The darker edges may have been done in Photoshop.

I haven't studied this closely but my guess is they shot it with reflected light rather than light shining through it. Just my guess.

In my (limited) experience, Shutterstock has been the most arbitrary, subjective in their process and communication with contributors.

I applied and was rejected three times by SS. I've learned this is more typical than not for SS compared to other MS agencies. Like I found and others have reported, SS rejects 5 of the 10 images required for an application, often with reasons (like Elena has reported here as an accepted contributor) which do not seem reasonable, images which most or all other agencies accept through their own quality filters.

For the other 5 images, SS gives no reason, no comment, no outright "rejection" per se, but no hint whether the 5 other images would have been accepted either. Just a failed application, come back in a month and say please.

Why would a business conduct themselves in this strange way? Maybe it's the humidity in their offices.

Got it, that works, thanks.

B.

I've only had 3 DLs so far at SV. I haven't uploaded many images yet, it was still pretty buggy, lots of retries.

How long do they get to stay in "beta" with very little changing on the website month over month? Who do they think they are, Google? :-)

Seriously though, some of these deep-pockets companies are molasses-slow at web development, some of these things can be developed, tested and launched in weeks, not months.

Quote from: epixx on October 28, 2007, 02:42
Jpeg seems to be a survivor, just like the fax, which has been obsolete technology almost since it was conceived.

Speaking of fax, I'm very tempted to eliminate ours (the phone line, the machine, everything) within the next few months. 98% of our fax traffic is "fax spam."  But in a few occasions we need it to transfer an analog sheet of paper or signature etc. Sigh.

Microsoft's new JPG replacement proposal - I do have to admin I'm VERY skeptical - Microsoft has almost NO intersection whatsoever with the concept of truly OPEN standards. I agree, if history is any indicator, they're doing it for money and strategic control, not because they care about next generation open standards.

Quote from: Microstocker on October 26, 2007, 21:22
Recently a person contacted me and asked if I would design an image exclusively for them. It would be a similar design to a photo that I already have on microstock, which has made ~500-800 $ in its first year.. The amount of time I need to do the new design would be arround 5-10 hours. My question is, what would you charge?

I would charge what I consider my time is worth, plus a consideration for the unique value of the image, plus a consideration for the importance of doing this job.

A) If it takes you 8 hours to create the image, multiply that times the hourly rate you would charge for billable hours (remember you also have plenty of unbillable hours which in the end also need to be compensated).

B) Explain that an exclusive image means you would not earn the approx. $N from stock sales, so that could be a reasonable approximate value of the image.

C) Shoot other stuff, variations while you're shooting this image which CAN be submitted to stock once their exclusive image is selected.

B.

Quote from: Pixart on October 26, 2007, 22:44
...you can go to Dreamstime, put in your keyword and check the sell-the-rights box (might need to open up more options), sort by downloads decsending.   The first row of images for the keyword "background" range from $350 to $7,000.

I tried this but didn't see a "sell the rights" option to get the results set you were describing. Did I miss anything?

Tx,

B.

I chose mine because of a fascination with light, and this is one of my favorite images.

Incidentally, this isn't a very good stock image, I think I've sold precisely one (1) (uno) (wahid) (eik) (satu) of these. :-)

B.

Some of the best domain names occur to a person when they are trying the least hard - brainstorming ideas, then giving it a rest.

I've had a multimedia business for the past 15 years, http://www.vividmedia.com. The business name I chose in 1992 has (for me) passed the test of time and it still works well. But it took a while to come up with that, I had some real strange ones in the weeks prior, which at the time seemed like good candidates, but now make me choke and gag.

I just finished my initial photography portfolio site, http://www.cameraB.com, a few weeks ago. I wanted the domain name to somehow communicate "photography" without being laborious. Camera + my firstname starts with B, it's simple. I'll know in a few more weeks if I still like it.

I second the godaddy.com registrar recommendation. I don't care for their advertising, and their website is rather difficult to use, but their costs are competitive and they offer good included services like DNS, or even mail and hosting if you want.

If you're looking for a domain name that will also be your business name, the task is harder, but if these two don't need to mesh then choosing a domain name is much easier, and it's easier to switch to something better later.

Many successful photographers have simply used their firstnamelastname.com and this seems to work well.

I agree, the quality of pixels matters (to me) more than the resolution or the size of the sensor. A bigger sensor might but won't necessarily produce better pixels. I think this is one area that will be highly competitive in the next few years, producing better quality pixels than the competition, even at higher ISO, on a small sensor. It's what the D300 appears to do in a significant way.

By comparison, I keep reminding myself how much rapid change there has been to computer CPU's over the years, Moore's law.

My first digital camera was a Kodak DC120 "brick" and that thing was horribly noisy and less than 1/3 of 1 MP! That was only about 8 years ago.

I do sometimes use auto ISO in borderline light situations and "live" event shooting. But it's too easy to forget to keep an eye on it - I wish there were a way to set some better default "rules" on what the auto ISO will do, some parameters.

For most microstock, until the D3/D300, ISO should be at 100 or 200.

I would vouch for the Canon point/shoots with the Digic III sensor - in the current world it produces a very nice highly portable image; good auto exposure, good color, IS. Noisy at lower light levels, yes. I almost always turn flash off, I'd usually rather shoot at 1/15 sec than use the on camera flash.

We've used and upgraded about 6 Canon Elphs at home for family stuff for the past several years. They're so small that they are easy to always have along, as opposed to something a little bigger that a little more often gets left behind because of that.

The SD 850 or 870 is a very nice little camera. I wouldn't try to shoot MS with it, although I do have a few accepted MS images from the 800 or 850.

The common complaint, rightly so, is that Canon could easily add better manual controls (shutter / aperture) to this but so far they have chosen not to.

A bit bigger and the G7 or G9 would offer the same sensor, better lense, and better manual controls.

Ian, great post from the mysterious and arid N32 W117. Where pray tell is Mad Bay? I presume you are making images? You should share.

>>It's amazing how little has been recorded in places well known

Say more. Scuba duper pointilist monograms?

There's another interesting question Pixart - what will happen when JPEG images are eclipsed by their replacement format?

I guess there will be an overlap of formats, not an overnight change, but it's really not something we can do anything about now other than recognizing that today's high-quality hi-res images won't always be perceived that way. The millions of JPG stock images will need to be re-shot (subject matter yes, but image format too).

I wonder how soon the day will arrive when a JPG image actually becomes as inaccessible as a WordPerfect 5.1 file, diskette, Zip disk, 8-track cartridge, vinyl LP, or for that matter a B/W negative strip.

Even .BMP files, not so long ago a common format for 8 bit images, I don't think today's web browsers can display the image they contain.

Sorry for the thread tangent, nothing to do with recession.

What if customers could name their own price for what they think an image is worth.

Hey, if Radiohead can do it... ?

Quote from: hatman12 on October 18, 2007, 18:44
There won't be a recession until the year 2012....  Between 2012 and 2018 there will be a very deep recession... I expect demand for stock photographs to fall by up to 50% during the period 2012 to 2018 after which sales should return to peak levels....

If such a prediction were to take place even if the years or the magnitude were off by X amount... one more factor is the ongoing growth of total customers (and their total dollars) who are purchasing stock images.

There are millions of people in the Oct 2007 world who have NO internet access now, but in 2012 will be purchasing stock images and other e-commerce.

What volume compared to today or compared to the "first year" or middle of a global recession I won't venture to guess. :-)

I can read it, with a little help from Google. 

http://tinyurl.com/ywoy9e

I'm really not planning on creating one... but if YOU were going to offer the really perfect MS agency, what would you offer? Aside from the challenges of startup (funding, development, staffing, attracting contributors and buyers, building at least a half million images... yes, all the reasons to not start a new microstock agency)

I'll start with a few thoughts...

• pass along at least 60% royalties to contributors (make it work on 40% overhead or less)
• bare-minimum stuff like ftp (AHEM, istockphoto!), iptc, streamlined keywording, powerful search, customization tools for contributors and buyers
• get RID of categories already - good keywording and search engine can handle this much better than oversimplified or overly complex groupings of images
• customizable pricing levels - not microtweaking, but some ability to set low/mid/hi levels on any image
• transparency - show your books to contributors, account for spending your cut, offer some visibility and accountability on growth planning, scaling, etc.

What would you add? And if the major current MS agencies aren't doing these things, why not?? Cost? Risk? Laziness? Inertia? Greed?

And, which of these are unrealistic?

And, what do buyers want that is not currently delivered?

In some ways, doesn't ever-increasing resolution ( >10mp ) and Photoshop make these lenses less relevant for most situations that used to call for a tilt/shift lense?

(I know this goes against the "get it right in the camera, not in software" approach, which clearly has its merits, but this is not right vs. wrong, it's preference.)

Scientifically, a tilt-shift lense is doing in glass (distorting angles) what Photoshop would do in software (distort pixels). If there are enough of them to begin with, there's greater control in software.

DigitumDei, is your application architecture, or other? Have you tried changing perspective (eg. in software) on non-architectural / non-vanishing-point images? I'm curious.

Quote from: digitalshooter on October 07, 2007, 05:02
I simply do not see a legit reason to have 4MP minimum requirements for microstock as some have... 2MP should be fine for a minimum if the image quality is up to standards.

On the other hand, there's a value for the agency to offer all image sizes a person *might* want, once they've found the perfect image in the search engine. Offering low-res-only for some images would mean disappointment for some customers.

I laughed out loud, to read about pasting an image into an EXIF "header" of a different camera's image file. Too true, that some reviewers do seem to be influence by unpublished and very subjective criteria.

From my little experience so far, the review process is one of the fairly weak links in the microstock chain. It severely lacks in consistency, like some other current threads indicate. I'm sure that some 60-80% of the reviewers try to be deliberate and careful about their decisions and consistency.

special, distinct, unexpected, perfect, custom, individual

It would be great if the more forward looking agencies would offer some transparency, some justification for their cut, especially if it's 50% or more of sales.

Marketing, staff, infrastructure, bandwidth, tech, customer reach, etc. Yes, that stuff all costs, and it's good for the agencies to be profitable too. But 85%??

Depending on whether or not you have a brand-alliance (Nikon, Canon, etc.)

This is not what I use, but here's a Nikon kit (all new stuff) that would be quite usable and versatile for stock, and would fit in your budget, and produce clean 10MP images if you shoot at low ISO:

$600 Nikon D40x body
$110 Nikkor 50mm 1.8 (use proximity as your zoom)
$70 fast Sandisk 4GB SD card 
$180 two Vivitar 285HV flashes (rig your own "stands")
$100 best tripod and ballhead combo you can find
$50 light tent or DIY reflectors
$90 flash cables/hotshoe adaptor/shipping/misc
$free - www.strobist.com - learn about creative lighting techniques with cheap, simple, portable, often DIY equipment.

Bottom line, remember: constraints are friends, not enemies: some of the best creativity emerges from within the boundaries of limitations.

Quote from: madelaide on October 02, 2007, 22:42
...yet they pay us only 30 days after the purchase.  I don't know if there is any accounting reason to explain this (other than keeping our money for a few days).

The fancy word for this is "float." In some cases, the money that can be earned off interest from "floating" the income for a few days or weeks can be a successful business model.

With today's ease of transferring funds, any website that takes 30 days to pass the money along to its final recipient is leveraging float. It's not a bad practice necessarily, unless you're the one at the end of the food chain. :-)

For microstocks, when the money is in-hand as soon as credits are purchased, the float can be even longer.

Congratulations! Nice image and collection.

Did I do the math right, do your DL's from this one image comprise almost a tenth of your DL's on IS?

I'm wondering if that's somewhat typical, or if there is any such thing as typical.