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Messages - Elenathewise
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651
« on: January 15, 2011, 18:23 »
Very interesting read. I was looking at "Daniel Laflor"'s portfolio a while ago myself and was wondering if it's just a part of Yuri's portfolio under a different name:). With very restrictive upload limits for non-exclusives it's very hard to grow your presence on Istock. So, to avoid those restriction one could register under a different name (or hire a real person to do that) and shoot some stuff exclusively for Istock... (not that I would see anything wrong with that). The images definitely have identical "look and feel", and yes there are models that appear in both Laflor's and Arcurs' portfolios.
It's either that, or Yuri trained a very capable competitor to himself;-)
652
« on: January 09, 2011, 13:33 »
I wouldn't pay too much attention to numberr of veiws. It's sales that matter:) as people already mentioned here, u can't really correlate number of veiws with number of sales. Some of my files have a ratio of 1:1, some 1:540. U may be getting views from browsers that never intend to buy anything, so it's not a good measure of anything.
653
« on: January 09, 2011, 13:25 »
I was expecting somebody to post that yesterday but to my surprise I don't see it on this forum.
So this is the link: http://tinyurl.com/2cjldso
Good summary on current state of microstock. Nicely done.
654
« on: January 08, 2011, 18:40 »
Until my mom calls me up and tells me about some microstock site she heard of, I'm going to think they aren't doing enough marketing.  I'm not sure if a company like Google or Amazon would be a good thing to join the microstcock game, but you have to think they would market . out of it.
I couldn't agree more! When ss was doing a survey about improving submitter end, I tried to tell them - no one cares, it is good as it is, please focus more on advertising to more diverse audience. Alas! They spent the money on prettifying the submitter page. The key to micro stock is that indeed this is a product that everyone can afford. Your grade 6 child doing a school project. Your grandmother making a church poster. Your neighbor plumber putting his add into the local newspaper. But - every time we approach someone to ask permission to take pictures, they not only never heard of micro stock, most of them had no idea what stock photography was! We are a Wallmart of photography business, and yet no one knows about us!
655
« on: January 08, 2011, 13:20 »
My stats at Istock was just over 170K credits for 2010. Istock has only a half of my portfolio because of the upload limits. To get over 1,200,000 limit you have to be selling 7 times more. For me, this goal is still unreachable since as a non-exclusive I have ridiculously low upload limits. Even if I suddenly start producing only files that are selling 5 times better than my average, it would still take me several years even to approach this. Yuri's portfolio size on Istock is just slightly bigger than mine, and I doubt he made the 1,200,000 level (although it's possible if he was uploading mostly his proven best-sellers to Istock). So, it looks like the only contributors who have a chance to make that level are exclusive ones (providing they are very talented) since they are not crippled by restrictive upload limits.
Not to start again exclusive/non-exclusive war:) - these are just facts.
656
« on: January 07, 2011, 12:25 »
Ah good to see another person who enjoys Darwin's blogs and amazing photography! 
His work has blown me away when I saw his book about the Rockies "Dances with light". He is probably my fist "role model" in photography:) Of course I wouldn't even think of going out in -30 C weather (with wind!) to take photos, but I definitely admire him for doing that:) I lived in Alberta (Edmonton) for 4 years myself, in winter you plugin your car and run from the parking lot to the building before your eyelashes freeze together... Another great Albertan: http://www.darylbenson.com/That image of sunrise with the horse (don't know how to post a link to it since it's flash) makes my heart ache...
657
« on: January 07, 2011, 12:06 »
Second week of January, probably.
+1
658
« on: January 07, 2011, 12:03 »
on par with BigStock. sometimes a bit better, sometimes a bit worse. Definitely not even close to the top tier
659
« on: January 06, 2011, 16:41 »
Hi alias,
Just to help Jonathan Klein said it himself when interviewed, so it isn't just based on guessing.
Leaf,
I have been lucky enough to be involved in two co-ops now that are both making good returns especially for the owner shooters because they get a larger slice than the contributors to their site. I will say I would love to be involved with something of the sort but from my experience it would take a very special group of people to pull it off.
They are out there but I don't know if they would opt in. It has to stay reasonably small in co-op form or the board has to absolutely be trusted and supported for a certain period of time to make it fly. Niche Micro collections could be a great way to start this. Baby Boomers are going to hit 65 here in about a week and senior images and footage I think are going to sell really well for the next twenty years. So who's in
Cheers,
Jonathan
I am
661
« on: January 04, 2011, 13:20 »
Average 0,13 US Cent per download. No FTP! Any Question? I don't upload new images since 10 month.
This is practically giving out images for free. I don't think any other microstock site is even approaching this. There are 25 cents per photo subscription downloads that people complain about, but taking into account their pay-per-download sales the average is still way higher than that. How low are we willing to go? Many people were outraged by commissions cuts on Istockphoto, and some pulled their stock portfolios or stopped uploading, and yet the lowest commission per image I got on Istock ever was still above 20 cents. Now someone's offering you 13 cents per download or lower and it's worth trying? Doesn't make sense to me.
662
« on: January 03, 2011, 22:47 »
Yes it's 1500 max monthly. Which is still an awful lot for this price. One year subscription on Shutterstock is about $2500, and you can download 25 images a day. One year at Photospin is $329-549 and you can download 50 a day. Seriously, they gotta be kidding. I don't know what Yuri is doing there:)
663
« on: January 03, 2011, 18:32 »
is it any different from CafePress? I played with that one years ago, it's quite hard to make money unless you have a high traffic website that you plug your shop into, or do your own serious marketing.
664
« on: December 09, 2010, 13:44 »
If you wipe the exif, they will have other excuses to reject - their infamous "artifacts" or "overprocessed" reason for example. Those just make me shrug. It's either extremely unqualified people who are not able to tell what artifacts are if they bit them from behind, or people driven by conflict of interest since they have photos of similar subjects in their portfolios. Both cases are indications of amazingly unprofessional environment. I was asking agency owners years ago - don't you think it's a conflict of interest to allow reviewers to have their own portfolios on the site? The answer was always - nah, it's fine...
I had a couple of submissions recently returned for the need of extra model release (a small part of the back of they guys head was visible), so we went ahead and added the release, now they rejected those images for "use of direct flash". Needless to say, no direct flash was used, not even close!
I am sure there are many talented and knowledgeable people with good work ethics working as reviewers on Istock, but there are also way too many unprofessional people in my opinion.
665
« on: December 06, 2010, 11:50 »
Inspectors cannot assume you have stitched several images together. Just put a note in the description along the lines of *stitched panorama* and it will be fine.
Why?? I had the same problem. The reason agencies don't want you to upsize images is because they don't want files with poorer quality. If the quality is fine, this means the image is stitched. Inspectors should assume just that. If I managed somehow to upsize the image without the loss of quality, then who cares? If inspector can't tell poor quality from good quality and have to rely on camera EXIF info for that, then... well, they shouldn't be inspectors. Istock doesn't have a way to submit a note to inspector other than in image description, which is ridiculous. It means after image is accepted I have to go edit the note out of the description. How difficult it is to add a little field "note to inspector"? Or hire inspectors who actually can evaluate the images.... SIGH 
666
« on: November 28, 2010, 15:34 »
Well now I am seeing double from looking at all the sample photos at 100% resolution for 2 days from different lightweight cameras. The only one I liked quality-wise was Leica M9 which costs like a small car, has only manual focus, no zoom and very limited number of lenses. And it's not even that small. The quality is quite nice though, no question there. So I guess it's either M9 or wait till technology makes another leap... ("Come on technology... you can do it... leap already..." ok now I really do need a break:))
667
« on: November 28, 2010, 14:01 »
The A55 seems to be getting a good response from users, but there's not really that much difference size-wise when compared to a small DSLR, particularly seeing as there aren't any lenses that are any more compact that traditional DSLR lenses. I can't see any reason why you'd get this over a D3100 if you already have Nikon lenses - its only about 50g lighter.
Its in the video specifications and capabilities that the Panasonic cameras, particularly the GH2 are really nice. I'll probably get one for the video features when it becomes more widely available.
Well see with A55 you get this little cool flip LCD screen. I the (very) old days I used to own Canon Powershot G2 which also had that feature and I found it very useful. You can take ground level photos without actually having to lie down on your belly:) Since I haven't held the A55 myself I am not sure if it flips to the side like Powershot one was. I guess it's time go to a camera store. About another Nikon body - I already have a D300 body that's lying around without much use, maybe I should just put a fast 50 mm lens for it and call it my "super-light" camera...;-)
668
« on: November 28, 2010, 12:36 »
I have been reading reviews of the Sony NEX-5. That one looks promising. Anyone tried it?
I just read a review on NEX-5 in D-SLR camera guide and it says this: "If you approach this as a D-SLR owner looking for a top-quality pocket camera, the NEX is a disappointment. It's just too difficult to make manual adjustments, so as a result, the NEX-5 rather falls between two stools" . They also say the quality is "no match for rival D-SLRs". I haven't tried it myself though.
669
« on: November 27, 2010, 14:23 »
What about SONY A55VL - anyone had experience with that one?
671
« on: November 27, 2010, 01:25 »
I am tired of lugging around heavy stuff. I want something portable and light just to have with me all the time, and I want it to have good image quality.
I looked at Leica V-Lux 2 and it seemed promising, but I couldn't find any decent review of it. I found some images taken with "pre-production" camera and kinda looks like crap at full resolution. I mean, I shoot with Nikon D3X usually so it's hard to compare to, but still - is there anything decent in the "bridge" cameras categories? Decent meaning good enough quality to sell.
Would appreciate any advice or links or pointers to reviews.
Thanks in advance,
Elena.
672
« on: November 25, 2010, 10:08 »
Normally it wouldn't catch my attention when a photographer does a blog post about microstock, but in this case it's Zack Arias doing the post, and he's a guy I have a lot of respect for. He's just a cool guy, with a very refreshing outlook on photography and creativity in general. And you know you've seen his "Transform" video and loved it.
Anyway, he did a blog post about his views on microstock as a photographer who admittedly doesn't have any desire to participate in microstock and believes that the microstock business is headed towards collapse. Can't say I totally disagree with him there.
It's a good, long read, definitely worth the time: http://www.zarias.com/microstock-sim-cards-in-cameras-big-foam-fingers/
Those who can do, do. Those who can't do, teach. Or blog. Or complain:)
673
« on: November 17, 2010, 13:35 »
Hmm... Looks like you're the only one they sent that newsletter to:)
674
« on: November 17, 2010, 12:42 »
Creativity. 
675
« on: November 17, 2010, 12:34 »
What I can't get my head around is they end up punishing their most productive, most hard-working and talented contributors, the very people that bring them most sales. First they dangle a carrot in front of you to get you motivated to produce more and better, and then when you get there, the carrot is gone! Basically the idea is "Let's tell them we'll pay more as they sell more, so they'll work even harder to makes us rich, but then we won'd really pay them anything... har har har..." Treating us like we're stupid donkeys, which we kind of are going along with this.
Actually, with all this ranking crap - if the agency is doing something like this, this should be in a contract. A binding one. You can't just change your mind or make false promises, this is bad business ethics. All of them are doing that kind of shady stuff. As I said before, I'll sign up with anyone who'd take a task to get this industry regulated. I don't know much about it myself, but will be willing to help. They have to be accountable for their actions.
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