Quote from: Hobostocker on May 28, 2014, 04:24

next step should be to allow FTP uploads.

FTP is a security nightmare.

bullsh-it.

very good.

next step should be to allow FTP uploads.
they've already FTP for news and archival images so why not for anything else ?

Sure I do not agree on 3 points:
- "plugins are so good they're killing the reason to pay crazy amounts of money for the top lenses" - A bad lens + plugins is never as good as a good lens + plugins.
- "decent Sigma or Tamron lens" - Some Sigma lenses are better than some best Nikon or Canon one (the 35 mm f/1.4 and the 105 f/2.8 Macro for example), so I will not call them "decent", and they even cost less.
- At last "modern photography is ALL about photoshop, not about gear" - Photography has always been about photographer and it will not change so soon� Photoshop is only an instrument.
Give Photoshop to my cat and we will see

__
You should consider too that what is good or acceptable today for microstocks will probably not be good enough tomorrow.
So what is better to buy bad gear today and an other bad gear tomorrow, or good gear you can use today and tomorrow?
After I have bought a better camera and better prime lenses my global rate of acceptation has grown significantly.

of course you won't go far with bad lenses but all you need is a decent mid-range lens to make good saleable photos, the difference between the top-range nikons and zeiss compared to mid-range sigmas or tamron are very small anyway, only a photographer will notice.

photoshop is indeed just a tool but nowadays it's becoming more important than the camera and the lenses and this factor is always downplayed because of all the well known marketing reasons and BS.

besides, since anyone can buy your same gear it's even more obvious that it's in the post processing that you really make a difference from all the other snappers, most of what you can do today with PS is simply unachievable with studio lights, lens filters, and whatever other hardware gear.

people must realize our world is now oriented on DSPs and digital processing in general, it's no more locked into a perimeter made of film rolls and lights, digital manupulation opened up a whole new universe and this is just the tip of the iceberg of what will come and what will be the norm pretty soon, traditionalists who are still ranting and raving about Rangefinders or Fuji Velvia are definitely a thing of the last century and should better shut the F up once and for all, it's 2014 for F sake, we're going to shoot in 60MP soon and having computers powerful enough to make real-time post-processing on huge files.

so, in this context, the role of the photographer will become even more important in my opinion despite the whole doom and gloom discussions we often read here and elsewhere.

cameras and lenses instead are doomed to become cheaper and taken for granted and this is already true unless you need the fastest gear for sport or wildlife or whatever.

it looks like a typical ripoff site designed to attract viewers from Google Images but it won't go far as the latest GI update a couple years ago pretty much killed this business once and for all.

also their buyers are probably a bunch of losers, there are many other better places where they can buy prints.

as a potential customer i would be totally turned off by their clunky web site and their barebone search.

FAA suc-ks.

moreover, they've the most hideous keywording/uploading system in the industry and they are doing F all to improve it and no hope for FTP of course.

yeah they're photographer-friendly but that's all, where's the money $$ alamy ?

i've nothing against shooting obscure subject but the time it takes to edit and keyword and all ... just doesn't make sense with the actual fees.

nobody is going to waste production time and money into godforsaken destinations in the vain hope someone will need it sometime in the future, just a few years ago a travel image would sell easily for 200$, now it's 10 or 20 bucks .. i'll rather sell subs on istock and SS at least i will recoup some cash.

I have terminated my contract with Getty.
Any recommendation which RM agency I can consider?

none because in one way or another they all sub-licence to Getty and Getty is still nr.1 for RM.
i'm afraid you just shot yourself in the foot.

you can make some sales at Alamy, AGE, and the others, but it will be a pain in the as-s to reupload and rekeyword and their sales are no big deal compared to Getty.

it's a race to the bottom and we can't stop it.

agencies have no incentives to raise our fees, it will end up exactly like for digital music and ebooks ... anything sold at 1$ or less or even free for "exposure".

the obvious consequence will be quality going further down the drain as there's no way to sustain expensive shootings and production costs.

i don't think it's a bad thing overall, quality stuff will still be produced and sold on agencies like Getty, while cheap buyers will stick to micros, to each his own.

as for us, we better diversify our product lines.

if selling digital images is becoming more difficult the agencies will be forced to pay us less, not more !

--> supply vs demand.

the problem is systemic and not limited to LR4/5.

today's mainstream trends on software engineering are all pushing towards virtualization, OS-agnostic apps, and meta-compiled languages like Java or C#.

result : it's all good and well but the performance sucks big time compared to C/C++.

as far as i know all Adobe products are coded in C++ and Objective C and yet they can be slow as a dog in some situations where horsepower is needed, there's no real solution at the moment apart adding more ram and/or using 4 cpus, after all these algorithms were designed years ago when 12 megapixel images were considered "big".

it can only get worse as C++ is more and more seen as a thing of the past by the many computer scientists.

and the irony is that performance has nothing to do with languages, it's the compiler that makes or break the final binary application but surprisingly i'm reading crazy things about compilers recently as if they were a relic of the past century and some fools are even predicting the future is all about Javascript running in some exotic virtual machine.

Well it's not that far off Hobostocker. People come to places around me and visit, many during the Summer are from out of state, some are overseas tourists. So why does someone need to travel someplace else, when they are surrounded by things close to home?

Nothing against travel photography, just a thought that one could stay home and do "travel" photography, without the added expense.

I figure I could never leave this state and still be busy shooting things for the rest of my life.

Not as exotic, but there's no end to local events, attractions, art, architectural, natural, and historical sites.

yes, if you're lucky to live in a very nice city you don't need to go far away.

and if you live in Paris or London or NYC i'm sure you can make a living just shooting local areas and local people.

there will be always demand for the big cities, no matter if there are zillions of photos of the Eiffel Tower from any possible angle and weather condition.

i even met specialists who make landscapes of their lakes and mountains next door since 30 yrs and now they're recognized as specialists in their niche and published books etc  ... they're not rich but neither poor .. i don't know why they don't shoot anything else but in the end it's all about getting the rich clients rather than begging for food selling at discount prices .. i mean i can't blame them when they sell a big print to a rich suc-ker for 10K$ ... who needs to travel when they have the right established connections and marketplace ?

doing travel stock will never pay very well, that's a given, pros would not even leave their home without an assignment and covered expenses, they would not settle for cheap guesthouses or mcdonalds meals

I'm not interested in a JOB!  there are easier ways to make a living. I do photography to feed my travel habit  - that's why these questions have no single answers - the costs/profits etc are going to vary for everyone

to each his own, you travel AND you take photos, and while doing this you learn a lot more than the average tourist in my opinion as they're not focused on the small details and neither on looking things from an interesting perspective.

carrying a camera also will make people a bit more friendly sometimes so you end up talking and chatting with locals that would otherwise not give a sh-it.

costs/profits apart, unless it's too expensive or too far away i don't mind going in places that will never sell, we only live once.

Disagree.

Serendipity means not just fun, but also finding unplanned shooting occasions - i.e., work.
There's a fine line between the two.
Only half of my earnings from travels are from planned shots. Maybe I am a bad planner, or maybe I double my earnings by wandering as a cloud.

Museums and cultural activities mean finding new inspiration from art: a nice diversion - with possible returns - from the microstock style.

By not travelling (too) rough I'm not tired and I don't hate it, and the whole Europe is my own city.
Of course I could spend a lot less but it's not worth it (for my own sanity and quality of life).

But I guess - depending on personal preferences - both models work.

well in my experience if you manage to keep the costs very low you've a lot of spare time to take things easier and shoot areas of secondary importance that often turn out to be veeeeeery interesting, for instance in poor countries what you see in the downtown is quite a different story from what you see in the suburbs, almost another planet in some cases.

or you can sleep and take a day off, up to you, but that's a lot harder to justify when you're in a place where 100$/day is the bare minimum to survive.

i don't think nowadays you can travel rough in europe, there's nothing rough anymore even the cheapest trains and buses are clean and smelling good, same for the cheapest guesthouses and you won't get sick with street food, of course all this comes at a price but the standards are pretty high now compared to the 80s or 90s.

Asia instead is the best place to travel rough, you can't get rougher than India or Nepal or some parts of Indonesia and rural China ... well maybe in africa but i don't know, never been there.