Hi Tom,

Thanks for the histogram. Like you said, with playing with shadows/highlights you could have got far with only this image. But i understand your motivation
And lucky enough for this scene, only the water can move by wind so I guess architecture in combination with evening/night shots is a candidate for HDR.

The contrast in 7307136 is extreme, i understand you can't do that with 1 shot.
Nice shot, and done at a great time of the day.
Did you only sharpen it for this smaller version? (or perhaps photo.net did it) (the stones & tree give a sharpened feel).
The only comment (if you want to hear) i have is the light spot on the bottom left. My eye moves over the photo and goes to the castle and its nice towers, but instead of staying there, it then moves to that spot on the bottom left and wonders 'what is that?' I guess its water, but how come its lighter then the rest.  Which is a pitty since that is not where you want the 'looker' to focus.
Anyway, back to HDR, didn't you want to make the bushes/green a bit lighter?

You may find Charlie Waite's photo's interesting, (so i guess a dramatic sky would be nice see:
http://www.charliewaite.com/image-details.asp?LibraryID=2331
http://www.charliewaite.com/

regards,
bjorn

About PovRay....

have a look at this:
http://hof.povray.org/

I love Gilles winning image:
http://www.oyonale.com/image.php?code=464

Hi,

What 3d raytrace software is used for generating stock images? 
I want to give it a try (used autocad/inventor at work), but don't want to start with buying a $$$ 3d software package  . And perhaps something more image related (iso technical)
Is there something free or cheap around that generates good enough quality for the stock sites?


Thanks,
Bjorn

Hi Bateleur,

Do you sell Licensed or royalty free on alamy?

Hi oboy,

I guess, your car in motion picture will be impossible to do with hdr. But i get your point...  But in my experience, the less fuzzy (movement) the better the sales....

>and movement photo do get accepted and sell.
Can you pass a link? I can't find a sale on the 2 you mentioned...


>I cannot see why it should not work for web use.
since pc screens only have 256 colour shades per R,G and B.
for printing ok i can understand, but for web/pc???

I'm selling images on the micro stock sites for a few years now and I'm thinking now of submitting photo's to Alamy too.
Can you give me some tips on submitting to Alamy (compared to micro)?
 
Thanks,
Bjorn

hi,

Thanks again & nice shot!

bjorn

Hi,

Any (dutch) out here who submit to http://www.nationalebeeldbank.nl/ ?

I would like to hear your experiences.
Is it worth translating all your keywords back to dutch?

Thanks for sharing!

Hi,

just looked at the new balance sheet on stockXpert to find out it changed.
now got both the (old) credit and the new subscription sales & $, nice they show it both, but not so nice that the link is gone telling you which photo(s) sold on that day 
Do you know any other way to see which of your photo's sold for a day (or week)?  (don't want to go though all) you can't sort them on download date...

http://www.stockxpert.com/balance.phtml

regards,
Bjorn

Hi leaf,

Can you add this one?

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=4403071

thanks,
bjorn

I uploaded 7 photo's last week, and all where rejected with comment "subject too blurry" this although they are pin sharp photo's & accepted by the others. (StockXpert photo no. range = 5139271 - 5253361).
Have the same idea, that they want to clear the queue.

send them an email, when they did the same trick a while ago, but it was never answered.

If you have mass rejections of last week, what range are you photo's in?

regards,
bjorn

Yes, Leaf come on, lets hear the next subject/round...
(as long as its nothing with people...).

I still have 20 eggs in my fridge, if anybody is interested ;-)
Amazing to see, how difficult it is to find a white egg here, had to see 5 supermarkets...

Hi,

Not that i'm too serious about it but, just as a mind game...
Reading the complains on the existing agency's made me wonder...
What would it take to set up a non profit micro stock agency?

With the focus on the photographers (& customers) in stead of the company itself.
The goal to give as much return to the photographers as possible.

Obviously there are some cost, the hardware (servers etc) & marketing/advertising.
I guess if we keep the site simple there would be a few of us that could work together to get something in the air, saving expensive software engineers. When successful, it can always be expanded. (so eg. only keywording and no categories , to save us time on both sides)

Instead of hiring people to look at the photo's for acceptance & quality, we could set the rule that if a photo is accepted at any of the existing big 6 agency's its good enough for us. So when you upload an image, you also give a link to an agency where your image is online. Checking this can be done in exchange (i do one for you you do one for me), randomly generated by the software, or in case you don't want to check other people's photo's, you can choose to pay eg 10 or 20 cents to have it done, hoping your photo will earn it back on its first sale.

Big changes and introduction of new ideas could be done by voting. Where all contributors have the same vote right or some system based on the number of photo's you have online.

Here on the forum there are 800 registered users, lets say that there are 500 active one's with an  average of 200 photo's () that would bring in 100,000 photo's a nice start. But i'm sure that if we give 80%(?)  to the photographer it would draw new uploaders quickly. By setting the pricing a bit below the big 6, will draw customers and since the 'company' doesn't have to make a profit, both contributors & buyers are happy.

Big question is, how much do we need to spend on marketing to get it moving?
Does this require a financial injection or would it be possible to set up a system where eg. every contributors first earned $10 would be used for marketing. And i'm sure that with so many creative people around, there is one that can write a nice article/press release (free marketing).
As soon as sales start moving the 20% on each photo earned could be used to keep the site in the air and for advertising.

Any brainstorm ideas?