I get it... direct link.

http://embed.gettyimages.com/embed/146104035?et=g6-y81VDPEib6nbkSMMv5g&sig=GePjNsiZenjaiCyUFsOSLxqF5x7oRjyJwhMdIrji6jo=

Just doesn't seem to display IMG here.

Seems to be this only applies to Getty Images and not people like myself who are Indys on IS.

direct JPEG link :

http://d2v0gs5b86mjil.cloudfront.net/xc/146104035.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=31D8FB54DE31AA506B2C6A649B44F270DD1C3606758FBFDC1A08B9523F5DCD73&Expires=1394154000&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJZZHJ4LGWQENK3OQ&Signature=eUZDdbY85YDR1xt5NqwrlOHDcBM-5vtLnG79d549GHs5Zc2NQtg-RGVr7oncBNczKAzgqAjjKwd6-YYsl2nBd7k-KD4N0-iFjUV8R9Arfc5XhhU6YQfw6VWgbC4cK~doCjtoCIbYya4d8mPQpvgthzjfdTbqosOvU5U2qWOSGnYwPCenw5~jY~5zsiCcDvkuZR19-xinz~P6Wn2YsfXu7FNfaeotsWRK29JLySn3n7J2-muUVmyc-i9LkfE7DuKXWteACiin2ReMYavo86froyI2HGMovRc64N2ocEiCZlUUcPCW17vFh-vGFXEPZf4t71ym2MfbmCRaczyUjDQEEw__

now there are 35 Million free pictures and subscriptions at iStock, they really know what they are doing

Indeed they do, because they will soon make more money with photo sharing than selling stock, just wait and see.

As for us, i'm a bit skeptic, but it's still better than nothing, if we look at the scenario of mobile apps it's a lot worse, they make a few cents per download if lucky but because of huge numbers they can end up making a LOT of money and this could have never been possible with traditional business models.

Just think about the recent Selfies at the hollywood oscars... that picture was shared millions of times and the author earned nothing .. with Getty they could have made tens of thousands $$.

Unlike you guys i come to accept we're in 2014 ... some stock agencies are adding up to 30K pics per day ... Flickr has 4-5 billion images and most of them with CC licence ... we can talk about selling images for 100$ a pop as long as we want but the world has changed and it's not going back anytime soon.

You wanted microstock ... and now you get FREE photos, i told you years ago already and ALL my prophecies came true.

And yet, nothing of this is going to kill photography, monday i'm booked for a well paid outdoor shooting, that's what we're supposed to do, real things, going on location, stock is a side business and a moribund industry.

 

I'm 100% with Getty on this, finally a bold move to tackle bloggers and spongers.

Let's face it, the actual world wide web is a lawless place where no police is moving a finger to protect OUR rights, anyone can easily steal copyrighted material and get a free lunch and apart rare cases no one is going to knock at their door or sueing their as-s.

interesting topic.

how to make money $$ if you make a selfie that is shared by millions on FB and twitter but you're not backed by Samsung ?

Quote from: Hobostocker on March 01, 2014, 15:38

look at the latest Sony NEX, they're already able to produce saleable images especially if downsized to 12MP.

I own both an NEX-7 and 5DMII. At lower ISOs the image quality is about equal. No need to downsize. I love my 5DMII but rarely use it now. I'm planning to pick up an A7R.

The 5D has always been totally overestimated, it's a camera of the past, it can't even beat the nikon D600 or the D7100 in pretty much any department.

I'm curious about the next Sonys, as much as i hated Sony in the past i must admit they're the only ones now along with Sigma who are serious about innovation and value for money.

look at the latest Sony NEX, they're already able to produce saleable images especially if downsized to 12MP.

however, there's no way to squeeze the lens even more unless they squeeze the sensor too, in that case you could get a decent 8 or 12 MP with simil-DSLR quality, but we're still far far away from being able to fit it all inside a smartphone !

another option would be going the Rangefinder way, this allows the lens to be "pancake" but it's still 1-2cm long, so once again totally out of question for use on smartphones etc

it makes me laugh that all these marketing drones keep ranting about cell phones being just a step away from DSLR quality, they'll keep waiting a loooong time !

and this about shooting in daytime, forget about being able to shoot with fast apertures or in low lights with a smartphone, i mean just stop dreaming, i'm so sick of cell phones promising to make anything including coffe, what the he-ll ??

such a sign of desperation, they know the game is over, they know the actual 5-600$ phones will be on sale for a 100$ in a couple years and no dramatic improvemente in both hardware and software can be seen at the horizon, anything has been done already on phones, it's a crippled platform by design, very limited in its small perimeter due to weight, size, and touch screen.

nobody is innovating anymore because there's just no space left for innovation, they reached the peak already, as a product it's fully mature and complete now, new models will be just small cosmetic upgrades.

the microstock industry reached the last stage ... merges/acquisitions, polarization, and finally some maturity about prices, services, etc

i see it as a good news, it doesn't mean this industry is dead, it just shows that it reached its apex and now it will keep going the way it is.

the times where every month there was a new player in the arena are definitely over, and we can certainly expect more M&As soon .. in the end the market will be made up of the big 4 and just 3-4 small agencies at most.

Istock is looking like a textbook case of bad management, they finally managed to tank the company with total disregard for both suppliers and buyers along with their notorious lack of vision and long term planning.

There must be a major re-org going on at Getty, they will probably merge IS + Thinkstock and other underperforming divisions, in any case their grand plan for microstock domination totally backfired so far.

It would be interesting to know a bit more regarding sales, is there actually a demand for photojournalism on Shutterstock ? I'm following the clashes in Kiev on both western and eastern medias and can't remember a single image credited Shutterstock, of course i could be wrong.

Secondly, very unprofessional to keyword and to caption some of these images with the words "regime" and "dictatorship" as the actual government in charge has been democratically elected.

As anyone can see in the images there is just riot police involved, no members of the army or special forces, at least not yet.

By the way, in case the readers here don't know, the so called "patriots" and "democrats" killing policemen in the clashes are mostly composed by members of the ukrainian neo-nazi party "Svoboda" :

http://rt.com/op-edge/ukrainian-nationalists-attacked-police-888/

i did the same mistake years ago, accepting shooting something where i had zero expertise and where i also lacked the proper gear.

the pics turned out OK but of course not on par with Pros doing that stuff for a living.

end of the story, i got the money but i lost the client and felt miserable and to top it off he also told other friends that i was a mediocre photographer.

my fault ! but lesson learned !

never accept an assignment where you know you can't guaranteee a professional result at least on par with the clients expectations.

clients know sh-it about all the technical stuff, they think a good photographer is 360 degrees from architecture to fine art to studio to indoors to sport to news to weddings, and good luck telling them otherwise.

i was very clear with him about this but i shot myself in the foot and rightly so as even wanting i lacked the proper lighting and much more.

we ain't seen nothing yet.

the next big thing is Asian stockers flooding the market and you can't compete with their cheap production costs in Vietnam/Indonesia/Philippines.

for anything else, i don't think it will be possible to stay in the top 20% with quality images unless you're a team or an image factory, you'll be forced to settle down for less.

the eternal Mac vs PC diatribe is going on since 30 yrs and will go on forever and ever.

BUT, until 15 yrs ago the Mac was king in DTP while nowadays there's little difference between the photo apps running on both systems.

and if we talk about CAD/CAM applications the PC has been king since day one apart for Archicad and some other exceptions to the rule.

what really makes the difference today is a good calibrated IPS minitor in my opinion.
by the way, the Mac fan boys should be reminded that they should recalibrate every 6 months at least with a hardware solution, no matter what the apple's marketing BS says.

as for OSX, well it's nothing more than a glorified revamped NextStep UNIX GUI recompiled for X86/64, with removed Finder and the * "dock" added.

and the file manager bundled with OSX can't even sort directories on top of files ... that's unacceptable for Pro users.

i'm using PC and Macs since the early 80's, if mac users are still ok using just one mouse button i'm afraid they're going to be confused with two buttons .. the mac user base is quite colorful to say the least, they could be put on par with those using Sony NEX and expecting to shoot in Auto mode forever in any situation as they've been told that Sony does it better ... they're indeed a sort of "cult" and go tell them otherwise.

now, talking about laptops, have you tried the Lenovo Ultrabook U series ?

as for monitors, Apple displays are mid-range in the best scenario, try some better stuff like 2-3000$ Eizo, Sony, Panasonic, etc

the bad reputation still affecting WIndows is that it's born and still is a general purpose OS, it's like a 18-200mm lens, jack of all trades and master of none.

moreover, users don't even want to hear about reading a manual and have unrealistic expectations from a PC.

thanks god now they're migrating in droves to smartphones and android in particular so the PC arena will go back being a tool for Pros rather than people buying a laptop to surf facebook and twiitter.

i predict it will be a big FAIL.

first of all, if they had the need to "relaunch" their marketplace it's obvious they weren't selling much.

secondly, commercial licences are just one factor in the whole marketing mix, what matters is how they plan to actually make sales and that's the KEY factor, considering how difficult and expensive is to sell photos online nowadays i don't think they've any chance to make a breakthru, they will survive well but they ain't getting rich unless for whatever reason a VC starts investing billions on it or they sell out to Getty.