Quote from: asiseeit on July 02, 2012, 18:09
Anyone want to hand Spalding's legal team a lawsuit on a platter?
http://foap.com/market/stock-photo/4ff0be255f5e880d10000284/prom/basketball/ramubry

or how about Apple?
http://foap.com/market/stock-photo/4ff062b7712a946b750001a1/apple/nyc/new

Second link: Shot of Apple building.......does Apple make a 15 Mp iPhone/iPad? That's the size given.

FWIW. Here's a compatibility chart for Innovatronix (Tronix) converters.

http://www.innovatronix.com/compatib.asp

I've seen some models advertised here (in NL) and they cost €400 to €500 but perhaps the larger power models with extra features are more expensive. Personally, I have no experience with these or battery powered (studio) flash units.

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on July 31, 2012, 17:30

Quote from: click_click on July 31, 2012, 16:47

Quote from: cthoman on July 31, 2012, 16:40
...
If you want an anecdote, I turned down a job a few months ago. They wanted me to meet them at their office. It was about a 30 minute drive to the north side of town where their office was. In the time it would have taken me to get ready, drive there, have the meeting and drive back, I probably could have finished the job. I turned the job down. It just didn't make any sense to spend all that time to meet for such a small job.

Now you can hear someone say: You never know, if you met them it might have led to many more lucrative jobs on an ongoing basis...

Thats why you qualify it and ask for enough detail to determine if there's a bigger opportunity or just a one hour job that will be unprofitable.

I wonder what percentage of photographers do any job that pays even if it loses them money.

Some clients are clever in that they say they have a small job and little budget bbbbutttttt in the future they expect to need more shots for which they'll have a normal budget. 'Course the big job in the future never materialises!
I got roped into something earlier this year by a client who sells golf equipment. He was opening a new store at a city 9-hole course/driving range and the management of the course needed some shots for posters at an expo. They got my name via the client and, of course, the shots were needed yesterday. Budget was too low but to have not done it would have meant that the expo at which my client was also present, would have been a little bare. I realised that these were cheapskates when I enquired about the haste involved for the shots.....the expo was 10 days away after all. That was because their printer in Poland needed at least 7 days from order to delivery of mounted prints on board!

I didn't make a loss but thought that whilst I was there, I might as well do some shots for stock, one of which has already sold a couple of times. Still waiting for their BIG job with budget to match though. Dunno if I would be tempted to do similar again. If the location offered a fairly unique opportunity to do stock that I ordinarily wouldn't be able to do, I would consider it. Actually working at a loss......not so sure about that though.

Quote from: cclapper on July 31, 2012, 01:11
I was immediately disgusted, I thought it was to take a screenshot so posting stolen images could be even faster, but it does a google search. As far as I can tell.

If you want it (Google images) disabled, go to your Firefox tools folder and click on 'Add Ons'. You'll see Google Images app which you can 'Enable, Disable or Remove.' I tend to enable it when I want to use it but have it disabled for the majority of the time. I have an old, slow computer so it uses processor power/RAM when working (or whatever!) and slows this machine down. Besides I find the 'blue camera' hovering over most pics, irritating.

Chances are that you have downloaded the app at some point but then a few Firefox updates were incompatible with Google Images and it was disabled. Didn't think that it was re-enabled automatically by the latest Firefox but who knows.

Quote from: ShadySue on July 29, 2012, 20:37
I've just heard two British swimmers in interviews one after the other, talking about how all the Twitter support is helping them. Beats me. It must be a generational thing after all!

Hmmm Twitter........story here in NL about the new leader of the major (not so much any more) political party, CDA, whose number of Twitter followers had swollen from almost zero last year to 20+ thousand recently and with only 40 tweets from the guy himself. Someone looked into that only to discover that 82% of his followers were created as robo-followers (ie they didn't exist) to presumably make him seem more important than he was.

Quote from: Zeus on July 29, 2012, 17:36
It's hard to beat the good old telephone when it comes to getting business. You do a bit of research, call someone who might need your work, and see what happens. Eventually someone does and if you don't screw it up, you can get a long term client. If you do a good job, you may get a referral as well. I find with long term clients, you don;t need anything except the time to take them for lunch now and then. A web page is good for newer clients and FB is a complete waste of time.

+1

Quote from: WarrenPrice on July 29, 2012, 16:25
I see a business plus just from being "seen."  How often do you watch MAJOR TV commercials to see or hear, "or check our Facebook Page and/or Twitter Account?"

It works.  Like Anyka, I'm gradually learning proper media etiquette.  

If I could afford major TV commercials to direct viewers to my site/FB/LinkyDin..........I wouldn't be asking for discussion of this topic cuz I'd be RICH!

But according to the words of the ad agency guy, the BIG advertisers are now questioning how much business FB brings them.

After my first year in microstock with FT (exclusively) I must have gotten the feeling for what they liked and disliked. My acceptance rate jumped to 80 or 90%. Occasionally I submit one or two that are not colourful and punchy to test the waters (or whatever) and to my amazement they often get accepted...............but then don't sell.

Quote from: Anyka on July 29, 2012, 05:23
Indeed, the word "efficient" could never be used when talking about facebook.  It is not meant to be something efficient.  Even more :  as soon as facebookers notice/feel you are trying to make facebook a business tool, you'll be ignored.  You'll have to be part of facebook, "like" things of your friends, comment about what they share etc. and not just post stuff about your business.  And if you don't like that, find another way of marketing.

Even more valuable information. Thanks. Personally, I have no need of it and businesswise I doubt that for me it would make sufficient contribution to the marketing mix, relative to the effort involved. Clearly, I'm not a FaceBooky type and shall remain my old 'stick-in-the-mud' self.

Something I came across on another forum (not MSG) that deals mostly with the stock market side of things. The poster is the owner of an ad/marketing agency in the US (has always appeared pretty clued-up on his business before)  and had this to say about FB:

"Eventually they will be unable to make money. People use it as a way to share pictures, links, events, and cat videos. LOL. Not much money there. The ads are generating the lowest clickthrough rates of any platform. People don't want a relationship with a brand. They want relationships with their relations ( and friends) and from Brands they want something for nothing---a coupon , a discount, a chance to win a free I Pad etc. The problem they have is the way the next generation uses it. The younger users check it like they check their email. They are on and off it in 2 seconds. The younger users also use it for private chatting, again no monetization to be found there."

Thanks for all your posts. Most informative. Anyka, you seem to have found the smart way to use FB for your business. Let your satisfied customers do the walking/talking for you. An electronic word-of-mouth. Facebook is as it's name suggests a book of faces. And when you're in the people portrait business, by clever coupling of different marketing tools, it can be made to work for you, obviously.
As I mentioned in the original post, I'm not in the people portrait business and I still find it difficult to imagine any great business benefit for me from being on FB. However, I also take other comments into consideration too, eg........view it as something between a newsletter & Rolodex..........chance to tender for work via a friend of a friend. Perhaps I'm less negative about it now than I was but I still can't see it as an 'efficient' method for me of acquiring new business.

'Aesthetic quality' rejections at FT generally mean, "I couldn't fault the image on any objective criteria so, subjectively I don't like it/don't think it will sell". Not a lot can be done about that, move on.

I'm an old stick-in-the-mud having a 'discussion/argument' with a friend of mine regarding the merits of my having a FB account (which I don't have)! His argument for an account is that everyone has one, you can't be in business without one and that must bring in new business. I earn my living primarily from commissioned photography for industrial clients in the food sector + a little pocket money from stock. I am dubious on a time-invested vs new client billing basis of the merits of the social media whilst my friend reckons that it must be good for business.

I'm no high-flyer, big deal photographer. Nor do I have an outstanding style/technique to my work......so it's not like I'm going to be noticed among the millions of other photographers with an account. My friend insists that with an account, the world will know that I exist and be able to find me. I argue that the world will not even notice and that I'll be just one of the billions of FB account holders, so why should I expend my time on maintaining an account when I could be more profitably spend it on other methods of acquisition.
My question is, do you directly get work from new clients from their looking at your Facebook account or is FB just a part of your more direct approach to acquiring new business via the more traditional methods (personal contact, phone, direct mail, word-of-mouth recommendation etc)?

I already have a site with a fairly complete selection of the work that I do. Do I need a Facebook account as well? TIA for any comments/advice.

Quote from: grp_photo on July 27, 2012, 13:41
In this case I think you need all the flash power you can get, so rent some big ones from you Elinchrome dealer. Also I wouldn't light indirect or would use softboxes or umbrellas in this case, you loose way too much power and you need it all.
Personally I would go the wedding photographer way and would sell it through a macro agency but that is your decision. If you wanna shoot it with microstock in mind ( low iso and solid aperture) you need a lot of flash power!

Agree with the need for power. Pity that Elinchrom no longer produces the big 3500 Micro RF Power Packs that they used to. They sometimes turn up on eBay for a reasonable price with heads to match. As there's time to plan, it might be worthwhile picking them up on eBay if available and selling again when the work is done......a small amount of profit or loss could be involved because there is some demand for those more powerful packs still.
Another approach would be to limit the amount of church you want as background and light accordingly (just a small part instead of the whole cavernous light sink!) All that's then required is a reasonably fast long telephoto lens to cut down on the expanse of background in the shot. Lighting could then be placed just outside the angle of lens view and close to the background wall requiring to be lit.

One last thought........rent some HMI daylight lamps for lighting the background. No worries about recycling times as they are continuous and an input of 1 Kilowatt produces the equivalent of 3.5KW of tungsten light but then at daylight Kelvin to match the flash. They may however be rather pricey to rent from a movie/film light rental agency.

For getting light on high walls or ceiling you will probably need the most 'light efficient' reflectors of Elinchrom. Those would be the HP 26cm 48°  reflector or the Maxi-Spot 29° 40cm.

If you can get hold of a studio power packs with a couple of heads, those would be the reflectors I would try. Best of luck with lighting such a light sink. Quadras will be fine for the models but wouldn't make much of an impression on the building interior.

Quote from: wut on July 10, 2012, 19:36

Quote from: dirkr on July 10, 2012, 19:28

Quote from: wut on July 10, 2012, 14:44
It's a European agency

It's not. FT is officially located in NY.

Wow, so why is everybody saying it here. And why do I have the eu subdomain?

I have the UK domain and if I registered in Germany I would have the .de domain. Had I registered in the EU.....not available before mid-2008, I would also have an .eu domain. It's a US service corporation (albeit paying out in Europe via a Luxembourg bank). That's why you have to fill out the US IRS tax disclaimer to prevent US taxation (if you are a resident in a country that has a tax arrangement with the US IRS).

Quote from: luissantos84 on June 21, 2012, 03:49

Quote from: Lawren on June 21, 2012, 03:15
I think if customers buy images from photographer who has lower rank in FT, then FT can keeps more revenue. For example, from the ranking White to Gold (non-exclusivity) have the same price but they share different commission.

Although photos from Emerald to Diamond are more expensive, FT can share more. But maybe customers can find the same images easily with lower price in many other agencies (especially for non-exclusivity). So when my ranking is Bronze, I don't feel the "fall" at all. In actually, since 2012/01 my weekly rank jump from 8000 to 4000 then to 2000.

if so why don't buyers leave them and join SS per example once they can get 750 files for 250$ (not saying I want that) but I am sure most of the files are in there too (actually those and a few more millions), not to mention that we would all feel this down trend not only top contributors (they would feel more right)

I believe they have changed their "best match" which is hurting top contributors, doesn´t make much sense once they do most of FT money even paying more royalties

Buyers can stick with FT for those 3Credit emeralds.........just buy a $200 sub for a month and download all sizes @25X/day every day for one month.

Quote from: gostwyck on June 29, 2012, 00:29

Quote from: RacePhoto on June 28, 2012, 21:48
Then, why do they have soda machines removed from schools? Replace candy machines with fruit machines. Candy and soda pop has become contraband? 

Why do they want to complain and regulate what a fast food restaurant serves? Now in New York they want to regulate how big of a cup of soft drink the quick marts, theaters and places can sell.

My point is, education and self responsibility. Not legal barriers, bans and stupid regulations.

You have absolutely no understanding how fantastically clever marketing, over several decades, by major fast food chains has totally changed the expectations and portion size of their customers. It's not an accident that people eat twice as much as they did 40 years ago in such places. They have been progressively incentivised to do so by 'better' offers, etc.

BBC2 are currently running a series called "THe Men Who Made Fat" which provides some of the detail;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01k0fs0

+1.
Excellent series too. Well worth watching.

Quote from: sjlocke on July 01, 2012, 00:32
Wasn't it worth it to keep the entire planet from being disappointed?

Quote from: Lagereek on May 31, 2012, 15:13

Quote from: ShadySue on May 31, 2012, 14:48

Quote from: Lagereek on May 31, 2012, 14:30

Quote from: wut on May 31, 2012, 11:48
When I was getting back from Morocco last week, a bottle of Glenfiddich in the duty free shop reminded me of you. I was kinda disappointed when I saw the 30€ price tag . Knowing you, I expected it to be at least a 100, something special and really sophisticated

Thanks a bunch!  Im proud of being associated with Whiskey! , well, Glenfiddich is good but there are far better. Try MacAllens, good stuff, puts hairs on your chest.

Glenfiddich and The Macallans are Whiskys. Just sayin'.
Whiskey is either Irish product or the paint strippers that they put out over the pond. (OK, that's maybe unfair. Jack is like paint stripper. I haven't tasted Jim Beam or any of the others.) Or various others from Japan etc.

Well to be honest, Jack and Jim are ok, but its nothing like the real thing. Irish like Bushmills, etc, are superb. BUT!  if you really want to taste fire and hell and one of the best. Lagavulin!
all I can say is Lagavulin.

Tried Lagavulin once..........quite sufficient and too medicinal for my taste. Rather have Glenmorangie any day........bit too much of a 'girlies' malt for you Lagavulinphiles I suppose.

Quote from: heywoody on June 27, 2012, 12:55

Quote from: OM on June 02, 2012, 02:12
Unlike iStock, there's nothing to be learned from Fotolia rejections re. improving and re-submitting. Far too general and sometimes seeming quite illogical. Better to fugeddabout 'em and move on.

After a few months in the game is there anything that can be learned from rejections from anyone?

Probably right. I did learn a lot from iStock rejections but that was when I had just started.

Quote from: sharpshot on June 23, 2012, 08:47
Are the former istock exclusives that were given a deal to go with FT getting a boost?  Or is it people that have some exclusive images with FT?  There has to be something going on because as people have said, for all of us reporting a fall in the rankings here, there must be others going up.

Difficult to say as FT tells no-one who their exclusives are. One way to get an idea would be to enter a keyword in the area of one's choice and see what images come up on the first couple of pages. When those images have a number starting with 40, 41 or 42 they are fairly new and being 'promoted' as they are on the first page. If any of those images have a credit price greater than 1 and the contributor is less than emerald, then it means that the contributor is wholly or partially exclusive as they are the only ones allowed to increase their image price prior to emerald status. But not all exclusives do it which makes it even more difficult to determine. The only pattern that I can detect is that the first few pages of some searches produce many new images from what appears to be a select group of contributors who also appear to be recent serial uploaders (20-60 uploads in the last week and often 100-500 in the last month). If I had, say, 400 shots ready to upload, I would upload 100/week for the next month and see whether the images get into top search positions. If that didn't work, then I'd have to think there's some sort of 'club' operating to which most are not invited.

Quote from: robynmac on June 22, 2012, 23:17
All I know for sure is that so far in June, 2012 I've earned less than 15% of what I made on FT in June, 2010.     FT doesn't seem to give a flying proverbial that they are messing with people's livelihoods.

No they don't give a fig about anyone else but their new investors' bottom line and (consequently) the senior management's bonuses. Contributors interests and theirs are definitely not the same.

The search is also totally messed up and appears to promote certain contributors over others. I can't figure it out but not only do new images with no views and no sales (too) frequently occur on the first page of search, wrongly keyworded images from certain contributors keep popping up there too. Take the keyword 'disc'. Feed it in and click on the first image on page 1 That is an image of some sort of salami which does have 'disc' in the keywords. Click on that first image and look at the 'suggestions' on that page and there's a number of food shots shown, of which, most do not have 'disc' in the title and they're wrong anyway if you're looking for 'disc'. Look toward the bottom of that page and there are again a couple of food images that stick out like a sore thumb in that they shouldn't be there (not a disc in sight). Click on them and try finding your original search word disc in the description. Not there! As a buyer, I only need to see this sort of nonsense once or twice to know that I'm wasting my time and move on.

It just looks to me like some contributors get their images in prime positions, time after time, to the exclusion of others. Any form of merit appears to have gone out of the window. Many established images that are proven sellers (and by inference are images that buyers prefer) are actually excluded from the first pages of a search to have their place taken by any image from various (but what seem to me to be) favourite contributors. Whether these people are in some sort of club or receive megaticks on f***book, I have no idea but there's something very weird happnin' there. There's only one thing that I can't see and that is contributor bias on ranking and price. 'Favoured' contributors seem to come from all ranking groups and have various basic price levels from 1 thru 3. 

Quote from: luissantos84 on June 20, 2012, 22:37
I am silver, a lot lower ranking but I am feeling that change too, overall I have been getting better place (today at 4270) but the weekly have been jumping a lot between 1400 (lately) to 750

Wow! Weekly under 1000..........it would be a dream for me!! Me silver too, overall around 5,000. Saw 3,500 momentarily last week but haven't sold anything this week and my weekly average is still better than my overall............is nobody selling anything then? Seems out of whack to me.

FT.uk fully functional for me except for an image uploaded for review at the weekend and heard nothing yet!
Must be busy with the thousands  of new uploads per hour; everyone hoping to get a good search position before it's changed again. 

Quote from: Karimala on June 17, 2012, 16:58

Quote from: fotografer on June 16, 2012, 18:05
I have just been and looked for one of my highest selling images using it's most relevant keyword.  It usually sold several times a day at FT and has about 2000 dls but I've just realized that I haven't seen it sell for ages.   On the dl search it comes in on the second page (20 a page),  but the relevant search where it used to be one of the first images I now can't even find it after going through about 10 pages.

Yep...same here.  My top seller at FT is a simple green fabric background.  It shows up as #2 in the DL search, then drops to #210 in the relevance search (photos only).  

What's worse than the crappy placement is that only 15-20 or so of the preceding images depict green fabric backgrounds or are fabric backgrounds with patterns containing green.  The rest are spools of thread with zero green or fabric, piles and piles of laundry, and every type of object and non-fabric background imaginable.  40+ don't even show any green...not even a smidgen (several are plain backgrounds of a completely different solid color: white, red, brown, blue...take your pick!).  Why would a buyer even stick around when literally 91-93% of the relevance search leading up to my top-performing image is littered with irrelevant images?  

I Took a look at 'green fabric background' or even 'fabric background green'. I see what you mean. The search is next to worthless. In fact, it seems that the only thing that all the images on the first page have in common is that there is' green' in the keywords even when there's no green in the image. When I look at all the recent images (those with numbers 40+ and mostly with few views or downloads) on page 1, a couple of things become apparent: there are 3 images from the same author all with coffee beans and a green leaf and that many of those 40+ images are from Russian Federation, Belarus, Ukraine, Romania contributors. There is no bias towards contributor status/price as the whole gamut of contributors is represented from colourless to emerald. The only other thing I think I  noticed was that a high position in the search is favoured by not having an English title but I didn't really check that out so I could be wrong. (See my previous post in this thread about green quiche posing as tortilla!)