Quote from: trabuco on March 17, 2020, 19:21

Quote from: Lizard on March 17, 2020, 17:55
In many countries they are testing just and only those who had close contact with those who were tested positive so the real numbers of infected are waaay higher. Because mild cases many will not even know they have or had it.

This is true.

In Spain you can call a phone for coronavirus but they don't make the test to you. If you are a politican they do many times.

They just do the test to you if you know that you have some contact with infected people or if you have been in the infected areas.

Today, our Boris has announced massive tests for all the people with symptoms. I don't believe him, for me It's a criminal government.

Let's see.

Boris Johnson is a lying *insult removed* as Donald Clown, their only concern is to remain in power

Main Maduro's political prisoner, Leopoldo Lopez, belongs to the Venezuelan party that belongs to the international socialist democratic parties.

One have to learn how to difference marxist socialism (today Putin supported and manipulated countries, like Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela) and Social Democracy (Spain, Norway, Sweden, Canada etc.)

If they just listen to radical right wing radio talk shows, Fox Bigots and Donald they will probably have a very distorted fake version of the reality. And I don't mind they enjoy living in their complete cluelessness, what's kills me is when they try, in their complete ignorance, to convince me to believe in the absurdity their minds have been illuminated for years.

Venezuela is not a socialist country, its a country taken by a bunch of crooked drug dealers ruled by an ignorant clown (Banana Republic Donald Version) supported by Putin

A Russian with a drone these days in "nationalist" USA?  ummmmmm I would think it twice, mister

Everybody knows free press has always been the enemy of the state, it is better not to think and believe whatever the leader dictates is the truth. Specially when the leader is a clown.

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on February 04, 2017, 20:03
I couldn't get on to esp. I even tried resetting the password and that didnt help. Also can't log into their forum anymore so no help there.

I am in the same boat, I can not login to esp neither to contributors forum. I hope Getty people are reading the posts in this forum since its the only way I can comunicate with them now. Bad.

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on October 29, 2016, 03:50

Quote from: Juanmonino on October 29, 2016, 02:28
But paying the exact percentage of royalties for any single sale (credits and subs) looks to me like a fair move.

Sounds ridiculous to me.  They are not known for their accounting acuity.

I am not talking here about their accounting acuity, Im just saying that from now on, we will get the exact percentage of royalties for any single sale (credits and subs). It does not mean either that we are going to make more money, this is something only time will tell. So far I don't see a reason to panic about the latest news (if you are exclusive)

I understand Independents being upset because their royalty went from 15-20% to flat 15%
But paying the exact percentage of royalties for any single sale (credits and subs) looks to me like a fair move.
We still don't know their criteria about how many credits will be necessary to be in each category, thats something that will have to be judge the day they publish it.

My condolences and solidarity to independent fellows, but for exclusives, I still don't see the reasons to panic and close accounts

Killing "classic view" as they recently announced is not going to help attracting new customers either. I dont understand GI obsession in eliminating options.

Ok, this is another scenario, suppose one day, does SS down forever? I really wonder this question's answer. What do the independents will do then?

Leaving IS or Dropping the Crown before finding out if new changes work would be foolish.

Quote from: shudderstok on April 29, 2014, 02:42

Quote from: luissantos84 on April 28, 2014, 13:02
1 year after going exclusive

74071 pictures (http://www.agefotostock.com/253clwghjz/en/Search.aspx?author=YURI+ARCURS)
52470 pictures (http://www.the3dstudio.com/product_search.aspx?id_category_0=290&id_author=543004&ipst=0&sort=rank)
45702 pictures (http://www.superstock.com/resultsframe.asp?tag=results&imgextra0=1&txtkeys1=PG_41979
25763 pictures (http://www.viscoimages.com/list/advanced_search/?find=&photographer[]=1289)
12115 pictures (http://pt.dreamstime.com/yuri_arcurs_info)

somebody sure has a lot of time on their hands. and man talk about holding on to things. i find it saddening to see one is creeping yuri one year on and spending so much time creeping his every move on other agencies. and people wonder why i remain anonymous.

yuri is the one who organized a conference overhere to inform us about him going exclusive with getty and his conversion to Nokia 41 mpx, looks like he also has a lot of time in his hands.

Quote from: asiseeit on April 24, 2014, 03:46
The last 2 weeks were kind of low and Good Friday+Monday were very low. That being said, sales have picked back up to normal the 2 days.

Same experience, except sales did not exactly picked up as always, maybe 10-12% lower. There is no question subscription will have an impact in sales, the question is how big the impact will be.

Quote from: MichaelJayFoto on March 04, 2014, 12:46

Quote from: cobalt on March 04, 2014, 12:41
The karma of internet public postings that come back to bite you...Well, he was the king of subs downloads on SS, now he can be the King of subs downloads on istock...just without all the extended licenses and additional income SS offers.

I don't think you've got the latter part right. iStock has all this because it was all they had in the past. And to be frank, iStock's "ODD" and "SOD" sales are averaging much higher than those of Shutterstock.

It's only a matter of perspective: When submitting to Shutterstock, you know you are submitting to a subs site. So anything bigger than $0.38 looks positive. When submitting to iStock, you knew you were submitting to a credit based site. So anything lower than $5 will now look ugly.

And when it comes to Yuri, I doubt that he cares a lot. I am pretty sure he cashed in his cheque already.

Yuri and other pseudo-exclusives do not care about IS sales, they care about their stuff in GI, where they get more money, probably huge percentage y maybe better exposure. IS for them is gravy.

I still dont unserstand why yuri accurs  came to this forum...to promote his new venture? We supposed not to make any benefit out of it,actually the way I see it after reading his posts is that our days as full timers microstockers are numbered, that only him and a handfull of photo factories aregoing to survive,he brings here bad news.
Thats the way I see it and I still dont understand why still are many people following him and praising him.
Please let me know in which way his new ideas and ventures could be more than the last nail in our coffins.
The only thing, with all my respects,I can from it is that he betrayed all his for many years policies and way of conducting his business in general.
Becaming Getty kind of exclusive contributor contradict his prior spreaded theories.

Tell me if I understood right, the new Nokia 41 mpx phone will automatically assign 30-50 keywords for every shot I take with it?

Where there is an action there is a reaction, Istock lowering prices? what do you think competition is gonna do? sit and see their customers go back to big daddy?
Microstock prices are going to plummet and the agencies are going to drop the commissions they pay to their contributors will shrink in order to the agencies to survive the price war that just started. Anyway there is a huge offer of images everywhere, right? Just go to flickr and you will find people anxious to give up their work just in exchange for their names being credited. There is an big oversupply. The microstock market is saturated.
Microstock factories right now are over producing in order to survive the coming future market, some of them are even merging among them in order to remain competitive and profitable, in order to keep a certain percentage compensation in IS.

So whats the future? only being exclusive and overproductive could allow you to have a chance to survive if you are not more than a casual hobbyist. Even if you became exclusive and start shooting like crazy doesn't mean you are gonna make it.

Do you now understand why the famous danish professional microstock photographer we all know changed his mind agreeing to do exactly the opposite of what he was preaching for the last 8 years? He wants to be out of the microstock price war that  is coming taking refuge in the medium stock exclusive harbor because he knows his chances of surviving in the independent microstock market are very narrow.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, the big losers in all this enchilada are the contributors, specially the independent contributors, unfortunately.

It is a sad day for microstock photographt.

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on June 27, 2013, 22:07
Should be titled "iStockphoto tries to undercut all other agencies on independent content" or "iStock desperate to regain market shares, sees chance to give away independent content".

Sean, i am IS exclusive, 3516 of my images are in Main Collection too, therefore they are not giving away only independent stuff. Very concerned they send more of my images to the very cheap corner.

Bad news run fast, I dont think anyone in IS HQ is in danger, thank god

it would be interesting to see if any other big players will follow yuri.
one thing does not match with what Yuri wrote here about cost of producing images in order in stay microstock, couple of years ago he wrote production for him was becoming very cheap

I think FLICKR more than Yuri has something to do with the death of subscription microstock as we know it (if there is any death at all)
Getty now is able to offer clients more than SS, they offer expensive stuff, medium cost images, cheap crap, subscriptions and more in one portal.
The only reason IMO lot of people preferred SS was because huge content, IS could not offer then a subscription site as big as SS.
Now Getty in filling TS and Photos.com of content.
Getty through IS created a way contributors get compensation depending quality and exclusivity.
SS ignored any other way of offering content beside micro price subscription, and I think it was a big mistake.
I think what Yuri saw when signed with getty was more income and more exposure, if someone knows today about Microstock and stock in general is mr accurs.
He is just surrendering to the evident.

The model is changing, not dying, IMO

Quote from: pieman on February 10, 2013, 21:31
I've actually added it to my facebook status. Terrific work. I think maybe you should consider a caption contest. I would be more than happy to participate in that.

As for this Banned from iStock Club: I understand. It's easy for you to speak about your experience without also taking into consideration the number of times I have had to contact people, delete posts, try as best as I can to rationalize why it's important for people to remain civil. I'm not perfect. I rise to the bait left out for me occasionally.

These are public forums too. We can all read them. Contributor Relations(who tend to get the worst of the frustration - see the deactivation notice thread you have going), Client Relations(they get the calls that should probably be going to Contributor Relations- no phone support is horrible, I know) and the few buyers who come in to see what is going on here. Everyone sees everything.

Anyhoo, I've already made it clear in the forum restructure thread that anyone who would like to discuss having their privileges reinstated are more than welcome to contact me via site mail on iStock. Clearly, not all of you have site mail either. So I suspect your best bet is via a support ticket.

Thanks, folks. Don't hate the player, hate the game

I dont hate, lobo, I just dont understand why you banned me, anyway, you have your own reasons. I dont hate the company either because it feeds me. I just dont like to be censored. I grew up in Spain when Franco had his dictatorship, and a lot of my images and comments were censored then, And I suffered terrible consecuences because that.
Therefore, I feel frustrated when I get censored because a comment I made sayins that the API thing was too complex for me. I never insulted anyone, never, neither in forums, neither in real life.
I understand you have your reasons, therefore I do not hate you nor dislike you.
I just dont feel like posting anymore in a place where I was banned unfairly.
Just to let you know, there are no bad feelings. It is not the end of the world for anyone for being banned.

Quote from: ARTPUPPY on February 10, 2013, 10:31
I'll just leave this here...

Your excellent artwork says it all

iS forums are not being moderated anymore. iS forum are now been censored, and there is a big difference between being moderated and being censored. In the free world, freedom of speech is moderated, in Red China and Russia, freedom of speech is censored.
Therefore because I live in a free country I am not going to tolerate anyone to censor me consequently I see no reason to came back to IS forums even if they reinstate my "privilege" to participate in their forums.
I encourage others to participate in forums like microstock forums or Sean Locke forums.

Definitely something is going on, probably something big is coming, like having a search without exclusives, they are cleaning the house before they are implementing their new search levels just in case. The reason I was banned was very stupid, lobo was probably waiting for me to write anything just to get rid of me, My comments are probably not welcome no matter what I say, just in case.

This is ridiculous, even if lobo takes the ban on me away I am not going to participate in their farse anymore.