what type of deal do the NAPP members have?

Free shipping.

Wow, they sure picked two low-ballers to profile in that article - makes me think that someone with an anti-microstock bias pitched the story to them.

 ... looks like most people are getting plenty of OD sales on SS - how did you fare this month?

Yes, it's a very nice shot, but that's not nearly the same person who frequents this site. You've mixed up YinYang with yingyang0.

You're on the right track.

Concentrate first on getting the right shape of the shadow, then add blur. For the final touches, duplicate the shadow layer a few times and try combinations of "multiply", "color burn", and "soft light" until you get a pleasing appearance.

For the baby's sake, I hope the roses are dethorned!

There is no "best match" in that sense.  If the keywords match the search terms, it comes up.  If the title and description mattered, all you would need to do is modify all your images so all the keywords existed in the description and title.

That's the way the DT "relevancy" search works: title and description play a dominant role in search placement. Although it may sound like a good thing, maximizing your exposure takes a lot of twiddling and tweaking, which I don't think many people bother doing. Life is much simpler when only keywords matter.

Vincet Laforet had an interesting post today on the closing of photoshelter

Interesting, yes, but heavily biased. As I suspected, the decision to 'pack it in' was related to funding. The ultimate reason for their closure was ar poor business model, in which their attitude towards microstock pricing (i.e. ignore it rather than compete with it) played a dominant role.

As far as all the 'this sucks' and 'I was hoping they'd make it' comments go, don't you people realize you had a hand in this by participating in the microstock market? You can't have it both ways.

They never grasped the impact microstock has had on this industry, and were in for a long, uphill battle ...

Yep. The saddest part of this may be that their now ex-CEO still doesn't get it.

I have all my 1400 images jpegs  in one folder on my windows XP . And all raw in Lightroom.
Also I backup to 300GB external drive.

So how do you tell what's online and what isn't? Do you upload everything to everywhere as soon as you create it? I'm guessing you don't bother keeping track of rejections and/or resubmissions.

Thinking about this reminds me of a thread I started about image management and upload scheduling. The overwhelming opinion was that I was wasting my time on such things and would be better off creating new imagery.

I use the simple and cheap power of hard drives.

I have a folder for each agency I submit to. Within each folder are 'Model Releases', 'Next Upload', 'Uploaded', 'Rejected', 'Online' and 'Offline' folders. I name my images in subject-number  fashion (e.g. 'teen122.jpg', 'mountains12.jpg', 'boat63.jpg', ...). When I began shooting stock I used a spreadsheet, then migrated to a database, but I eventually found it too cumbersome to maintain. Sure, keeping things in folders takes up a lot of hard drive space, but managing my portfolios is a cinch.

Reality check: Making significant income with weddings is a tough grind.

A lot of couples want a highly finished package (albums, DVDs, website, ...), and the only repeat business you can hope for is via word of mouth. Heavy advertising, attending bridal shows, and alliances with boutiques, florists, venues, and musicians/DJs is mandatory. Shooting the ceremony with two photographers is becoming the expected norm. Putting all these together means you have a lot more overhead than the typical non-commercial photographer, which means you have to charge more. Competition from friends/relatives/co-workers of the couple who 'are really good at photography' can play a very significant role in how much you can charge. On top of all that, your working hours happen when your friends and family have their free time, and your social life will suffer because of it.

I can't tell you how many people I've known of (usually women) who have blindly decided to get into wedding photography, only to have a rude awakening. This is strongly parallelled by those disappointed by their venture into family/children/baby photography. Personally, I blame the 'Wow, you're an amazing photographer - that's the best shot ever!' culture of Flickr for this.


Do your homework if you choose to go down this road ... and good luck!

Hi my name is Eugene. I am a professional photographer but I am having so many issues with stock.
...
Please help me somehow. College student and am trying to figure this all out. 

He submited 750+ images in one batch at SS, and got 190 aproved?...

I don't think there's much hope for you, eugenef, if you thought doing something like that would help your situation. Given that you're not a pro and therefore have a lot of self-competing imagery, uploading 750 at once was very foolish. Even a batch of 50 of that stuff would have been too much.

On the bright side, your horrible approval rate on the batch (25% !!!) should give you the clear message that you need to rethink your approach to stock photography.

I'm surprised nobody mentioned Wacom's CINTIQ 21UX tablet screen.

Am I the only one who thinks this would be about the perfect way to do post processing?