Yellowknife (Canada)
Currency $CA. (=$US these days)
Minimum wage 9.00$

Pint of Guinness - $11
Cinema ticket -  $12
Rent for a two bedroom apartment per month - $1500 (+/-)
Visit to the doctor - $0
Cappuccino - $5
High-speed internet /w 80gb of bandwidth - $125/month

And I'll add regular gas:  1.25$/liter

I know 85% isn't an accurate number, it's just the angry number to throw around. It's very complex to try and figure out what they are really making as an average percentage based on the whole. I like the previous post where the guy touched on fair trade and china. I don't think what he was getting at was moving to macro. For me I have a freelancer, micro and macro budget. As an art buyer I do love iStock for my micro needs. It's priced right, and the content is good. "made in china" doesn't mean its bad. I have an iPhone thats made in China and its awesome! Since I've dipped into the stock world, I have a soft spot for it. I know how hard it is to make a go of it.

If I have say $2000.00 per year, and I spend all that at istock, its a safe bet that about 20-35% will go to the artists. So if I'm trying to support the artists first, I'm better to spend that money at stockfresh of another place where the contributor gets paid more.

In the coffee world, the farmers yelled and screamed for more money, but it wasn't until people started to realized the benefits of fair trade that the farmers started to get paid fairly for there work. Art buyers are mostly socially conscience people, I think the industry should start a movement for fair trade royalties. Maybe that just crazy I don't know, just trying help and give a different perspective.

I contribute to iStock for fun. My real job is Art Director at a Canadian Magazine. I'm starting to feel like I'm supporting a big corporation instead of the artists. After I burn up my last batch of credits, I'll be taking my business elsewhere. 85% percent is just too much profit IMO.

Haha, that balmer guy has some mad sweat pattys!

The problem with this model for me is that its missing potential to make it big. You see with stock photography, having the ability to sell multiple times, gives you the ability to make it big. Even if you could knock off a logo a day 5 days a week, and you sold everyone of them for 750 credits, you would make 90k US per year. Which is decent, but not as good as the best stock photographers. But then again, thats more then I make now

If your shot is only lit by a strobe, freezing action is not achieved by the shutter speed, its achieved by the flash duration. You could have 1/60th on your shutter speed, but say 1/2600th flash duration and freeze moving hair. Short flash durations is one aspect that separates less expensive strobes with higher end ones.

If you want to have ambient light in the shot and freeze action, you could use a hot light, or a reflector with a fast lens - allowing you to bring up your shutter speed beyond its maximum sync.

I could be wrong, but that also looks like an iBook.

As an art director, I've seen the industry change so much. In the beginning, you would hire a photographer with a style and concept in mine. That was the norm, not just reserved for huge accounts. Then, paying $600ish for RM was the new cool. Now days, a lot of agencies only have iStock accounts. The designers are emo about it. Constantly complaining, because the shot they really want is at Corbis or Getty or that illusive phootshoot, but instead they are forced to settle for less, because the end client doesn't care anyways. Vetta solves this, because now designers can buy better images with their iStock account. All they have to do is buy less, and they can stay on budget.

This will work until for a while until the non exclusive iStock photographers start producing equal quality images and selling them on the other stock sites for cheep.