happen if one caught alight?


This one on Ebay ($230) is like the one I brought:

NETGEAR�s Storage Central is an innovative product for storing and protecting music, games, photos, videos and other important files on a secure device.

Include 1,000GB = 1 TB (2 of 500GB Western Digital WD Caviar� SE 3.5-inch) drives.

Connect Storage Central to any router or switch and Smart Wizard takes care of the configuration. Storage Central functions like a local disk drive but without requiring a dedicated PC.

You can setup this storage as RAID 1, Mirrored Disks to which each disk store the same data, so that data is not lost so long as one disk survives. Total capacity of the array (RAID 1) is just the capacity of a single disk = 500GB. 

David

Revenues for the first quarter of 2008 were $34.5 million compared to revenues of $34.8 million for the same period last year.

I do not know anything about this Agency, but are there any statistics on the number of contributors and images year to year?

If the revenue has not increased year on year but the number of images has , then that would not be good news for contributors, diluting thier revenue.

David