... I'd prefer automatic payments and I'd certainly be up for direct deposit or anything else labor saving they come up with (that's fee free).

Yeah, me too. It'd be awfully nice if agencies gave us that flexibility: pay me on the 20th, pay me whenever I get $100, pay me every Friday, ...

It never occurred to me that there were people requesting such frequent payouts. ...

I've noticed there are two schools of thought regarding payouts: those who make a request one a month (casuals and part-timers seem to prefer the end of the month) and those who make one as soon as they reach the minimum payout (or an arbitrary amount like $100). I typically make my mine on the 20th to get the money in time to pay bills - looks like I'll be doing it on the 15th this month!


... thanks for the 'heads up', lisafx!

I used the 16-35 for interiors as well. It was quite good for that, but when I decided not to do that anymore I found the lens to not have enough zoom for general purpose use.

I like using the fisheye in two ways:
* Landscapes, where I want to get as much as possible into the shot
* Environmental Portraits, when I want to be close to the subject and still have him/her/it immersed in surroundings.

Shooting people can be bit finicky, as the lens has a very small 'sweet spot' where people aren't comically deformed. The lens really excels in being able to get very, very close to your subject while still including background.

Here are a few of examples:

   

The biggest problem I had with the lens was the lens cap, which is metallic and slides over the top of the (very small) built-in hood. It came off very easily and there was always a danger that it might do so in my bag and scratch the lens. I used to keep it wrapped up in a plastic grocery bag until I hit upon the idea of lining the lens cap with just the right amount of masking tape so that it fit more snuggly on the lens. Remember this tip if/when you buy the lens!

There are a number of people in the Seattle area are members of the Strobist group on Flickr. You should consider creating a Flickr account (free) and duplicating this post there (http://www.flickr.com/groups/strobist/).

I am confused. If I had your calibre as a stock photographer.
I would not put up with all this crappola, and pull out every single one of my images from IStock.
That would be devastating to Istock, Getty or no Getty.

I am sure Getty would not bat an eyelid if they had 2million newbies or non-producing contributors pulling out their images. But this is Yuri.
I can only guess the reason why you did not do this, is that you're being a gentleman.
Lucky for Istock I am not Yuri, as I am no gentleman either.

You have a unique point of view, to be sure.

3 %     woo hoo ! whoopydink 

Yeah, I know, tell me about it.
On the other hand, if you give them enough time even the most insignificant bits can add up.

I stopped uploading to SV a few months back. Seems like a waste of time.

I think of SV and Crestock as equals: easy uploading is offset by minimal income. If you're at one you should be at the other. Together they might account for 3% of your income.

I can't figure it out, and evidently, neither can anyone else

The opposite end of the spectrum, for me, is Flickr, where it's not out of the ordinary to see people rave about an image that has been overfiltered and/or has artifacts visible at low resolution. The lesson to learn, I think, is that it's only photographers who care so much about quality - end users are far more interested in emotional impact than technical quality.

Quote from: sharply_done on December 01, 2008, 18:04

i think the poll is too narrow. You should've included 25,000+ and 100,000+ categories.

CofkoCof was quicker... I edited the question to be more clear

Oops, I voted based on number of IS downloads.
Can you edit the poll so I can change my vote?

"Maybe they didn't think it necessary to have the same key phrase in there 4 times?  Huh" 

That is possibly it, I think I might have originally had things like "ski-lift" and "chair lift" that all got matched to the same thing, but then why doesn't IS just kick it to one instance of their CV match?

[/quote]

If this is the reason, it's news.  Even if they all map the same CV term, they never asked us to delete them.  It doesn't need to be done, the system shows the CV term only once (check any of your images online).  So it's not like your cheating or spamming.

It shouldn't be news - I had a few IS rejections for exactly this reason when I began shooting stock (two years ago) and quickly learned to weed out duplicate CV terms. Blindly relying on the CV to translate your keywords is not a good tactic.

0 sales for me in NOV

Wow, I'm quite surprised by that, leaf. I've been on SV since the beginning and haven't had a problem making the low $10 payout in 2008. My SV earnings are on par with Crestock.

Given that nobody was hurt I'd probably keep taking pics, but of the now-much-nastier traffic jam and not the accident. What you're saying couldn't really happen though, as "inching forward slowly" and "quite badly damaged" don't jibe.

I beleive before the change they considered three subs equal to a classic sale so there has been a change there as well. Now you need 25% more subs to equal a " classic sale ".

Nope, it's always been 4 subs = 1 classic.