Quote from: Lisas4 on August 04, 2009, 23:03
So you think he is not doing this at least partially at work? Are you sure?
Did you ask him?
Just run some numbers yuorself instead of getting all emotional. If he doesnt do it at work, he has do to it off work. Security guards have 8 to 12 hour shifts.  4 hours preparation and uploading/ day , shooting, family life, normal life, 8 hours sleep, mmm, how many hoours does a day have? Sounds not enjoyable to me.

My husband does 12 hour security shifts at night. Add to that the 40 minutes travel either side too. He does hourly patrols of a building and outside it and doesn't have time to do anything more constructive than read a book or watch tv in the small gaps between as he has to supervise cleaners coming into the buildings, night engineers. They don't get to laze about all night y'know. It's slightly offensive to assume that security officers sit free to do other things at their leisure.

Oh and during the day he fits in making me happy which isn't easy as I'm housebound and a miserable cow due to my health problems leaving me in agony, three children and a home study course. He's also happy, and enjoys every minute of his day.

I only recently joined zazzle as I've been separating my stock from my more artsy stuff. I made my first sale within days and I'm managing a sale a day off about 6 images on there, while it's only postcards and pennies I'm still happy to see stuff selling.  I think to an extent the lack of the community feel of say RedBubble does make it more of a seller.

They tend to hold the funds until after they've made, shipped and the sale is through without any hitches. Potentially I assume it means our money can then vanish if there's a quality issue. The funds usually appear cleared within a month.

Awesome, my hubby is a security guard too but he prefers to let me do the photography. It's nice to see someone who has grabbed the world and made something of it with a positive attitude. My best wishes.

I'm all for making it more secure but please do remember that there are people like me out here too.

I don't have a driving license.
I don't have a passport.

I don't have either because I have medical conditions which don't permit me to drive and due to them, I can't work either, hence why my photography sales mean so much to me, it allows me to actually contribute towards the upkeep of my family and as our family are struggling along anyway I can't go and pop £80 out for a passport I'll never travel with, not while there are shoes to buy and mouths to feed.

So by all means, please yes, help to cut down fraud but look into other methods of proving identity too.

I tested the microstock waters last year with a mere 12 photos, I'm currently focusing on improving my camera skill before I dive in properly. Out of all the sites, I've removed my microscopic portfolios from all except BigStock, DT and FT. The rest accepted pictures that I know weren't good enough and never made a hint of a view let alone a sale. Out of them all DT was totally dead until last week when I found sales, the best sales out of all the sites, my pictures are still reasonably close to the first page and I'd say out of all the sites, they've done the best for me. Obviously I'm a mere duckling to it all, but I thought I'd pop my head up.

I applied to join in november, still nothing. I'm starting to feel hurt. 

I had the same problem with a new dvd player a while back, the shop gave me a new scart lead and told me to try it first for free. Worked, it's a common problem apparently with dvd players getting returned and down to the scart being broke or having bent pins.

I think I'll test it out with a few pictures and see what kind of viewing they get etc, if it's positive then I'll see how the fee goes and let you all know my experiences with them. It can't really do me any harm and my personal circumstances right now need me to take any opportunities that could help support my family.

As always thank you for all the advice and comments folks, I always appreciate the information I gain from you all as you are much further into the stock side of photography than me and I feel a lot more confident with good advice on my side.

Ok so the moral rights bit isn't as scary as I thought. I know it's only five images but I figured that having a few there would let me get a foot in with a few ok shots and see how it goes, with todays market I doubt they can afford to keep it with fees for long.

The site does have a lot of flaws though after more investigation, huge amounts of properties including a pizza hut and no sign of a property release, with the T&C too it looks like they would throw the photographer to the dogs if they got caught out. I haven't checked the model release side of things yet.

I've just been pointed at this site http://www.picturenation.co.uk/, I've never seen it before and I thought I'd sign up and check it out. But being a little new still I thought I'd ask opinions as the T&C confuses me.

This part

QuoteBy submitting the photograph to picturenation, being the sole author of the photograph, waive absolutely your moral rights arising under Chapter 4 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and, so far as is legally possible, any broadly equivalent rights you may have in any territory of the world. (this refers to picturenation using your member name to publicise your photo)

confuses me as I'm not 100% sure of all the act and despite further down it states that you retain copyright.

I'm just a little blonde and unsure of some of the parts that look a little suspicious so I'll be grateful for the opinions of people here who know much more than me and can save me signing up somewhere that isn't going to be good for myself.

Thanks in advance.

I had a hd fail a while back and I lost precious family photos so I'm now paranoid and back all my photos and important stuff up to crazy levels.

I have an external drive I do a weekly raw backup (plus all my pictures of my kiddies) onto and then it gets stashed away in a hideyhole in my house where I know if we were robbed it'd be highly unlikely to be found.
I also do a monthly sealed and dated cdr zip that my mother keeps in a safe at her home.

Have a great christmas everyone!

*passes round the humbugs*

It's become too commercial now, I get told what people expect for christmas, though this year everyone who dared tell me what they wanted was told they could be grateful for a present that was bought with thought instead. I am getting rapidly to the point I just buy for children, adults expect so much and it's lost the whole joy of giving aspect, luckily my kids have been brought up to enjoy the simple things, we still do crafts and baking and they are both charity shop/car boot sale fans and would rather spend a pound or two "rescuing" an unloved toy than get some flimsy plastic thing for £30 that'll be broken within days.

Now I'm off to potter my way round the shops trying to find sprouts, a sieve for my lumpy gravy and best of all.. to walk slowly and annoy all the people still panic buying.

Well my first week in my new home in South Wales has been icey, cold, foggy and damp and it seems to be staying that way. Now where did I pack that thermal underwear.

I'm a first aider so I'd pack my camera away and wait to see if I need to go and help anyone, but if they start waving crowbars at me I'll vanish away, while I'm a helpful little being I'd feel no guilt at the accident, the driver should be concentrating on the road, taking the blame would just give people a reason to start cases against anything interesting on their route.

I don't ever take crash photos though, I do tend to have my camera in my hand in the car and I'll always put it down if we have to go past an accident, I'm old fashioned I guess and I don't feel right taking photos of others misfortune.

Can I pretend to be so young that none of this counts for me? 

That was most entertaining to watch

I've had this advice off a friend, it's possibly one of the best pieces of stock advice he gave me as there are pictures that have been saved from my useless folder with downsizing and used for stock companies who take smaller sizes and also for sites like RB etc for card designs.

I'm still very smalltime so I have a limited portfolio and I checked all my images, nothing. So I'm assuming by my checks they aren't getting the images from FT, DT, BigStock and judging the quality of the images they are getting them from one of the top sites. I've checked a friend on 123 also and they do appear there so possibly the source.

My email spam has gone down, today I only had 2 emails to delete instead of my usual hundred, I'll agree with the forum spambots though, a site I own with a forum has recently started getting spambots, thank goodness for ip blocks.

I've had problems with loading with FF too, I ended up using IE. Though I now have images that have been stuck in the review queue for over a month, I know I forgot to do the keywords on one or two, my fingers went mad and clicked too fast.

Quote from: kkart on November 10, 2008, 08:32
Well I am certainly a RB fan here myself, as far as the watermarks go, they now also have a 1px gif overlay, so anytime u right click on someone's image that has this protection enabled (yes, it is up to the artist if they wish to enable this) it only downloads 1px. The BubbleSites ROCK! I honestly tip my head to RB for this, giving artists an actual website that stands on it's own OUTSIDE the community atmosphere, where people can order directly from. My BubbleSite is far from done at the moment, but I am seriously considering pointing my domain to here once it is: http://kkart.redbubble.com/

And your work is awesome too! I actually have you on my dA watch and RB watch, love your HDR work.

The watermark is shoddy but I do two kinds of photography these days, the stock is something that I do watermark heavily but the arty stuff I do which I put on places like RB etc are less of a worry to me as they are primarily for print sales and anyone who does steal the websize image either has an inferior picture to blow up or is advertising for me.

I rarely have time to check back through my pictures as I have to dash to do the next thing, if I get a break then I'll review things and go back to redo something, but generally I don't trust my display to be honest to me so I don't panic till I sit down and start to process at the pc.

Funny thing is how much of a photography dork you become, when the optician turned off the lights and was shining a little one into my eyes all that I could think was how much noise there was and how it could do with running through PSP.