Quote from: jamesbenet on May 16, 2017, 09:32
Stats are finally gone today, we cannot see any sales until the 20th on ESP. It was good while it lasted

My favorite ghost stat page: http://www.istockphoto.com/user_stats?id=(YourID)&Offset=-1&DownloadsGraphFileType=

hmm, so what can we do now to check our data? (sorry, i've been under a rock for a year...)

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on February 07, 2017, 03:33
Sounds analogous to the issues of sampling in the music business.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/permission-sampled-music-sample-clearance-30165.html

Nice analogy! But for some algorithms, it goes deeper/more subtle than that, i think. Say the algorithm doesn't copy any exact soundbit, but just a general "feel" of the song.

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on February 07, 2017, 03:33
I don't suppose anyone will want to participate in detailed discussions until there's something pretty close to ready - do you think this is a year or two away? Five years?

I'm guessing that agencies won't take anything that you don't own the rights to. They won't be looking at ethics but managing their legal risk (agencies are risk averse).

Various sharing sites will use all sorts of copyrighted stuff as input and hope they don't get identified.

If it matters to the finished image which pieces are used as input - versus any pile of pixels with the right colors will do - it'll be harder for the creator to claim copyright in the new work. If enough people wanti to create this type of imagery, possibly agencies will have a new type of license for use of image chunks in new works to make the synthesized images legit. A new type of extended license.

If one trains one of these algorithms on someone's portfolio, but then they generate a completely fake image in the *style* of that artist, what *is* the legality of this? There's no explicit copying involved, and the subject matter might have changed completely, even. But without the portfolio as training, the generation would not be possible.

Quote from: niktol on February 07, 2017, 03:29
I don't think people who are seriously working on computer vision and pattern recognition are interested in stock photography now. However, I am pretty sure that developments in machine learning will have a tremendous  impact on many professions, not just a small group of photographers.  Wait for the data-based approaches in diagnostics and medicine in general, to mention just one. Lotsa kids who go out of their way to get into med school will be seriously disappointed.

Oh I absolutely agree.

But someone can take advantage of this (and not always necessarily in a malicious way). For example I think it raises an interesting (and legal?) point -- one could download Trey Ratcliff's entire New Zealand collection, generate new images, and sell (or use) them. Should Trey get some (credit/royalty) for creating the "training" dataset?

I'm curios what people think of photo synthesis algorithms, and how this will impact [stock] photography in the future.

Although still far from perfect, photo synthesis algorithms are starting to be able to generate photos in interesting scenarios (for example, given an input sentence: https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.03242). These algorithms are "trained" on huge collections of photos (e.g. imageNet). Depending on the algorithm, they will create completely novel images driven by some mathematical costs, or they will be semi-copying small parts from other images.

What do you think is the ethical (and legal?) situation for using images created by these algorithms. In some sense, they can generate completely novel images, but they are trained from existing photos. Better, yet, what happens if this algorithm is trained on photos from an artist that are under a non-commercial license, and then generates brand new photos in that artist's style?

I believe these algorithms are coming, and some very deep conversations need to be had . If anyone has any links to other similar conversations, they would be appreciated.

Thanks.

have 2 videos on p5. Make about 1 sale per month - so roughly $10.

I know, my stats are so useful

Quote from: mlwinphoto on December 04, 2013, 23:28
Certainly can't draw any meaningful conclusions from this small of a port but it doesn't look like things are going too well in 2013; both monthly income and RPI are down when compared to previous years....kinda goes along with what alot of others are reporting....

yeah, absolutely not enough to do solid statistics on.

I haven't really done anything stock for a couple of years (as you can tell my by stationary number of images) other than check the balance, so I thought I'd look at the graphs again; and if anyone cares to look as well and learn something from it.

Quote from: Ron on December 04, 2013, 17:39
I dont understand the graphs. Every year your earnings start over again, shouldnt that line from 2010 not start where 2009 ended, etc. ?

400 dollar in one month with a few images is quite impressive.

I think this shows I didn't communicate something properly. It is like that for the 'cumulative income', everything else is just a monthly number.
Does that make sense?

* edited some graphs to show the word 'Monthly'

Hi all,

Just in case this is useful for anyone, here's my istock selling stats over 4 years, for a *very* small portfolio (28 photos/videos).
http://depo.fotozygous.com/stock/

- Adrian

seem to be going down for me as well. Again, small fish so it's probably not an important statistical point.

ah thanks for the note. I searched for HV30 and just went there, didn't check the title. Thanks.
I've never sold anything on ebay, is it a difficult thing to do without prior experience?

Hey all,

I'm selling a very very slightly used HV30 (it's really new condition). I used it a grand total of 3 maybe 4 hours.

Canon HV-30 HDV CAMCORDER with all cables, manual
same model, new on amazon - Corrected link
same model, used on b&h - B&H used

Some Accessories specific to HV30:
Camera bag --- Lowepro EDIT 120 CAMERA BAG (BLACK)
Filter set --- Hoya 43MM INTRODUCTORY FILTER KIT
Extra Battery --- Pearstone NB-2L22
LCD Hood --- Petrol PMH-A1U MINI HOOD F/2.7" LCD

Asking 350$ for everything, OBO.

Thanks for reading!

hmm... to all of you talking about shutterstock footage - can you apply to shutterstock just for footage? Also, I've heard that they are not too good just yet at footage sales?

Thx!

even at pond5, it seems to me some people wait for several weeks, others wait a couple of days. Is there a preferred submitters' group or something?

Thanks for the info.

What's the procedure for getting into pond5 as a contributor? I can't find a page talking about this. Do we need to submit a few clips before we get 'accepted', etc?

Thanks,
- adijr

I really apologize if this was discussed, but i haven't been around here for a while and haven't seen anything about this via searching.

I was thinking of adding some vids from a recent experiment to my port, and decided to gauge the time i'd have to wait for approval decision. I looked at the 'recent uploads' at istock and found that video exclusive files getting accepted now (Oct 3rd) were uploaded at the end of June - i.e. over a 3 month wait for exclusives. Am I understanding something wrong? I haven't uploaded something recently, but it used to be ~2-3 weeks for exclusives last I uploaded anything...

Images also seem extremely slow (most exclusive images are from july/august)
http://www.istockphoto.com/browse/latest/video/

- adijr

Income, RPI, RPD for a beginner port (all iStock):

http://depo.fotozygous.com/stock/

(June Best Month This Year)

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on June 16, 2011, 04:41
Why wouldn't an agency be interested in this? Istock made one sale and lost 75. Istock is making about $10 per download from me so that's $750 worth of lost sales just from one image. With millions of images that's gotta be tens of millions of dollars just falling out of their pockets every year.

Nah... a 75x rate is for a specific image you estimated. On average, that factor is probably much much smaller - and where it is, it may be a ton of work to do anything about it (many sites are outside the jurisdictions in which istock sells its licenses, for example). I'm guessing it's a ton of work, for a very small potential $$ increase, and agencies judge that the same work can be put to developing the agency in some other way. Just my guess...

Quote from: click_click on June 16, 2011, 04:07

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on June 16, 2011, 04:03
Well, I'm already finding some of the stuff I mentioned earlier about people just copying what's already out there.

I found one of my more popular images with some simple text added to it. One designer probably modified it and it's now on at least 75 other websites.

I'd love to know for each image sold how many are copied. 75 from one image is pretty bad.  

I experienced the same. I think we would all be doing really well if all our images would be licensed properly, even at micro prices.

So sad that those cheap ba$tard$ out there can't even spend a few bucks on an image... 

I'm not sure everyone is actually a cheap *insult removed*... honestly, before I bought a DSLR I didnt' know anything about these rules and photos and licenses. I vaguely assumed that you can do anything to any photo and re-post it just fine... It was a simpler time...

Quote from: click_click on June 16, 2011, 03:58

Quote from: adijr on June 16, 2011, 03:50
The 800px rule (btw, 800px in higher dimension, you mean?) is actually part of the contract of a sale? Is it true for all agencies?

Dreamstime:

Quote... For Web use, you must not use the image at a width exceeding 800 pixels unless it is included in your site's design. If the image is part of a design and manipulated accordingly, the image width can be higher than 800 pixels. ...

Shutterstock:

Quote... a)
On web sites, provided that no Image is displayed at a resolution greater than 800 x 600 pixels;....

iStock

Quote... Displaying an original image digitally on-screen larger than 1200 x 800 pixels; video image size limitation is 640 x 480. Any size reproduction is acceptable with substantial changes to the content. ...

huh, didn't remember that one... interesting, quite large though 

so i guess the rest is about the same

even at 1200, the (easy-to-steal) problem doesn't go away. but still, good point. Practically speaking, what does it mean "included in the site design"? sounds subjective to me.

Quote from: click_click on June 16, 2011, 03:43
You forgot to label your post:

How to get stock images for free

You are correct. That's why I have been sending out DMCA notices to everyone that is hosting my images in high res.

Everything usually over 800 pixels is not allowed for web use.

Sorry, I don't mean to promote it (obviously).

The 800px rule (btw, 800px in higher dimension, you mean?) is actually part of the contract of a sale? Is it true for all agencies?

At first, I was really happy and enjoyed this feature. Very fun.
I see alot of people here talking about "stolen" images. How does one know if images were stolen or rightly purchased?


Perhaps More Importantly:
Then just now I tried something. I wanted to see how many hits a popular istock photo gets. So i tried DrGround's Good news Travels Fast. You get tons of hits. but then, i can sort them by size. Hey look, if i do that I get a high-resolution, non-watermark image that a site is using somewhere. for this image, you can get a 6MP version. Now, it's not legal to take this 6MP image and use it anywhere... but it sure makes it easy...

In short, you can go to a stock site, decide which picture you want, go to google images and get a High-Res, non-watermarked version, quickly. I'm not worried (being a small-timer), but it may be an interesting issue to bring up?

Following the 'GI Sales' problem I re-downloaded and now the program just crashed (Windows 7) upon start.  No error.

I'm not a paying customer, but thought I'd try the program..

Awesome post!
Thanks for including a link in your article to your hourly rate stuff, In the end this is v important! cool to see it rise like that, congratulations.
Out of curiosity, why do you think IS RPI is slowly falling?

I have a v small port, but in case anyone cares about some of my stats: http://depo.fotozygous.com/stock/micro.htm

Quote from: luissantos84 on June 12, 2011, 00:41

Quote from: adijr on June 12, 2011, 00:16

Quote from: luissantos84 on June 11, 2011, 02:12

Quote from: adijr on June 11, 2011, 01:23

Quote from: luissantos84 on June 10, 2011, 18:48
don´t see the point of this topic but my biggest was 40$ and lowest 7 (cents)

What do you mean the point?

I'd just like to get an impression on what $$ people are making on the biggest sale. Seems to be in the 200s$ right now.

I'm very surprised to see a 0.07c sale. Wow

I believe RPD is a lot better "point"

You're right - I just meant that I wasn't starting a post to get some sort of point or do some computations, I was just curious.
Indeed, to learn something RPD is important. Mine is 3.63 since exclusivity.

a lot more interesting is knowing that looking at your portfolio.. you do have some success with such a small port.. my RPD is on 1.25$ (not exclusive)

Thanks.. in the odd case you're curious, here' more stats:
http://depo.fotozygous.com/stock/micro.htm

I think the real stat at the end of the day is $$/hour, where you have an estimate of the number of hours you've spent on your pix (including the rejected ones). In that department, I'm not doing so well yet (around 12$/hr im guessing, probably more because I'm harsh with my hour estimates). Stil, even doing nothing that number goes up

Quote from: luissantos84 on June 11, 2011, 02:12

Quote from: adijr on June 11, 2011, 01:23

Quote from: luissantos84 on June 10, 2011, 18:48
don´t see the point of this topic but my biggest was 40$ and lowest 7 (cents)

What do you mean the point?

I'd just like to get an impression on what $$ people are making on the biggest sale. Seems to be in the 200s$ right now.

I'm very surprised to see a 0.07c sale. Wow

I believe RPD is a lot better "point"

You're right - I just meant that I wasn't starting a post to get some sort of point or do some computations, I was just curious.
Indeed, to learn something RPD is important. Mine is 3.63 since exclusivity.