While reading about ss, I found that Jon Oringer worth is 1 billion dollar.
How did Oringer have so much amount?

Because he is the founder and shareholder of a very big company.

He used to own 55% of Shutterstock, but now I believe it's around 10%.

Shutterstock is worth $1.5 billion today but was valued at almost $3.5 billion 4 years ago.

I've used manual for most of mine but, I have a friend that shot a 3 day timelapse a year or so ago and he swears by Aperture Priority. I tried it once on a sunset and all it did was destroy the tonal range.

It all depends on what you are photographing and what end result you want. If you shoot a sunset with the sun as the main subject, you might just want the sequence to go from light to dark when the sun is gone. If there is nothing interesting left when the sun has set, it doesn't make much sense to raise the exposure. Manual, fixed exposure is your choice then.

But if you are photographing a city with a setting sun, you might want to show the city light up after the sun is gone. Now you need to gradually increase the exposure. The easiest way to do this is with the aperture priority mode and fix the flicker in post. Auto ETTR could be even better as the camera analyzes the histogram after each picture.

Sony cameras have more consistent metering than for example Canon cameras, resulting in less flicker in AP mode. There will, however, always be flicker since the incremental changes in shutter speeds are not that small.

You can blur the flickering a bit with longer shutterspeeds but, anything moving will be blurred also and might not look great (For instance I don't like the blurry clouds on the 1"6 exposure.)

For motion blur that matches standard film, just use a shutter speed that is half of your interval. If you take a picture every 5 seconds, a 2.5" shutter speed will result in "natural" motion blur.

And how do you do that? I think I used to use frame blending. For now I haven't made, or tried to make a decent time-lapse in some time. I recognize that controlling the exposure and making lighting consistent will help make the flicker less evident.

What do you suggest?

Everything on manual, WB, ISO, fixed shutter speed, locked aperture (disconnect lens from camera) will eliminate any flicker introduced by the camera. Of course, flicker introduced by nature itself is harder to control. 

Sometimes it makes sense to use some form of auto mode, with Auto ETTR being the best if your camera supports it. Your driving video, which is cool, is a good example. Something spanning a very long time with radically changing conditions (tunnels, shade, etc. etc.) needs to have exposure changes.

This will result in flicker, but it can usually be removed in post. The best tool for this is Flicker Fixer by Boris FX. It works wonders.

Ideally though, I would have used a much longer shutter speed to create motion blur on the road and passing cars. Hard to do on the GoPro since the aperture is fixed, but there are ND filters you can buy.

Here's one I tried to save but I didn't want to spend a whole day on something that was just for fun. Flower (actually a dandelion) fairly full day cycle, with insects. It jumps and the shadows are a killer for ruining what I intended. Also looking for advise or suggestions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM9qQ7biW70

This one is cool too. Hard to foresee insects and clouds, but a longer shutter speed could've been used to smooth out the insects.

But as with most things, it's the subject matter that's most important. I see timelapses full of flicker in big tv shows and movies, and they seem to accept it. Boris FX Flicker Fixer would turn both of your timelapses into flicker free, smooth clips.

And no, I don't work for Boris FX  - it's just the best flicker fixer I've found, and I've tested MANY...

Quote from: increasingdifficulty on January 05, 2018, 05:44

I would argue that knowing each search engine and thereby tagging properly and accordingly is more important than the quality of your work.

Just putting that out there.

A well-tagged image that's OK but nothing special will probably sell better than an otherwise excellent image that is poorly tagged.

Yes, exactly what I said. 

Well, the person who started making those anonymous white renders (or at least the best) was a microstock top seller for years. Probably made quite a bit of money.

Simply copying that concept isn't likely to be anywhere near as successful... It just looks like an off-brand copy. You have to come up with something of your own.

Exclusivity only makes sense when you are close to the owners and there are 200 photographers on the site. You will benefit from personal pitches, incredible visibility and good placements.

At the sites for the masses, don't even consider exclusivity today. It's very expensive.

Although, if you want to be picky, if you want to watch Game of Thrones (HBO), Breaking Bad (Netflix) or Seinfeld (Hulu) there aren't really any competitors, as each company mostly has exclusive content.

I see them more as complementing each other rather than competing.

If I want Jessica Jones and Narcos I can't just look for the cheapest alternative. Netflix is the only choice. And if I want Game of Thrones, HBO is the only choice.

BS handled the situation very quickly and efficiently.

That's great, did you use the support email or did you contact them in a more direct way for such a fast response?

Chinese copyright law is very different from what it is in most other countries.

And legal or not, they can copy absolutely anything anyone is selling online (and offline). Anywhere. And it happens a lot.

Still, there is business going on in the rest of the world. Just another thing to consider when setting your prices, that's all.

If you have a unique design, you need to take care of your branding and make people not want to buy ripoffs.

I use my own name on my account here and most of my sites (it's jsnover rather than joannsnover at some of the older ones). You can Google my name and see pretty much anything about me. It's a risky way to operate - sites can and have closed my account because they didn't like my organizing activities - but people know who I am.
...
You can't really post any link to any portfolio, at least not one that's been around a while and where someone is already here on MSG - you'll be spotted as a duplicate pretty quickly. Posting a link to a small/new portfolio won't get anyone fake credibility and the moment a scam artist picked a more established portfolio to impersonate, the odds of getting found out go way up.

Well, anyone can create a new account, take your picture, post your portfolio links and say that YOU are the imposter. It wouldn't surprise me if there are profiles here claiming to be some successful author, while the real author has never even set foot on this site. After all, a tiny, tiny minority of stock contributors visit this site.

It's hard to really prove anything other than going through a whole process of "ok, tomorrow I will upload a picture like this to my portfolio, that is the real me".

Yes, I'm taking this to the extreme, but you can't blindly trust anyone here, no matter the avatars or portfolio links. Just be aware of that.

Never have I heard "the most important feline events" before. I guess there's a first for everything. 

Seems like Dreamstime is really working out for you 😀

Well, that depends entirely on when the last withdrawal was...