A slightly shameless plug for my blog, but it's stock related:

http://www.trash.co.nz/blog/2014/149/should-this-be-forgotten.html

Although academic pushing my blog here as it's not photography related on the whole.

And no, I didn't find one of my photos on my own blog! :-)  I found one and blogged about it.

Cheers, Chris H.

Opt-out or not, decided to remove my (small) portfolio from Fotolia.

Never did like their site much... :-)

Hi folks..

And Hello Sue!  Long time no talk.

What got me back to thinking about stock was getting rid of 1000's of event photos from my website a couple of weeks ago.  I decided it just caused more hassle than profit having them up and striped the site back to just a simple portfolio which I'll upload some stuff to over the next few weeks.

I uploaded one, count them...  1. photo(s) to IS/SS/DT/FL last night, and it's approved on SS already, so I think that means I'm back in business.  :-)

Cheers, Chris H.

And watch his interesting keywording.  'business' on this:  http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-180449990/stock-photo-jet-engine.html

:-)

No judgement, just observation, some of mine are probably dodgy as well!

Quote from: ruxpriencdiam on March 29, 2014, 16:03
And watch this guy!

22 DL's with 68 images in 1/2 month.

http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2657683#2657683

Actually, just had a look and my last post was in 2010 !   I have been slack. ;-)

Long time, no type.

I've been inactive on here, and stock in general since 2011, just sorting out stuff to start uploading again.

Just thought I'd say hello. 

Cheers, Chris H.

I keep all photos, apart from the real nasty ones (flash didn't fire, forgot to re-set focus to auto etc)

I keep them on a Raid 5 network server, and backup to external HD's which I rotate 'off site'.

Apart from random rejections we all vent about occasionally, my only consistent peeve in microstock is the acceptance emails from fotolia that just give you the image ID....

I keep a spreadsheet of images, and I have go to to the site an figure out what the ID relates to...

Given that it's a pretty minor issue 'Hate' is way to strong, but if I were to drop a site it'd be Fotolia for that reason, as they are also my lowest earner now that StockXpert is tits-up.

Cheers, Him.

Heading for about the same as April, which was not all that hot...   

So down on last year.. Per the other thread I'd assumed last month was due to the Easter lull, but maybe something else is up as well? 

Certainly not the end of the world, and my stats have pretty big variations month to month anyway.

Cheers, Me.

Quote from: averil on May 08, 2010, 01:32

Quote from: Voidreporting them and just getting the images pulled just doesnt seem to be enough. this is a well seasoned photographer and knows better!

Given that the offender is possibly about to lose his istock income, forever, the OP may wish to negotiate some settlement for the illegal use of his image. Not possible of course, if there is full disclosure.

Good point, I'd not thought of that angle....

Scratch the request for a link for the mo.   

The suspense is killing me....   

Can we please have a link?  Even a hint... Keywords to search for?  Anything? 

Quote from: Jabber on May 03, 2010, 10:50

7) Jabber ??

the hutt?  

But seriously....

I'm sure we all know who the bullies are, but they are not a monopoly, and while a good number of smaller agencies are turning a profit and paying their contributors similar margins is there anything really that broke?

If we had a massive asymmetry in industry like we see in the desktop OS market (microsoft vs the rest) or there was the industry wide market fixing that seems to be in the pharmaceutical industry then we'd probably have real cause to rally behind someone, but I suspect you might wind up standing on a hill by yourself....

Just my 2c worth.

Quote from: ShadySue on May 02, 2010, 22:56

Quote from: chellyar on May 02, 2010, 21:10
Is it worth the effort?

Yes, of course. Why would you want to p*ss off buyers?

I suppose the real question is whether or not it does annoy the buyers?  Or does having the auto disambiguation of an image push it to the bottom of the heap in the best match process?

Anyway, two votes yes, no votes no...  Looks like my auto-DA'd images have been voted off the island.

Hurro,

Is it worth the effort?

I've (finally) got with the reset of the world and started using deepmeta, and I noticed that it's a lot quicker to DA old images using it than the web site (no surprise really)

So, my question for the day, is it worth going through and DA'ing older images?

Cheers, Chris H.

Well, I'm from New Zealand, so we refer to most people from other places by the same title most Americans use for us: 'Where?'

Just read the whole thread (after posting, typical).

My April '10 earnings are down on '09 and '08, and only just higher than '07 by a few dollars...

Seems April '10 just sucks generally....

IS: 40%
FL: 27%
SS: 21%
DT: 12%

Overall income was quite a bit down on last month, as sharpshot said, Easter and the travel problems in Europe probably had an impact.

Quote from: ShadySue on April 14, 2010, 11:41

Quote from: chellyar on April 14, 2010, 10:16
I feel your pain.....

For work recently I need a picture of a young woman suitable for a banner image across the top of a skincare related page..

Try searching for 'young woman' and see how much junk you get....

The results of "one young woman only" sorted by best match aren't bad on iStock. If you want something more specific, you can 'search within', though sometimes that gets hairy.   

We were using shutterstock (Don't have an account on istock at work...)

We eventually found a really nice shot, but it took ages...  istock's search is a bit better, I just tried searching for the type of thing we wanted on istock and I think their search tool would have narrowed it down a lot quicker.  Funnily enough trying to find the image we did purchase in the end on SS is quite hard a well.  Hmmm, might get an istock account at work... 

I'd not been a customer of microstock regularly until I started my current job about a year ago.  It's given me a whole new respect for correct keywording of images.  Some things really do take on a needle in a haystack proportions.  Although I have the advantage of being able to shoot anything I can't find myself I suppose, which many customers wouldn't have.

I feel your pain.....

For work recently I need a picture of a young woman suitable for a banner image across the top of a skincare related page..

Try searching for 'young woman' and see how much junk you get....

A bit of a different take on this...

I have a pretty generic portfolio on 4 sites (was 5 till StockXpert folded their tent)  My monthly earnings have been creeping up over the last 5 years in a pretty consistent fashion despite a busy month only seeing 30-40 new images, and many months I add none. (Yes, month, not week).  (links below if you wanna check them out, feel free to buy some images while there! :-) )



You can see from that the big growth has been in IS earnings.  The big upward kink in that line was one of their pricing changes at about the same time I got keen and uploaded more images than my normal trickle.

SS 'peaks' after new uploads, but as has been mentioned before (on here, or SS forums??) the peaks include old image sales which is odd, but that's the nature of the subscription model I suppose.

The big peak in SS sales around Jul '08 was when I was unemployed from a 'real' job and spent a lot more time uploading images, I think I put 80 odd images up on SS in that one month.

FL responded well to the increase in images, and seems to have held the growth in income after the peak that SS saw.

If anyone else has similar records and a fairly 'average' portfolio it'd be interesting to compare them.. (Obviously with the actualy $ figures removed like mine!!)

I'm looking at spending more time this year on micros, and I've decided to start uploading some of the 'better' stuff which I used to keep for prints at a local gallery, probably not stock worthy, bordering on arty, but will be interesting to see how it goes..

Cheers, Chris H.

Are they going to re-instate your portfolio for you?  That sounds weird...

I mostly just lurk here now, but I'd have to agree that these forums are quite mild....

I've been doing only forums, and before that Bulletin Boards since the start of the 90's and this one is fairly well mannered compared to some which are more heailyt moderated..

I think Leaf does a pretty good job of keeping things just right, IMHO.

(And for what it's worth, people who completely hide behind a screen name with no links to blogs/portfolios etc. annoy me a well, but I'm over it...)

Just logged in to remove my images and request payout..

For what it's worth it appears that the login box top right does not work, but at /balance the login box in the middle of the window does..

Weird.

Cheers, Chris H.

I don't think IS is closing the door..  Rather raising the bar a tad.

If you look at some of the stuff that appears in the newest uploads thing on the home page you'll see there is a lot of errr, junk, that gets in.  Imagine how much of that doesn't get in?

Make it harder for newb's to get to higher upload limits and you reduce the overhead of having to teach them.

The microstock industry I think is suffering from the headache it's own early advertising caused 'Sell your photos, make money'.  IS is raising the bar rather than buying more aspirin.

I am concerned what the latest changes mean for me as a non-exclusive Silver with a pretty average port.  But I'm not going to loose sleep over it, as I've got my eggs in 5 baskets...

Cheers, Me.

ROFL...

They're just a tool, same as your camera.

It's what you do with it that counts...