Haw haw
Beardless and yesterday mutated kid and too early baldy guy ....

How do you know? Rogermexico had a cap on.  

There are places still today in Indonesia where people live without running water, telephones or electricity and live normal lives. Well normal for them.

Living most of the time in Northern Mindanao, I can witness this kind of situations. They are quite normal in the rural areas, and those people don't walk around like savages in tribal outfit at all.

"No running water" means nothing. This is the tropics and it rains all the time. It's easy to catch and store it. Everybody has "nannies", unemployed girls that do all the washing by hand, the cooking, the cleaning and fetching water at a totally clean mountain stream (many of those!) for 30$ a month (if you feed them too).

Telephone? Landlines are scarce and only in the cities. Who needs them with all the area covered by cellphone antennas? If they don't have a cellphone themselves, their mom or dad has one, a cousin in the extended family that lives in the group or the barangay captain has one. That cellphone is shared in the group.

No electricity? Well even in my suburban gated compound, we have rotating brownouts of 6hrs per day. The money for the maintenance of the hydroelectric power stations ended up in the pockets of some politicians. I heard things like that are standard practice in Indonesia too. I run on a home generator then which is a PITA since the fuel costs me as much as a month's rent. When in Rome, do as the Romans.

Street names and house numbers? Hahaha. Everybody knows were everybody lives so why would you need that? Poverty? They live better and more relaxed than many people in the West, having to rush around to get by.

The dad of my models is the mayor of one of these rural places. Everybody can find him and he gets his snail mail but he has no street name nor house number. iStock accepted the release without problems, you just have to mention it clearly. Of course, I attached a photo with her holding the completed release and her school ID next to her head.

WOW !!!!
  128GB Echo SE Backup Drive
Part Number: LEHSE128BSBNA
Price: $499.99

Hahahahaha. I'm a frequent traveler and I always carry my laptop and an 120$ 1TB Iomega disk with me. My 16GB card is always in the cam and it is more than enough for a daytrip.
I am shooting since I was a kid, at 14, and using film (every time a fortune for me) made me very selective in my shots. Of course, doing video too will fill up your card fast.

I know this is old thread alert, but I've been noticing this trend for several months. In fact, I found this particular thread by googling "istockphoto new files don't sell", just to see if anyone else was talking about it. Sure enough. Not only do my meager, once-in-a-while uploads no longer sell, but I've been observing portfolios of several top contributors who usually produce consistent sellers, and the trend is the same with all of them: files uploaded after about Feb 2010 are DOA.

Thanks for your observations and welcome to the MSG. I stopped uploading twice to IS since 2005 and till now, half of my sales are still from before 2007. I resumed uploading in 2009, and the things that start to sell now are those of 2009, with an odd brand new shot in the list. The secret of sales of course is search engine position, not that much quality. Since the best match has been changed regularly in the past, I don't care any more and I just upload, hoping that the best match will change again.

Things HAVE changed. For sure. My review was completed within AN HOUR after submission.
The problem: they accepted 10 of the 110 images

Thanks for the info. They are still the same then. No use considering uploading there. The same disease as all these new sites like Fresh, Veer. Too selective and ignorant reviewers as to what sells. It's an omen: they won't make it.

I expect big changes, since Masterfile is one of the top macro stock agencies. But, who knows. Corbies is the big one and look what happened to SnapVillage and now Veer still struggling.

At least they are cleaning up the mess, since it was quite obvious that Crestock was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Well the macros obviously all want a micro leg now, since their macro income certainly must be fading away slowly. The issue is here that they have to fight against 4 giants that control the market with 7-12 million images in their collections. Whatever they can offer, it will be 10 times less and exactly the same content. So what could be their USP?

If the dust is settled there (it might take a while) I would consider uploading but only if they pay to upload. Veer has set the mark. I'm not going to waste time uploading any more to unproven sites that have a high risk of failure.

@ Brian: Thanks for the clearing up. I will check my images and come back to you if I don't understand.  Patricia

You can't since it has been mentioned here that you can't re-edit your keywords after they have been swallowed in by the system. That makes it so frustrating.

Would the keywords "sexy" or "nude" apply to the following image for purposes of istock sales?

Yes, + erotic.

My application was rejected, and you know what, I agree with them 100%.  At least for now the site is mostly smiling people, with a lot of white, a very clean style . . . . . .  classical studio type photography which a lot of members here are very good, so good luck and go for it.

Well I maybe exaggerated, 1/3 rejects. But I sent in my studio stuff in high-key first on purpose. Those were all accepted. It is, however, a very competitive segment with a lot of supply. I'm just worried that if they limit their collection to that segment, they won't attract many buyers since all that stuff is on the larger sites already, plus all the rest. What is the USP of StockFresh then?
Right now, they seem to thread into the (unsuccessful) tracks of Crestock: QC too strict and probably low sales. My rant was not a grunt against rejections. I'd like SF to be successful, but on StockXpert my landscape and more unusual stuff sold the best. What isn't accepted can't sell, right?

Additional note - I have started having the model's friends, spouse etc. witness their signature.  Before I was just having my hubby do it.  They are less likely to contest if their friend is the witness IMO.

Since almost a year, I follow the sound advice of RT.
Shoot the model's head holding up the signed release next to it.

Type for "free download", "free software" free this free that, you will often be asked to pay at the end. It's a internet thing to insert a free term in web pages, to attract more traffic.

Hahaha. I spent an evening googling for a free flash slideshow generator. The download was free of course. Even the use was "free", till you installed it and then there was a big fat watermark all over. You could remove it by buying the Pro version for just 49.99$. Hahaha. What I really hate are those vendors that throw you in the Internet Exploder when you uninstall their not-so-free product, asking what was wrong. Grrrr... (sorry for the off-topic).

I prefer "single fee" because that is what it is, compared to RM. "Royalty" reminds me of queens and kings in the tabloids. I also wouldn't call a commission of 0.20$ "royal".

Well, either she signed it or she didn't.

Option 3: she signed but says now it's a forgery. For 2 million, it's worth trying.