Boy am I ever confused of this.

I do some stock photography and I also do some website designing.  When I'm working on a website, I usually either take the pictures myself, or use the pictures supplied by the site owner.  Occasionally I'll buy a pix or 2 through iStock.

Lately I have been question my customers about the origins of the pix they provide, warning them they need to be careful about copyright infringement.  Of course they always ask "How can I tell if it's copyrighted?"  I usually tell them to assume it IS unless it specifically says "public domain."

I've been wondering lately how much I am sticking my neck out as a webmaster by publishing these files provided by my customers that I don't know for sure where they come from.  But it's there site, right?  And I shouldn't be responsible, should I?

I became even more confused today when I bought 2 pix from iStock for a website.  Whenever I use a purchased picture, I always edit the IPTC data, adding "Licensed by iStock to Carrolls' Creations for use on whatever.com" to the Copyright Notice field. 

Well, neither of the pix I downloaded today had any IPTC data -- NONE!  The Copyright Status field said "unknown."  And they were from 2 different photographers.  So if someone stumbles upon one of these pix somewhere, how are they to know it's copyrighted?  And as a webmaster, how do I know if my customer really took it himself (I always look) or if they swiped it from a google image search.

I'm really surprised and shocked that iStock doesn't insert some kind of copyright information into the IPTC data!  I'm equally surprised that not all photographers insert that information into their files before they are uploaded.

So, what do y'all think a webmaster should do in terms of pictures???

Steve Carroll

I just made my evening rounds of my micro sites to see if I made enough today to have a beer, and I noticed that YAY has redesigned their website.  Didn't spend a lot of time checking it out, but it seemed a little confusing to me -- at least in trying to get to the "my account" page.

Hint: click on your username at the top of the page.

Anyway, I see that they are now listing views and downloads on the "my portfolio" page.  WOW!!! If those views are for the entire year I've had pix up there, it's no wonder I haven't sold anything.  Hardly any views at all.  I think I've sold more pictures on most other sites than I"ve had views on YAY 

Perhaps those views are just from today since they turned on the new site???

I have been working today on updating some lightboxes -- some of my own, and also adding pix to the new microstockgroup boxes. 

While reviewing what I already had loaded in the older MSG boxes, I noticed that the MSG banner/link thingy had disappeared from about half of my images!  I know they used to be there -- they would have had to be or I couldn't have added them to the lightboxes.

So how did they disapear?  Did IS remove them? 

For those that have images in the MSG boxes, please check yours and see if some are missing the banners of if it's just me.

Thanks,
Steve

I logged in this morning to check progress and noticed that all the pictures in my gallery have been rearranged since yesterday.  I wonder if this means the best match for keyword searches has also changed???

I also had a SALE, the first in two weeks, so I hope something has changed and that he keeps working for me ;-)

I finally talked my wife into shooting more stock photos and am helping her get her port into order....

How do I delete an image on istock?  I've looked all over and can't find the delete button.  I need to delete some she uploaded some time ago.

Thanks,
Steve

Arian here from Mostphotos.com.

We have been in the planing stage for trough the summer and we are now ready to start implementing some new features and marketing campaigns.

We will be working hard to improve the number of sales from now to December. And we need to hit some key points in order to that.
* Increase the over all traffic
* Create better market awareness of our brand
* Get more links to the site to improve our search engine rankings.

We have been trying to come up with ideas on how to market our brand without spending large amounts of cash and we came up with a method.

We can offer a API solution that will allow users of big blog services like wordpress.com and blogspot to search our database directly from their blogtools.
They can then pick an image and use it on their blog. NOT for commercial purposes.

We will deliver a lowres image with a reduced watermark containing the photographers name and the address to his or her profile at mostphotos.
The image will also be linked to the view page of the photo.
This will be free of charge for the blogger that gets some nice images to use in the blog post and we get publicity and a new way for the photographers to show off their work.
We can also provide a list of links to all the blogs that are using your images so you can check it out.

So we need your input on this feature, would anyone be interested in letting us use their photos for this service?
There will be an opt-in so we wont force anyone to do this.

Please post your comments in this forum thread:
http://www.mostphotos.com/forumviewthread.php?thread=1523

Best regards
Arian Barhami
Ceo Mostphotos.com

Is it appropriate to have the same MR photo on more than one site -- such as both photoshelter and alamy?

thanks for your input....

Steve