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Messages - loop
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926
« on: April 04, 2009, 07:30 »
If you look the fist 8-10 pages you'll see that almost all non-ex have green numbers. They seem to be well treated in this best match incarnatioon.
927
« on: April 03, 2009, 17:51 »
I also download straight from the camera.
Integrated card readers often are cheap and have problems with big files (20 -30 MB). I have a new computer where every part -to say so- is 2011's or 2012's standards but the ICR it's the weakest point; tends to fail or to go painfully sow. I don't use it anymore.
When the card reader works, it's incredibly fast. I downloaded over a gig of pictures in about a minute or less (didn't time it so not sure exactly how long it took...but it was darn fast!). I don't like downloading straight from the camera because it wants to use software and I just want to transfer directly to folders I create.
Paula, I don't use any software to dowload from the camera. Just pugging the mini-usb into the camera. Then I copy all the fotos (select all, copy) from the card and paste it in my "originals" folder, that's all, and its fast.
928
« on: April 03, 2009, 16:56 »
I also download straight from the camera.
Integrated card readers often are cheap and have problems with big files (20 -30 MB). I have a new computer where every part -to say so- is 2011's or 2012's standards but the ICR it's the weakest point; tends to fail or to go painfully sow. I don't use it anymore.
929
« on: March 31, 2009, 08:24 »
I think maybe I haven't made my point clear. What I'm saying is that IStock has the exclusive contributors, but at any given time when a buyer might search there will be a huge amount of images (of varying quality, including top notch ones) available on all the other microstock sites while not available on IStock. A consequence of their upload limits on nonexclusives. So for a buyer there is no real advantage to searching IStock's image library over any other. They may even have a wider selection of quality images on other sites as a consequence of exclusivity rules not working with the upload limit rules.
Modified after last post:
I disagree, those with the biggest backlogs will be the big producers like Yuri et al. there will me a huge amount of top notch images on other sites not represented on IStock at any given time
There's a main difference: more or less, worse or better, you will find the same content everywhere but at istock.
930
« on: March 27, 2009, 19:22 »
Yes, they are in Norway, that is obvious, far away from Hungary.
931
« on: March 24, 2009, 17:43 »
Finally, there is the often ignored aspect of globalization. I wrote about this 3 years ago on Talkmicro and most had to laugh. Just go to any site forum and look at the new contributors. Most are from Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, Croatia, Slovenia, Poland, and recently the Chinese started to pour in. Those are countries with a cost of living that is a fraction of that of the industrialized West, but they get the same price for their photos as Western photographers. The production cost of a shoot is much lower there and in the limit, they will dominate the scene. Devaluing the dollar is a great move from Obama, so the West-Europeans will be the first to go.
Well it's a theory except you're forgetting something, the highest yielding type of imagery are those that feature people, the buyers at present don't want that many images with Chinese folk in, and the other countries you mentioned are all poor in comparison to the largest image buying countries, and without sounding patronising I could spot a Polish girl in a cheap looking outfit a mile off, so although they may be able to mass produce the images cheaper than the Western world a lot of them will look cheap which is not what sells. Fit, healthy well dressed people is what sells at the moment because it's what the buyers want representing their needs, there are those from the countries you mentioned that do produce the type of images that sell, and if you check I think you'll find they're no better off than anyone else if anything some are worse off because they need to pay more for quality goods in their countries than we do.
I agree, RT. Actually, if done wisaely it is cheaper to proce the kind of images the buyers want at the "Western World", than in the countries you quote. And I wouldn't call countries as Russia or Poland as something in the line of "third world", I've been in Eastern countries and life is not so cheap at all. Those are ideas from the past. In the meantime, no mater how many now contributors or from where they came, my RPI and my istock income grows day after day.
932
« on: March 23, 2009, 16:58 »
I'm exclusive, I wasn't a bit nervous when Getty bougth istock, I'm not now. But yes a bit sad, because it was great to know that there was a nice and smart guy like him at the steer. Bruce had the microstock idea, and put the idea in motion; without him, probably even this forum wouldn't exist. But istock flies on his impulse, and will go on flying, I haven't the sligthlest doubt about it.
933
« on: March 19, 2009, 21:18 »
Which is nice about iStock, because they are all independent, they can't fill the queue with their entire portfolio at once.
This kind of short-sighted protectionism will turn sour on IS sooner or later.
Why would it?
In fact, it's exactly the reverse. Several clonic-content sites , one site with different content. Maybe if not sure who will win, but it's easy to tell who can't ever lose.
934
« on: March 19, 2009, 18:52 »
What some people really don't understand is... copying.
Dear fellow members, your life - what do you know, what do you say, what you are is copied from others. Very first from your parents. This is how you fit yourself in the community. The way to become original is the "creative copying" of another things, persons, ideas, behaviors, etc. Some people think that "creative copying" of others is originality. It can be, the truth is that the originality is a complex process of comparisons between you and the others, the successful result of the healthy knowledge of what is aesthetic for others and what not, generally saying, what is a good thing and what is a wrong.
Jumping over the "creative copying" the result is the flat 1:1 copying. It's the easiest way. Not so successful people copy the successful ones because the not successful want to be successful. Simple.
Everything is relative.
Being so creative means that you always add something new to old things so you create something new. Please accept the fact that many others will copy you. Please accept that this is the way of life. It's the way of evolution, this is how the species survive, one member copies the another and the successful behavior survives, the unsuccessful dies.
For those who make problems of being copied I recommend to not upload their works so others can't see their work so it cannot be copied.
Please understand the above in positive approach. I totally reject stealing. Illustrating an idea is an amorph thing, everybody can say "the original idea was mine" but sadly this means "I used first this idea". This doesn't means that you own the idea.
That's just sophism. It's like saying that knowing that everybody has to die sooner or later, murdering shouldn't be a crime. Plagiarism, as stated in the law, is a theft. That said, I've been copied a number of times. In some of these cases, the issue has been resolved by means I won't comment know. But it's true that other times, at least at microstock industry, resolving the matter is difficult. For these cases, I'm considering Plan B. Wich consists in: 1) Flood the microsite with different versions of your original file. Re-shot, upload a number of them. That will dilute the plagiarist's benefits and increase yours. 2) Go to the plagiarist folder to have a look at his bestsellers. Maybe, some time, he has had an good idea, and being as he is in sharing mode, probably he won't mind you copying --improved, with better model, props and/or gear-- and uploading several versions. I still haven't done movement nuber 2, but I'm very tempted. The only problem is that when I've gone to the plagiarist folder often I've discovered that his best selling files are copied as well of other photograhers.
935
« on: March 19, 2009, 16:43 »
dimmu, in art , there is nothing new under the sun. i am a musician and was doing music way before i even started photography. and many times, i have heard the same thing copied from robert johnson, elmore james, tchaikovsky, chopin, charlie parker. examples: led zeppelin, fleetwood mac, beatles, antonio carlos jobim, and almost 90% of jazz music. also charlie parker "stole" from gershwin, and cole porter.
in 1980's when i was playing in vancouver ( i worked and travel all across canada. and is now settled in the extreme east. cannot go any farther)..
anyway, i got really mad when someone "stole" my music i uploaded to mp3.com . i was one of the first indie musicians when mp3 started (in fact , that was how "tan510jomast" became my nickname. only it was tan510 as a blues composer.
i was in the blues charts of mp3 as high as #5).
ok, back to my point, i complained this to a fellow musician who was much younger than me.
his wise reply was, "it's not important to be the first, only to be the best".
i think that speaks volumes to all of us. don't worry. if yours is in fact the best,
the buyers will show you.
cheers. (sorry i wrote so much. it's a looooong story, an old one. but a good one. something i always remember till this day, as you can see). More than the fact that there's a lot of plagiarism (at microstock and other venues) what annoys me is this attitude "it's normal, there's nothing new under the sun", etc that appears to be a passport to copy everithing that can sell, instead of being creative, and a very good hiding point for people that doesn't want or can be creative, a free pass for mediocrity. Because, if "there's nothing new under the sun", does that mean that mean that I can took your portfolio and rip off all your bestsellers?
936
« on: March 09, 2009, 14:31 »
Sorry, FD, but it is most definitely not a fact. Facts are verifiable; what you have here is a speculation based on a premise. That premise may indeed be based on experience, which is based on facts. But claiming that a future action will have a particular outcome, unless based on something immutable like the laws of physics, is not and never will be a fact. No matter how good your reasoning ability, no matter how likely your claim is to be true, it's not a fact. It's your belief, and it may be mine as well, but that's all it is.
Exactly. To illustrate with an example easy to understand: FACT: Although FT has lowered one or two times (ranks changes, commissions change... even, in some way subs introduction) the royalties for contributors, many of them, no matter if grumbling a bit, are staying an go on uploading there. Including, as it seems, Flemish Dreams who is doing a FT what he says with some contempt exclusives would do at IS. For me it's ok, I'm not on Fotolia and it's not my worry. But it is a Fact. FICTION, FANTASIE, NONSENSE SPECULATION: What exclusives at IS would do in a similar situation. Istock raised commissions for exclusives about four years ago, but never has lowered them. Even the IS peculiar subs program guarantees these commissions --in my experience, a lot of subs sales have given higher royalties. So, anyone -- no matter if with auto-induced prophetic fantasies-- can't know what would happen in that case. Even less, someone who is not exclusive and probably doesn't know/talk often with other exclusives.
937
« on: March 08, 2009, 18:38 »
Its a fact in your mind and in your wishes and fantasies, I concede that.
938
« on: March 08, 2009, 17:29 »
Good points but of course IS's greatest strength are their exclusive contributors. They more or less have to treat them with kid-gloves in case they induce a mass exodus and a gift to the competition.
IS's greatest strength is their marketing, they could treat their exclusives how they want and the majority would still woohoo their little hearts out in the forums.
Of course, that's just your uninformed opinion.
939
« on: March 07, 2009, 06:43 »
It's a good agency but not the only agency in town! I'm sure they don't have 100% of the worlds buyers and that's why you should spread yourself around...
They have massive server problems at times and given their size they could loosen the purse strings a bit more and if your non exclusive then being limited to only 15 images a week or longer is not productive for an active photographer.
David
Last serious server problem was in Setember 2007, almost two years ago. There have been some hiccups after that, but nothing unusual for a web page, not serious at all.
940
« on: February 28, 2009, 09:32 »
First time I'm logging in and I don't know how to make a quote, sorry... I'm quite amazed by your post grp_photo. Send me some samples at [email protected]. I'm curious to see those images you are talking about. Thank you kindly! Lise
I doubt he will be able to produce any valid example, Lise.
941
« on: February 27, 2009, 08:45 »
@PaulieWalnuts,
I don't think everybody around here agrees with him, but yes, I do!
I hope that's good enough to validate his thread. He got me.
@Jim_H,
no, you don't have to show your image! In fact, I would strongly advise you against it.
But even if you decide to post your photo here, and even if it's a truly perfect image, I BET the Istockers will definitely, absolutely, most certainly, find the one, single, out of 10 million, lone pixel, guilty of CA, or artefacts, or perhaps 'halo'-ing, or maybe noise, or something new completely, one not yet invented photographic sin.
Remember that they want to find it, and they will.
Problem is that while frowning upon your lost pixel, the Istockers somehow forget an important factor. Inside their very own portfolios lurk much worse images. Right there, right under their noses.
Cropped heads, blown highlights, skewed WB, noisy skies, out of this world compositions, laughable isolations and spamming-the-hell-out-of-the-customer keywords, to name just a few, are all running freely inside their ports.
How come then such horrors got accepted?
That's because Istock doesn't sell quality.
It sells an image, a chimera, it sells 'exclusivity'.
The exclusive Istock file may well be 10 times worse than yours. Nevertheless, it will get accepted. Much, much easier, and a lot faster.
And that is a fact.
Fooling customers under the spell of a dream, disregarding quality and real needs, IStock sells banality at higher prices.
Wish you all the best,
Anna
That is and old and repeated rant posted many times, and that has been proved wrong many times. I think it comes from personal (an why not, quite logic) frustration at having files rejected. On other sites you can blame other things. At istock, having a strong exclusivity program it's easier and better for one's ego to blame it to "non-exclusivity discrimination". I'm exclusive and I've had many files rejected for artifacts and other motives. As everybody. The true fact is that IS is harder on artifacts than any other site. And for what's the oroginal OP issue... It's absolutely true that without seeing his rejected work, there's nothing we can do to help, advise or put the blame on the pic or on a flawed inspection. Witout seeing it it'ls like discussing angel's sex.
942
« on: February 26, 2009, 20:12 »
I know that 2.0 is not yet implemented or at least FULLY implemented, but I am at the moment happy with whatever algorithm is in place.
Feb. is a MBE for me and my last four downloads were all files that have never sold before and are all at least seven months old.
It does not bother me that newer files are currently getting the short end of the stick. I think this is just the final tweak before the real best match kicks in.
I am an exclusive... so lets see if this supposed new swing completely kills me next month 
PS: I agree with the previous posts that it is really the buyers that should be dictating how best match works. Without buyers we are nothing (painfully obvious, eh?)
I don't. Istockphoto, which is more expensive than other sites, needs to show to the customer the difference of having what others --as a group-- don't.
943
« on: February 26, 2009, 20:04 »
I'm new.
A month ago I was accepted by IStockphoto - no problem, first attempt. I submitted a few photos and they rejected about 80%, many for "artifacts" that I can't see, some for other goofy reasons. They even rejected photos that got me approved in the first place (yes, I know they can do that, but then what does nitial approval really mean?). Keywording takes forever, reviews took up to 9 days. I appealed on 2 of the photos, politely asking for clarification, and never got any response. The images that were accepted got a couple of views, then went dead.
Meanwhile I'm off and running with Shutterstock, no problems. They accept my images, I get a few sales.
Ok, I've walked away from IStockphoto. But would someone please enlighten me - what is the deal with these guys anyway? Do they just like to mess with people's heads, do they not want any more non-exclusives, or are they just seriously disorganized?
I keep reading that IStockphoto is the place to be, but it seems like a complete waste of effort to me.
Dou you have a good monitor properly --an often-- calibrated with professional tools and software? I ask you that because I also had a lot of "artifacts" rejections when I was beggining at istock... artifacts that I couldn't see and that I finally saw in all their horror when buying the approppiate tools. Artifacts and also noise, specially in dark areas, play hide and seek in not so good monitors.
944
« on: February 24, 2009, 12:34 »
Personally I don't see any significant or obvious advantage/disadvantage to either exclusives or independent contributors with the current best match. In my view it is simply favouring good-selling images, irrespective of age.
I suspect you may be onto something here. The last couple of best match incarnations were so heavily biased against independents that simply leveling the playing field could have caused big drops in exclusive sales.
Correct.We had a good run ....Now we must keep building our portfolio's and polishing our crowns waiting for a favourable swing in the best match once again.
But.....in reality it should be the buyers that dictate how the best match works.........if they can't find the photos they want, they will go somewhere else. Maybe IStock is feeling pressure from them to make the best match do exactly that.....find the best photo for a given search....not the best "exclusive photo".
In many ways it is, because is the only photo that the wandering customer haven't yet seen looking at other sites and that so, it tells him (the customer) that at IS he will find pics he won't find elsewhere repeated at many sites.
945
« on: February 19, 2009, 11:42 »
No, I wasn't meaning you.
[[/quote]
"I don't think istcok are *, I think they have every right to protect their business interests. as do contributors and buyers".
[/quote]
And, at this point, we agree.
946
« on: February 19, 2009, 11:11 »
iStock seriously needs to chill out. They are becoming the * of microstock, looking to silence any and all opposition. So a few people are disgruntled about their policies. So what? It was bound to happen the bigger and more corporate they become. But it looks really, really bad when their admins come onto other forums and personally attack their contributors and buyers.
Seriously, WTH is going on over there with their culture and their business? It's like they've become wild animals, attacking out of desperation.
There's people that can't tell the difference between "disagree" or "attack". I've never seen personal attacks on IS forums. Unless not saying "Yes, you're right" and adding "I have a different opinion"is an attack. Maybe semantics have changed. In any case, I haven't not seen any attack (as defined in the dictionary), so I would need a quoted example of these kind of "attacks" to consider it. Btw, I don't think these examples exist. Then, complaining about a closed thread once you and the other person defending your same point of view have posted about 40-45 times (20 one, 20 the other, more or less) in five days , doesn't seem at all as if these people have been deprived the opportunity of telling their minds. Nothing to say to the fact that people complain about rises on prices. It's right and is a valid opinion. But when your realize that in the last three years 90% of the posts complaining about that come from the two same posters, and that their posts into this theme roughly approaches the number of 300, is that something that I can't' define seems to be going on.
947
« on: February 18, 2009, 18:05 »
this is my concern, too many images being given away, I would be interested to see how many images this would be 10% of 5 million is 500k free images, why buy it if there is a similar image for free?
Phil[/quote]
You can be sure it will be a choice of them. Giving away a volume of images for free is a mistake, because that only attracts free-image chasers. It has happened before and it should happen again. Judgig by StockXpert ranking, it doesn't seem the legion of downloaders at sxh.hu pay much attention to the row of StockXpert paying images that appears when they do a search for free images.
948
« on: February 08, 2009, 06:05 »
It works well and fast for me.
949
« on: February 06, 2009, 18:16 »
Well, I don't use professionals agencies because when I ask for a price, this price is never factible for microstock work. I pay my models, but I use semi-professional ones and to be able to find them is one of the most important parts of my work. Until now, with already years of micro experiencie and sales (obviously a lot les than yuri), I've never seen one simple misuse of my work. Maybe it's just luck, maybe the fact that normally I just come to see about 2% of my published shots.
950
« on: February 06, 2009, 10:14 »
What the heck?? I don't know how Carolynne's quote got attributed to me, but please edit your posts to correct it.
Please don't use my first name. I don't mind if my friends do, but, well, I don't consider you a friend. And since I don't know your first name, I find it quite rude.
Classic. I edited my post. Please return the courtesy and remove my name from your attempts to hijack this thread into yet another diatribe on the evils of istock.
Loop, I think the quote originally got messed up in your post (Reply #13). The wrong name got deleted and mine was left there attached to caspixel's statements. I would appreciate it if you would fix that so that there is no confusion about who said what. Thanks!
Done, whatalife. I deleted some of the text to make the quote shorter and to the point I wanted to comment and I didn't notice what happened. I'm sorry, accept my apologies, I neither would like to see this kind of comment associated to my name.
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