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Messages - epixx
Pages: 1 ... 26 27 28 29 30 [31] 32 33 34 35 36 ... 47
751
« on: October 18, 2007, 11:00 »
I believe Porsches are copyrighted (the design of the car), but never mind. I think I have a couple of Porsche images out there as well 
752
« on: October 18, 2007, 10:57 »
I think it is a nice effort, but honestly, trying to populate a drop down from a database with every state/city in the world is a bit above and beyond. Keep it simple
That part actually worked fine for me. Even my little village in Thailand was there. But the rating system has to go. If the agency wants to rate the photos, fine with me. They're supposed to know what they are doing. But when every Paul, Dick and Harry are supposed to rate photos, the results will be original to say the least.
753
« on: October 18, 2007, 03:52 »
thanks for the update. it is great to hear about your adventure since it is still my dream one day to live on a sailboat funded by microstock 
A microsailboat?
754
« on: October 18, 2007, 03:51 »
I wonder how they will compete with the established agencies and if they will push any of the poor earners out.
I think the next 12 months will be very important. Most of (all?) the big macros seem to be more or less involved in micro now, and those smaller entities that haven't started earning money for their suppliers within a few months, are probably out permanently. Nobody want to spend hours or days every month for a dollar or less per week.
755
« on: October 17, 2007, 19:28 »
easyFotostockTM is not a another photographer community and for that matter it will not have a forum where photographers will be moderated and can explain stories about how many downloads they make, how much they like their colleagues images, debating about Model Releases or how much money most of them finally receive...
The above is enough for me to become interested. Forums in one place (here), sales in one place. Makes sense
756
« on: October 17, 2007, 13:40 »
3 dl on their site & almost 1000 in SS & IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Isn't this reason enough?
I have just 11 dl's there, but the average pay per dl isn't bad, and since they are not dumping prices, it doesn't hurt me to have my images there. There are others that I worry much more about.
757
« on: October 17, 2007, 13:38 »
I've tried around 15 different sites, and will give up on half of them within the coming six months. Some are out already. It pays to be on at least five or six. Read the threads on this forum to find out which give the best results. There are few obvious winners here, except for the Big 6.
758
« on: October 17, 2007, 13:34 »
I suggest to add a new category: "Down and departing" !!!
that would be fitting for most of the "up and coming".
759
« on: October 17, 2007, 13:33 »
Tuesday or Wednesday. Don't like the beach. Too much sand.
760
« on: October 16, 2007, 20:34 »
I'm sure they will get their act together eventually. Except for the glitches, their website is rather functional, and although they haven't poured enough resources into this yet, they don't really have much choice. Corbis can't afford to be the only major macro agency without a micro, and they can absolutely not afford to have one that functions badly.
I'm there with 560 approved images so far, and around 100 in the queue. Most of my images are priced at $10 as well (no subscription), some "13-a-dozen-pics" at $5 with subscription allowed, and the best ones at $25. No sales yet though, but I only started uploading two weeks ago.
761
« on: October 16, 2007, 20:24 »
I'm curious as to why you want to delete from SPM. For me, they have generated twice as much money as LO. Obviously not a lot, but still...
762
« on: October 16, 2007, 03:48 »
Perhaps they are planning on trying to turn over a new leaf with the fancy new site.
I thought there was only one leaf 
763
« on: October 15, 2007, 19:25 »
I'm not sure if it looks better or not, and it doesn't seem to display correctly on my browser (Firefox on Mac). Nice to have some kind of statistics, although it shows that this month, I've only had subscription sales at Crestock.
764
« on: October 15, 2007, 09:40 »
My current bestseller at IS as well as SS is a terrible photo. I only uploaded it after 6 months because I didn't have anything to do one evening. It was even rejected at IS once.
SnapKillit has something called "Snappyness" factor. I guess that's a way to promote what they believe is good stock photos, and get the crap down where it belongs: a big grey substance at the bottom, increasing the bulk of their portfolio without being seen too often.
765
« on: October 15, 2007, 04:10 »
Epixx, you just discribed how macrostockers feel / felt about microstock. Yet you're in for microstock !! But now that they could be cutting into YOUR profit (and not that of the macrostockers) it's suddenly all hell and doom. Why don't you tell people to quit microstock, than we all can ask $50 an image.
As I see it, it's just 'go-with-the-flow' and when it's not profitable enough (and that day will come) I'll just quit, no problem.
The microstock model is doomed to give low profit at some time. So just grab what you can as long as it lasts.
You are correct and you're incorrect. The reason why microstock exists, is that making halfway decent images has become much cheaper with the introduction of digital cameras. Another result of the "digital revolution" is that there are much more images on the market than before. So, the prices fall, and quite rightly so. The problem we are facing now, is that we are competing with ourselves, selling the same images cheaper. If a photo has shown that it can generate a profit of $2.50 at StockXpert or any other site, why on earth should we offer it to the same customer for a price that only generates a profit of $0.30? If you lower the price of ice-cream, you can always hope that your customer will buy two cones instead of one. But he's certainly not going to buy your image twice, even if you lower the price to $0.01. The customer has already accepted the higher price, and would probably pay more if he had to. If the agencies mostly had exclusive photographers and unique photos, it would have made some sense, since it would have been a competition between those photographers. But it's not. It's the same photographers competing against themselves, lowering the prices. Lowering the price from, say $10 to $1 probably won't affect the number of images sold much, since, as I've mentioned earlier, $10 is already a very small fraction of the costs the customer has to publish the image. What you are talking about, the macro-stock prices, are so far above this level, that it doesn't really make any sense comparing. It's a different market altogether. So who will be the winners if we keep lowering the prices from where we are now? Photographers? Absolutely not, since volume will in no way increase at the same rate as the lowering of the prices, if at all. Agencies? StockXpert will get a short term gain, until the competition catches up, or rather: catches down. Then we are back to where we were, only with lower profits. Customers? High-volume buyers, absolutely. This is a gift from heaven for them. iStock? Absolutely. Being the only micro-agency that has managed to market their exclusivity feature in a proper way can keep their price up and tell customers that "if you want our exclusive images, you have to pay the price". So no subscription from IS. They simply don't need it.
766
« on: October 14, 2007, 14:44 »
Where do they currently go?
They obviously go to another subscription site. There aren't too many choices: SS, DT and 123. From those who have already decided to go with a subscription, there's nothing to lose or gain. But this will not succeed for StockXpert unless it's marketed. If it's marketed, it will take customers from other segments as well, those who pay more per image today. This has nothing to do with the expansion of the market. Any image purchaser can afford to pay $10 or more for a photo, and if they don't have a choice, they will. But as long as the suppliers, that's us, keep undercutting each other with subscription schemes and lower prices, they will get a lower price, a price that they didn't even ask for until somebody offered it too them. What kind of business model is that? I'm all for microstock. That's the reason why I'm here. But it has been shown beyond all reasonable doubt that customers are actually willing to pay real money for images. The prices of microstock images are already very low compared to other design/publishing costs. Who goes for subscriptions? Not the secretary who needs an occasional photo for a presentation. It's the advertising agencies, the web designers and other bulk users. Do they invoice their customers 30c per image? No, they don't. Only the cost of having a designer searching for an image is somewhere between 30 and 80 dollars per hour. Still we, and our agents, fight to offer them even lower prices. Lower prices that are more or less insignificant to the customers, since they are completely overshadowed by other, higher costs. StockXpert may gain some market shares from this, at least to start with, but long term, the others will fight back. Back to square one, only with a lower profit.
767
« on: October 12, 2007, 21:24 »
Those with lots of downloads get more downloads.
Hope this helps.
No, that doesn't help. Rather the opposite actually. It makes it even more difficult for those building a new portfolio to compete.
768
« on: October 12, 2007, 21:18 »
We have both a 90mm and 24mm Canon TS-E. Love shooting with them, mostly for the effect of a really shallow and selective depth-of-field by angling the lens plane away from the subject plane. However, almost all our microstock distributors reject the images because there's not enough in focus for them. The macros, on the other hand, love this style of image!
Ron, That's an interesting observation about the differences between the micro and macro agencies, and I absolutely agree. I've always claimed that the micros accept technically perfect, but rather boring images. Sometimes, I have a feeling that the reviewers at the micros just "go by the book", while those at the macros are qualified enough to actually use their brain as a part of the process. However, when it comes to Snapvillage, my impression is that they have an acceptance policy more resembling the macros. How is your experience with respect to that?
769
« on: October 12, 2007, 06:16 »
Right now, we're not on subscription on SnapVillage. That may change... we're testing out the higher price point approach for now. All images are default at $25 and we're moving some higher. We do have subscription available on all other distributors including Shutterstock and will opt-in to the upcoming StockXpert offer.
I agree on the higher price-point. I think that is probably the most interesting development within microstock right now.
770
« on: October 12, 2007, 06:14 »
I am guessing he was referring to Snap Village
Something like that. What did you call it? Snapvillage? Must try to remember that 
771
« on: October 12, 2007, 01:10 »
I have sold 2 photos at $1 each
Why do you price them so low? Don't you think customers can afford $5?
772
« on: October 11, 2007, 23:15 »
A solid customer base from the start. Look at LO, an agency that everybody liked, but alas.. no customers.
I think Packvillage has a few things going for it:
- easy to upload
- they do keywording if you don't (they also change the keywords if they don't like yours, not always to your liking, but at least they show they care)
- 5 price levels, your choice
- you can opt in or out of subscription for each image
- define your own sets (very convenient for somebody browsing your portfolio, not having to look through hundreds of photo looking for that particular food-shot)
- well established in the business, with a large customer base
- well known among any image purchaser around the globe, and among lots of others
773
« on: October 11, 2007, 23:06 »
In some ways, doesn't ever-increasing resolution ( >10mp ) and Photoshop make these lenses less relevant for most situations that used to call for a tilt/shift lense?
(I know this goes against the "get it right in the camera, not in software" approach, which clearly has its merits, but this is not right vs. wrong, it's preference.)
Scientifically, a tilt-shift lense is doing in glass (distorting angles) what Photoshop would do in software (distort pixels). If there are enough of them to begin with, there's greater control in software.
DigitumDei, is your application architecture, or other? Have you tried changing perspective (eg. in software) on non-architectural / non-vanishing-point images? I'm curious.
Yes and no. Manipulation of focal plane is simply not possible in Photoshop, unless you have an unlimited DOF to play with, and most of the time you don't. For architecture, it's a matter of discussion, but in my opinion, the difference in resolution after a perspective correction (usually less resolution in the upper part of the photo) will always show in formats from A4 and up, even with 10MP or more. Another thing I've noticed, is that circular, and in particular cylindrical shapes in perspective, tend to get "out of shape" after a perspective correction in Photoshop. Trying to correct them (a correction of the correction so to say) separately can really improve your hate for computers  Conversation between client and photographer (this is from a real case, photos of a 50 meter tall processing plant): Client: That storage tank on the sixth floor looks strange. I don't think we manufacture anything that looks like that. Photographer (jokingly): I don't know, I sure didn't place it there. Client: Oh, wait. It's tank number x3br5 (or something like that). But the shape is strange. It's much taller, and isn't it supposed to be circular? Photographer (looking at photo before and after perspective correction): I see what you mean, I'll have another go at it. Photographer (Two hours later, his eyes threatening to fall out of his skull): Now, what do you think? Client: It looks different at least. The height is right now, but the shape still looks strange. I think we have to get up there and have another go. Are you available tomorrow? The photo was shot at a location 250km away, from the top of an old oil storage tank, 40 degrees Celsius in the shadow (no shadow on top of the rusty old tank though, and no lift) Sometimes, getting it right in the camera is a good idea.
774
« on: October 11, 2007, 21:33 »
Ron is on Shutterstock -
http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-uiofoto.html
You're right. His portfolio link is wrong though. It leads to an empty portfolio. Anyway, I checked the portfolio at Snapperhome, and I couldn't find any subscription photos.
775
« on: October 11, 2007, 20:58 »
We've had 9 sales on SnapVillage in the past 3 weeks. All at either the $25 or $50 level.
Ron
http://www.iofoto.com
Ron,
Are you in our out of subscriptions?
Edited: Stupid question. Obviously you're out. You're even out of SS, right?
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