You can't consider Featurepics as the other agencies as you can fix your price yourself and you are closer to a traditionnal agency there. Before Internet and the microstock explosion, according to stock photographers, it was the standard for stock agencies to bring 1$ per year per photo in average.

I had my second sale there a few days ago too : 7,82 $ (5,47 for me) for a view of the Père Lachaise (a french cemetery). I had just upgraded my prices a few days before to 39$ (from 9.99) in order to be on level with Mostphotos where I have the same portfolio (but no sale) and this concern the smallest size available.

In the may/june issue of American PHOTO there is on page 25 an advertisement for Canon cameras, with three bodies : EOS1Ds ; EOS1D ; EOS 40D...
As if the 5D was no more on the catalog (yes, I know the 450D is missing too, but this advertisement is rather pro-oriented).

And in Europe you get a 200€ rebate with the 5D...

June ?

I encountered the same problem : my photos of Annecy (a french town) lost the "annecy" keyword even though it was the first one ! I suppose it's because they don't accept any keyword which is not already in their dictionary as I read here on another thread. That means most of the towns around the world.

Now, if you type "Annecy" on the french site you get thousand of photos for "année" (year) which must be the closer word in their dictionary to the one you are looking for.

It was a try and miss job. And I was lucky. I had just something like 8 pictures. I clicked on the first one and here it was, the rating. Clicking on it got me to the rater.

Of course, with 1000 photographs I think I would have encountered more difficulties...

Quote from: Arian on Yesterday
We have had some pressure from the buyers side to make this possible or else they will turn to sites like these below to name a few where photos are all without watermark:

http://www.alamy.com/
http://www.sxc.hu/
http://www.johner.se


Alamy is planning to introduce watermark soon. They made some test and it currently slow the searches but as soon as this problem is solved, every picture there will have a watermark. I don't know the two others.

I just began to upload there two days ago, got some immediate rating which didn't bother me, and suddenly, yesterday, four 1s. Just checked, they were given on two pics by somebody who registered the same day. He uploaded five pictures and gave 48 ratings.

First question : As Mostphotos seems to want to keep that system of rating by "peers" shouldn't it be limited to certain "confirmed" photographers, i.e. people with a minimum portfolio and not just anybody trying to get his first pictures up by a shot-gun technique of rating instead of working at his/her own portfolio ?

Second question : if this rating is not really useful in the overall rating, why keep it ?

Third question : what about an "opt out" clause for photographers who don't want to play this game (i.e. they don't get rated but they can't give rating). 

Personally, I spend already too much time to upload my pictures and prepare them before that, for playing games of hide and seek.

"Orphan Works Act"

I don't know what that is supposed to be, but I know that no law is universally accepted, and in a lot of countries works of art are protected by copyright or similar laws (s !!!) and I am not sure that anybody hiding behind an "orphan works act" could really hope to get through with using works by others and claiming "I didn't know it didn't belong to me !"

Hi Mark !

Congratulations.

I had my first sale there two weeks ago (and it was my first sale through a stock agency too !).

Yes, I know what some will say : I'll have to wait some time to get enough sales to get the money, but I'm not in a hurry : I am building my portfolio. And with 10$ the sale (7 for me) it should'nt need too much of them to get something.

And anyway, I like the site and their friendly attitude toward the photographers. I sent them a message with some suggestions and they answered quite quickly and their answer were dead on the point and really positive.

Good luck Featurepics.

As a photographer I agree that it is stupid and anything visible from a public place should be fair game, but...

What would you think if your house or your customised car (please see the "customised") was photographed and then used as a repellent in an advertisement saying "if you don't want to be like the ridiculous owner of such a pitiful piece of -whatever- come and buy at so and so" ?

Just to try to understand the other side of the coin.

Meanwhile, it is a fact that you can't take picture or publish pictures of anything. And as the photographer you will be on the front line when the law is called. In Paris for example, you can take a picture of the Eiffel tower but not at night as the lights are copyrighted. I suppose the next time the painting is done, the painter will copyright his job and you won't be able to use the picture done by day either. You should hurry.

Still in Paris, you can't shot (when I say "shot", please understand "publish the result of your shot") most buildings in La Défense ; you can't shot the pyramid in the Louvre (unfortunately, this pyramid is in the way, so you can't have a good general shot of the inside of the Louvre anymore) ; you can't shot the Buren's column in Palais Royal (I don't know why anybody would want to do that, but here also unfortunately they are in the way if you want to photograph these magnificent buildings) ; by the way, Buren lost when he tried to copyright a square where there is one of his sculptures. A fisher also lost in a famous judgement where he asked for compensation because someone had taken and published a picture of his boat in front of the tower in Collioure (a small harbor on Mediterranean sea). Also lost, the owners (or pretending so, which was not the case) of three small dogs who asked for a compensation for moral damage to their dogs when these poor beast so their portraits in magazines...

So, everything is not dark, there is hope at the end of the tunnel. But, for the time being, some things are copyrighted and you take a huge risk when you publish their pictures without authorization.

Personaly, I don't understand why somebody would put a photography on one site for 200 $ or more, and the same one on another site for 1$ or less.

To me, it seems like shooting oneself in the foot.

It seems to be working again, I just uploaded a file there.

I own the 70-200 F4 and it's a great lens. If you can buy the IS model it seems it's even better (without counting the IS factor).

and with a 1.4 converter it will become a 100/300 or close.

and still a great lens.

0

sorry,

total still 29 894

I tried to upload this morning, the first photographies went well, then the following ones were rejected with something like "can't reach the server".

I tried later on, same thing.

By the way, I got approval in a few days recently : upload on 13 feb, QC approval on 19 ; upload on 20, QC approval on 22. And the forum in Alamy indicates that others also got small time review.

It seems that their 48h goal for Q1 2008 is about to be reached.

You must work from a TIFF file which is superior to 48 MB. Then you save it as a JPEG (maximum resolution : level 12) and you upload the JPEG file.

Anyway, when uploading if your file is not big enough there will be a message error.

Another proof that buyers are not as "price sensitive" as some seem to think. When they find the picture they are looking for, they buy it.

Now it's up to everyone to charge 10$ 100$ or 10 cents...

I must be missing something there ! I am a beginner at Fotolia with only 8 photos but on the last three I had a keyword problem (in fact I had a problem on the first one too as they don't accept double key word, so my "trafalgar square" went lost, if you want to see my picture you have to search through "london fountain").

They are photogs of Annecy, a french town. Unfortunately, "Annecy" doesn't appear in the keyword. I had put it as the first one but it disappeared (three times). I asked Fotolia, the answer was that their machine was only using the first nine words (not 7, then) so if it was not in the nine, it was not recorded (that was not the case as I just said) and furthermore, their "artistic management" decided wich words to use in order to avoid spam. I can understand that, but I don't understand that the name of the town (the only cause for a buyer to look at it in 90% of the cases) will be dropped at this occasion. And as for correcting these keywords, the answer was "no, that's impossible".

Of course, I would like to be able to correct the keywords and make sure that the nine remaining will be accurate.

So, my question is : how do you do it ?

Quote from: yingyang0 on February 15, 2008, 02:59

Quote from: madelaide on February 15, 2008, 02:18
You don't get an interest, you only receive your money back (most of the cases in monthly payments).

Then I'll just stick with donating money. I've never liked what most of the micro loan groups do because of the loan shark interest rates they charge for the loans (25-36%).

After reading Kiva's "about Microfinance" page I'd be vary hesitant to lend through them. If you read question 6 "Why are microcredit interest rates so high?" They claim that there are three types of costs, yet the two don't exist for them. For kiva there is no cost for the money it lends (you're lending at a 0% interest rate to them) yet their example uses 10%. They also use a 1% default risk premium, yet I don't think they pay the lenders (you) if the borrower defaults so that's not an actual cost. Really the only fees they should be charging are related to transaction costs and shouldn't amount to 36% interest on the loans.

Just my opinion, but you'd be doing much more good by lending through a site like prosper.com if you want to lend money to people.  At Prosper the lenders compete for borrowers and actually lower the interest rate for the borrowers. Or if you're in the mood to donate rather than lend, but still like the microcredit idea you could donate to groups like villagebanking.org They actually setup microloan banks that make loans at reasonable rates in poorer countries. They also have low program expenses, which puts more of the money where it belongs.

As I have some banking knowledge, I must agree with YingYang. When I read this thread I found the idea exciting and was ready to jump in. But I don't understand why they charge interest to these poor people ! The money cost nothing, they don't incure losses... The maximum they could ask for would be a management fee (a once a time few percent of the credit, or a flat fee say a few tens of $) for the processing of the operation.

But even at a "low" 14% for money which cost nothing, that does look rather strange to me and it doesn't seem the poor guy at the end of the chain is the one who really profits from that scheme.

The idea is good, but I'll look elsewhere to see how it is implemented.

With Alamy, beware. There can be a long wait before your next approval. And one refusal among all you load up to then will signify the refusal of everything.

I am currently waiting for the approval of four uploading (i.e. around 20 photos). I don't dare to upload more. I have been waiting for their approval since jan 20 (some are waiting since beginning of january).

My advice would be, for a beginner like me, to get approved (4 pictures), then to upload progressively in order to understand their way of thinking/deciding.

Unless you can upload tens or thousand of pictures each day (which is not my case).

When your work is used for a book cover, you get paid, and you get a few free copies of the book. At least in civilized countries.

Now, if you are willing to work for free, to win the contest, and to be selected, and published, and still do it for free... Why not. It's your choice.

And of course, you can do all of that above and don't win. And get nothing.

But it's your choice.

And in my humble opinion, it's completely different from submitting your work to an agency which puts it in line and offers it to potential buyers who will pay you if they use it.

But, once again, it's your choice.

What did Mr Barnum said ?

If I understand your post, I think you are saying two things :

1) the first one gets all

2) the only issue is in advertising.

If I agree with the second one (and now that FP has reached a certain level they should soon be able to advertise), I can't agree with the first, otherwise everybody would drive in a Ford car and wear Levi's Jeans.

I think there is room for a lot of different offers, and I think also that Microstock will soon reach its limits. Right now, Microstock is an amateur field. Anybody with a P&S can sell pictures. And these pictures are sold for less and less through subscription, which drives the market down without anybody profiting it except buyers.

It's a spiral which will end in excluding pro photographers who won't find enough return for their work (we already saw Yuri lament about the trend and saying that he can't cover his expenses, and he isn't a pro -even though he could be-).

At the same time there is still a demand for upper stock because there are some markets where people are costing so much that they have to find quickly what they want and can't loose time on sites with low quality pictures they have to browse for hours before finding the good one.

I think there is room somewhere in the middle where good standing pictures done by professionals who want to earn a living and not only see their images in print somewhere for the thrill of it will find their place.

Which means perhaps a change in policy from midstock sites where quality will become their main asset.

Which, of course, goes through some advertising about the change.

I totally agree. There is no sense in selling on FP at the same price than on other sites. Their business model can work only if the pictures provided are different from the ones found on microsites and with a price allowing FP to make a decent margin.

The microsite economy is doomed to fail someday because of the ever decreasing prices and the everdecreasing share microsites offer the photographers to keep their margin. Sooner or later, the best photographers will try to find better paying markets. And better paying markets mean market who sell with higher prices.

FP is a model which should work well in this environment, and it will get better when they'll have reached a large portfolio. Right now they have reached the 500 000 pictures. That means they are beginning to offer something for everybody. That also means they still have some gaps to fill. Why not try to fill these, and so attract more potential customers, with pictures offered for a decent price ?

I think that 10$ is a minimum for a photo (well, according to Dan Heller, I put mine at 9.99).

Yes, it is 24. And if you select more, the last ones won't show. You'll have to un-select some of the former ones.

Quote from: GeoPappas on February 04, 2008, 18:18
It looks that way.

And I heard it might be called the 3D.

I read somewhere that Canon couldn't use 3D as it is a registered trademark ? Too bad, I'd really like to see the equivalent of my EOS 3 with a full frame sensor...