MicrostockGroup Sponsors


Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Topics - hairybiker777

Pages: [1] 2
1
Dreamstime.com / Customer support
« on: November 24, 2017, 03:04 »
I sent DT an email with some suggestions on how to improve the submission and keywording process. I got back a copy and paste reply, talking about all sorts of things I hadn't even mentioned in my mail. I won't waste time communicating with them again...

2
Alamy.com / Unable to login
« on: May 28, 2017, 06:36 »
I'm unable to login today - I get an "Invalid Captcha" message despite there being no Captcha dialog anywhere on the screen. Anyone else getting the same problem?

3
General Stock Discussion / Credit for image
« on: November 06, 2016, 19:09 »
Hi folks,

When your image is purchased through a stock agency and then used on a website, is it mandatory for the customer to credit you by naming the agency and your userID on the web page? I have an image that is currently being used on a popular tourism website and also in promoted posts (that is, adverts) on Facebook, and there's nothing on the web page to say that it's my image, or which agency it came from. The image was purchased in the normal way so there are no dramas there, but this is some of the biggest exposure I've ever had and I'm keen to maximise it...

TIA

4
General Stock Discussion / Viewbug blog
« on: September 06, 2016, 21:27 »
Hi folks,

I've just received an email from Viewbug.com, where I have a few images. They're encouraging me to upload more, saying they want to feature me in a blog. Has anyone else who uploads to Viewbug had a similar email in the last few days?

I suspect that they're just after some new content...


5
iStockPhoto.com / Latest DeepMeta
« on: August 01, 2016, 21:39 »
Among all the doom and gloom, it's nice to see a feature that I suggested has made it into the latest version of DeepMeta; it now has the smarts to recognise editorial captions in JPEGs, and if the city/country/date part of the caption is all uppercase, it converts it to title case as required by iStock. It also ticks the editorial tickbox, and populates the description with the caption minus the city/country/date. This will save me a ton of work as I do a lot of editorial stuff and I always do my captions all-uppercase in Photoshop.

They're still taking a month to approve images, but it's nice to have one little positive at least...

6
Dreamstime.com / Honest review
« on: January 30, 2016, 07:48 »
Well, there's a thing! I just had an image rejected by DT for being "not quite what we're looking for". How refreshing to get an honest comment in a rejection instead of putting it down to sharpness or somesuch when the image is fine from a technical perspective.

7
Photography Equipment / Sensor quality vs lens quality
« on: January 27, 2016, 21:55 »
Hi folks,

Let's say you have 2 20MP SLRs, one with an APS-C sensor and one with a full-frame sensor, both fitted with the same prime lens, both pointed at the same subject from the same location. Assuming the usual APS-C crop factor of around 1.5 - 1.6, if you take a picture on both cameras then you end up - obviously - with 2 20MP images, with one looking like it came from a lens with around 1.5 - 1.6x the focal length of the other. Let's say that you now crop the image from the full-frame camera so that the two images now look identical.

What I've never understood is if - or at what magnification - there would be an appreciable difference in sharpness between the 2 images. I get that the image from the full-frame camera would now be down to around 13-14MP but wouldn't the APS-C image only come out sharper if the lens can deliver enough detail to let it do so?

Sorry this is a bit muddled... I guess I'm just not sure of whether the sensor's ability to resolve detail is typically greater than the lens's ability, and whether it matters. TIA!

8
Hi folks,

I often set the shutter speed and aperture that I want in manual mode, and set ISO to auto. I had a situation at the weekend, shooting the ocean in bright sunlight, where I wanted to be one or two stops under to minimise the chances of highlights blowing out. I found that I couldn't set exposure compensation... I could only set up a bracketing range, which meant multiple exposures for every one that I wanted to take. The light levels varied a lot across the area that I was covering, so there was no single "right ISO"... what I needed was to be x stops under, no matter what the light, with a fixed shutter speed and aperture and automatic ISO. Is there a way to do that on a 6D?

TIA

9
General Stock Discussion / Anybody tried buymyphotos.com?
« on: May 28, 2015, 21:38 »
I signed up and emailed them some questions / concerns a couple of months ago... never heard anything back from them and I don't see any new updates on the site in respect of the "missions" that they offer. Shame... it seemed at first like it had the potential to be a nice little earner, but I have no confidence in them since they didn't reply, and the site seems pretty poorly thought out in that it doesn't even extract keywords from your JPEGs (you have to enter them manually).

Is anyone else using this site?

TIA
HB

10
Bigstock.com / No more uploads for me
« on: January 08, 2015, 20:57 »
Well, I've tried with BS but I think I've reached a point now where the effort is just not worth it any more. After a year or so in the game and with around 400 live images, SS is far and away my best performer with IS sales running at about 50% of SS, and BS running at about 20% of SS.

BS can keep my current port but I can't be bothered uploading to them any more. Shame, as they were the first agency I went with...

11
Shutterstock.com / Public sets
« on: September 02, 2014, 22:13 »
G'day folks,

I got around to creating some public sets today, mainly 'cause I'm sick of SS nagging me about not having any whenever I visit the site. Is there any great benefit in it? I see that I can track earnings by set, but has anything else actually changed? I mean - for example - are the tags in those images now open to search engines or anything like that? Will they show up anywhere they wouldn't before?

TIA
HB

12
Photo Critique / SS rejection - critique please
« on: July 24, 2014, 19:10 »
G'day folks, here's a thumbnail and a 100% crop of an image of mine that was rejected at SS. When I quizzed them on it, I was told that it is a little under-exposed and the white balance is "a bit off", and advised to use levels / curves to fix it up. What do you think the white balance problem is? I can only think that the colours are on the cool side and that I should perhaps add a little warmth to it.

I should add that the upper deck of the boat is light grey... maybe the reviewer was expecting white there, hence the white balance comment. Maybe not! I await and welcome your wisdom :)

TIA
HB

13
iStockPhoto.com / Website balance v DeepMeta royalties
« on: July 13, 2014, 02:16 »
G'day folks,

My balance at IS, as seen on the website, is roughly double the total of the 'royalties' figure in DeepMeta. DeepMeta actually has the correct total in its status bar but the royalties don't add up to the total. Shouldn't they be the same?

TIA

14
Newbie Discussion / Always colour?
« on: July 04, 2014, 07:07 »
G'day folks,

I'm getting ready to submit a bunch of portraits from an engagement shoot that I did for some friends recently. They look way better in black and white than colour, but I'm undecided about whether to submit them like that... I would imagine that most folks are only looking for colour portraits. What is the accepted wisdom in cases like this?

TIA

15
Adobe Stock / FT reviews - no rhyme nor reason
« on: July 02, 2014, 02:32 »
G'day folks,

How is everyone going with reviews at FT? I've just joined them and they're rejecting more of my stuff than all the other agencies I deal with put together! The rejection emails are so vague - "the image has one or more of the following (20-something) problems". How are you supposed to fix anything up when that's all the information you're given?

What's more, they don't accept editorial images. I don't see how I'm ever going to build up a decent sized port with them. I only joined because they're considered "big four", but they're more like "big pain in the butt" so far... even the category chooser is hard work. I don't see myself staying with them for long... I suppose I'll submit the rest of my port and give it a few months to see if there's any interest, but I'm not getting my hopes up. Dreamstime next for me... let's hope they're a bit easier to deal with.

16
Shutterstock.com / Multiple emails
« on: June 19, 2014, 20:33 »
G'day folks,

I routinely receive two copies of every "status of your recently submitted images" email from SS; any idea what's causing it?

17
iStockPhoto.com / Deepmeta problem?
« on: May 30, 2014, 19:17 »
G'day folks,

I'm unable to upload using DeepMeta at the moment... I get an error " 32700 - parse error, not well formed". Anyone else having this problem?

18
G'day folks,

I have some accepted images at SS where I got the categories wrong at submission time, and I'm struggling to change them. Here's how it goes:

1) Start in Catalog Manager, double-click the image. A popup dialog appears.

2) In the popup,  change the categories and hit the "submit&save" button. See the usual messages about misspellings, duplicate keywords etc.

3) Hit "submit&save" again, as advised. See a smaller set of messages this time (no warnings about misspelling).

4) Close the popup.

If I then go back into the image, the categories are the same as before; my changes haven't been saved.

If I come at it another way - via the batch that contains the image - I go through the same process but the edit page comes up in the main browser window rather than as a popup. When I navigate away after hitting submit&save, I get a message "All edits you have made so far will be lost. Please save your work by pressing the save work button". But there isn't a save work button - only submit&save.

I've tried Chrome and IE11. What am I doing wrong?

TIA
Nick





19
Shutterstock.com / Tagging style
« on: May 25, 2014, 17:35 »
G'day folks,

I've just been accepted at SS and am starting to send them my images, which have been tagged for IS ("medium group of animals", "elementary age children" etc) because IS has been my main agency till now. Does that tagging style go OK on SS, or is it better to re-work everything for SS? I'm reading tips/blogs etc on the SS site, but am also keen to get some advice from the trenches...

TIA
Nick

20
Newbie Discussion / Editorial captions
« on: May 22, 2014, 04:12 »
G'day folks,

In the past, I've been advised in these forums that the best way to approach editorial captions is to do them to Shutterstock's standards, no matter which agency I'm sending to. SS have revised their editorial policy (http://www.shutterstock.com/blog/announcing-shutterstocks-new-editorial-guidelines) so that you no longer have to supply the location and date a second time in the caption. In light of this, is the advice that I was given still good? FWIW, my other agencies are IS and BS...

TIA

21
iStockPhoto.com / EXIF & editorials
« on: April 08, 2014, 02:45 »
Hey folks,

I've had a couple of editorial images rejected twice each this week, for the caption date supposedly not matching the EXIF date. I used the date that DeepMeta provided when I flagged the image as editorial, and I see the same date in Photoshop and Picasa, so I'm at a loss to know what's wrong. I haven't knowingly stripped or overwritten any of the EXIF data. I've logged a Scout ticket but I'm keen to hear whether this is a common problem for those of you who submit editorial images to IS. I've never had a rejection like this before, but these two images have both been knocked back twice, so there's something in there that they don't like...

TIA
HB

22
G'day folks,

This photo of mine:

http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-37187770-garden-island-naval-base-hammerhead-crane-sydney.php?st=7445407

was taken at the Garden Island naval base in Sydney. My keyword tags include 'Garden Island' and 'hammerhead crane'. If I search using 'hammerhead crane' then iStock finds the image. If I search using 'Garden Island', it doesn't. This appears to be because 'Garden Island' isn't in the CV and so it gets broken down into two searches - one for 'garden' and one for 'island', neither of which match the image.

The only way to find it is to put 'Garden Island' in quotes, which stops it from searching per-word. I don't imagine that your average iStock customer is clued-up to the point where they would know that terms outside of the CV have to be treated like this, so what's the best way to make sure the image gets found by a search? I know you can ask iStock for a phrase to be added to the CV... that seems the best option to me...




23
G'day folks,

Please can someone explain the best way to resubmit caption changes to editorial images using DeepMeta? I had a bunch rejected for incorrect use of uppercase in the caption, and DeepMeta won't let me change the caption... it says the caption can only be changed on images that haven't yet been uploaded.

I'm not sure whether I should add the same JPEGs to DeepMeta again, or if there's a better way to approach this problem. I imagine that I should add them again and use copy / paste to rows to copy the category information etc over from the rejected images to the new batch before sending them up again.

I took a look at doing it directly on the iStock website using their resubmit option, but it seems that I lose all the category information if I do it that way, as well as any tags that I fixed up in DeepMeta.

TIA
Nick

24
Newbie Discussion / Different agencies, different standards
« on: March 11, 2014, 06:49 »
G'day folks,

I've been with BigStock for a couple of months, and I got accepted at iStock at the weekend, so I've made my first submission to them today. I've found two major differences so far:

1) iStock has a controlled vocabulary where various words and phrases all resolve to the same thing, therefore similar tags are unnecessary and in fact it takes more time to go through the submission process, as you have to confirm what each word means. BigStock doesn't have CV, therefore the more words you enter, the better.

2) iStock and BigStock do not agree on editorial caption format. One example would be that BS want the city and country in capital letters, while IS will reject an image if it contains words in the caption that are all uppercase.

For those of you who submit to multiple agencies with conflicting standards, how on earth do you go about it?!

TIA
Nick

25
Newbie Discussion / Registering a business in Australia
« on: February 26, 2014, 20:37 »
G'day folks,

When photography is a hobby that occasionally makes money in your spare time from stock, portrait shoots, events etc, what are the pros / cons of registering a company and putting your income and expenses through it?

I'm spending a few $ on nice gear like everyone else here, and wondering whether I could make any of it tax-deductible by putting it through a business while I'm still on the payroll as a regular employee in a job that has nothing to do with photography. I guess it can't be as easy at that, otherwise everyone would be creating companies and putting cars, property and everything else through them, but I'm keen to learn how those of you who are semi-pro / earning an income from photography while still doing regular salaried work in another industry handle your finances.

FWIW, I'm in Australia...

Pages: [1] 2

Sponsors

Mega Bundle of 5,900+ Professional Lightroom Presets

Microstock Poll Results

Sponsors