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Messages - Sergey
1
« on: August 18, 2009, 08:25 »
Do you hear yourself?? What RM? Which buyers with real $$$?? We talk here about microstock and images for few dollars, not $$$. We talk here about buyers who want cheap images. Who asked you about RM and expensive images?
The image with green sky and yellow sea is not made using real filter. It's made using PS and that's very obvious.
Rinder, I think you did right no matter you gave images with your copyright to another person. You wanted to prove inconsistence in reviewing regarding exclusives/non-exclusives, and you proved it. It was brave of you to post it here, but the truth is on your side.
then you're an amateur. learn to use polarizer filters and you can make the water green or yellow or orange and the sky green or purple or whatever in between, and much much more, that's been the norm since the times of Ansel Adams who was using b/w by the way so go figure. and you need more contrast ? use the camera, and it will look ten times better than with PS. more grain ? same as above ? more sharpness ? ditto. color dots ? selective out of focus ? gradients ? use filters on the lens, as any other pro does since the rock age. you guys crack me up ... if being a photographer is all about PS you better get another hobby. what i enlisted so far are the very BASICS of photography, and it's more fun than messing with a laptop and PS for hours.
2
« on: August 18, 2009, 08:16 »
<...
>...
RM is full of unedited images because there are buyers who need do to THEIR OWN editing afterwards and this couldnt be possible or very limited starting from an overphotoshopped image.
Sergey, from what I read you shoot photojournalism, social documentry and travel, and when you are shooting or talking RM you would have editorial in mind, lets look at Alamy where they sell over 80% editorial and RM, in a lot of editorial area's any image manipulation other than slight adjustments of levels would get you 'No Sales', and has got the editor fired more than once from thier jobs, so it is horses for courses, what works for one area of the stock business is a no-no to another.
Commercial images for advertising and advertorial are often enhanced as they are trying to sell something and make you dream of the blue skys and hot summer days, where your gritty type of social documentry and editorial would look silly enhanced as the images are meant to be realistic and bring the hard reality home to the reader.
The oversaturated images are not replacing your social documentry images and affecting your bottom line, on the other hand if the oversaturated travel images are hurting your revenue, then maybe you need to look at how you can enhance your travel images.
David 
yeah but let's then look at travel advertising : i don't see all this oversaturation with swimming pools, beaches, and bikinis... they look vivid because they ARE vivid in the real world ... maybe you guys are used to shoot washed out images and then think it is "normal" to waste 1 hour with PS to revive your photos one by one and then in the meantime add too much saturation here and there... the typical travel advertisement is hardly oversaturated, as they preserve the reds and yellow for the sales message, logos, and promotional text, which can not and should not be colorfully put in second place by the photo itself. i'm not affected by oversaturations in my field, not at all, i'm just disgusted by the trends i see in other fields related to travel, temples and monuments for instance now are mostly super vivd explodiing with sunsets etc etc i don't get it, it's a temple not a circus or fireworks ... i'm of the idea that people need PS so badly because their pictures suck and they suck because they're not real photographers, i.e. not able to make a perfect shooting without the help of PS. let's face it : NONE of you guys would have ever started selling photos without the help of PS, all your pictures would have been miserably and rightfully rejected.
3
« on: August 18, 2009, 08:04 »
There are also plenty of photoshopped images that sell on the macros and I have seen loads in magazines and holiday brochures. And it only takes seconds to add a bit of saturation. Digital camera files can look a bit dull compared to slide film, so I don't see much problem with adding a bit of saturation. Some people go way over the top but if it makes them money and is what the buyer wants, as is often clearly the case, they shouldn't be criticized.
wrong wrong wrong again. RM costs more because is mainly targeted at PRINT. print is not RGB, it's CMYK, that's why it's important to start from images as neutral as they can, provided they're very good already regarding colors as the conversion RGB->CMYK almost always will screw up some gamut range and you will need to recalibrate etc the photoshopped RMs you see around are there because the buyers decided they like 'em that way but this is not the norm in the industry. digital files vs film : no no no, if they look washed out is because you shoot in AUTO mode or never set correctly exposure contrast and saturation or use crappy UV/polarizers. digital can be extremely saturated if you want, all looking much more natural than with PS, it's up to you but you see nowadays people shoot almost everything AUTO with bad lights and bad weather and then complain their pictures suck. the only thing film is still superior is about resolution and dynamic range. people just go out of their way because they have uncalibrated monitors, they're maybe also a bit daltonic or need new eyeglasses, or simply because they've no idea their camera can be setup in 100s different ways and produce excellent images without any need for postprocessing. this may sound amazing to some of you but until few years ago photographers were supposed to make perfect shoots with just film and uv/polarizer and their 30 yrs-old photos are still selling on RM even now in 2009. and finally, oversaturated crap sells fine because buyers have usually very gross and bad tastes.
4
« on: August 18, 2009, 06:09 »
it's just too easy today to mess with the web.
never before it has been so cheap to publish images and articles and spread the word around
to a huge list of contacts.
but as production and distribution costs are next to zero, so are the earnings because when anyone can clone your idea or your products without effort where's the real value of your product ?
and why clients should pay for it ?
the only way to sell on the web is making something unique and hard to steal and that's simply not possible in any fields but only in some specific market niches.
5
« on: August 18, 2009, 06:04 »
RM is full of unedited images because there are buyers who need do to THEIR OWN editing afterwards and this couldnt be possible or very limited starting from an overphotoshopped image.
yellow water/green sky ? you can do that with any 20$ polarizer filter, but it will not look as fake as if done with PS, that's the difference.
buyers loving oversaturation are the ones who obviously have a tight budget and need something "done" to use right away.
serious buyers, the ones with $$$, always go RM and have their own photo editors.
it's not technology phobia, it's you guys who are born in the digital world and think there was nothing before digital and PS, believe it or not there are plenty of guys making big $$ shooting film (yes !) and b/w with ancient Leicas both in stock RM as in artistic photography and much more.
but as micros are very limited in their offering they only accept oversaturations etc
so now you're sort of thinking one-way ...
in fact the many microstockers who tried their luck with Getty etc and got rejected had to realize the fact
they shoot "micro" the hard way.
6
« on: August 18, 2009, 05:22 »
wrong.
on RM there's plenty of unphotoshopped images that sell.
the reason is simple : the authors managed to get the shot looking good
in the first place just with a normal polarizer and a correct exposure and
catching the right light at the right moment.
besides, you won't see all those oversaturated images in normal
travel magazines for instance, you only see them in photographic magazines
where photgs showoff and agree with each other, see the new fad about HDR
which is the ultimate heresy in photography.
reality is already very colorful by itself, it your pictures are washed out is because maybe
you're more a photoshopper than a photographer ... which once again reminds me of my rant about how much time you guys waste on photoshop instead of making saleable pictures straight out of the camera.
7
« on: August 18, 2009, 03:28 »
IStock is right.
i've never seen so many overphotoshopped images like on micros.
you'll hardly find anything "normal", even a simply postcard style
picture with a sky and a mountain will need to have purple layers
in the clouds and oversharpened rocks and ice on the mountain
with more sh-it layered here and there to add more fakeness to
whole composition.
and colors .. gosh .. you'll hardly find a picture on micros with normal
colors .. everything must be oversaturated by default .. grass is always
supergreen, sky is as blue as a diving pool, flowers are booming in a lysergic
raimbow ...
what ?
8
« on: August 18, 2009, 03:23 »
Back to the OP and the use of the word 'Free'
I was listening to a report on the radio driving into work and a quote I heard put it into context, and the quote was:
"Free only means that someone else is paying"
Before you can look at giving anything away 'Free' you have to look at "who and how", who will pay in the longer run and how you are going to monitize it, if you cannot answer these questions then there is no point in giving anything.
When the websites like flickr give away limited free accounts, the revenue to pay for these comes partly from advertising and the 'Paid Pro Accounts', so the free stuff is never 'Free'
David
right on the spot. FREE works fine for who owns the micro agencies : someone else is paying .. .YOU microstockers with your time and work !
9
« on: August 17, 2009, 17:19 »
Yes, the pendulum always swings, or as the French put it, "the more things change, the more they stay the same". Many if not most of these grandiose free-content schemes will eventually crash and burn, and microstock (after it goes 'free') will probably be one of them.
I agree that the vast majority of microstock contributors are losing money, to the extent they value their time. For me it's been a useful learning experience. I am at the point where I know I can produce images that sell, and I also know I'm light-years away from making enough money per image for this activity to be worthwhile. Now, I'm wondering what to try next. Stick with microstock and try to zero on on profitable subjects? Try moving up to something like Alamy? Sell photos at art fairs? Or just forget about ever making any money from photography?
I could spend a lot of effort creating 1,000 good stock images, at about the same time these agencies grind each other down to a price point of 0, making it all a waste of time.
As always, the future will head off in directions we never predicted.
yes, the core point is HOW MUCH TIME IT TAKES to keyword/upload/edit to a dozen microstock agencies ? what about people paying models or making expensive shoots ? can they really cope with the pityful micro payouts ? micro can only go down the drain as long as they're fighting each other on prices, and this will first and foremost screw the photographers not the agencies. it's the same with supermarkets now, farmers are paid so low they start leaving their vegetables on the trees as selling to Tesco they would lose money. and what Tesco does then ? importing cheaper vegs and fruit from China and Africa and screwing the farmers. it's a rat race, that's why only RM will survive in the long term, coz there is still a shitload of money on RM.
10
« on: August 17, 2009, 17:04 »
i find photo blogs very very boring apart rare cases. but there are exception thanks god, have a look at this in the blog section : http://photojournalismlinks.com/
11
« on: August 17, 2009, 17:00 »
They are not begging, it is a normal way to get money for a project. And these grants are very good and these photographers are making good money. You are just not informed.
maybe you're right, but... Anthony Suau who won the last World Press Award said he had no jobs for 3 straight months and he's no idea how to pay the bills and his mortgage. if he's in deep sh-it, what about the least famous photojournalists ?
12
« on: August 17, 2009, 11:54 »
well in some fields there's not much you can do :
some topics sell 10 times more than others, it's not your or their fault, it's just the way the market is.
i'll never become rich shooting social documentaries or slums in Mumbai ... even the most famous photographers working for Magnum or VII are starving to death compared to years ago, two famous ones for instance had to beg Getty for a grant of 50K$ in order to go back to war zones and shoot new projects as magazines are in such big crisis that they're paying next to zero to war photographers and go figure what they offer for social stories of poorness and disgrace.
on the other side, the last idiot with a Canon Rebel bought 6 months ago can shoot Paris Hilton drunk on a party and sell the picture for TENS of 1000 $$$.
see what's the future of news ... sad world...
13
« on: August 17, 2009, 11:48 »
talking about photography i think the best blog out there
is APhotoeditor.com
14
« on: August 17, 2009, 11:15 »
Interesting. I think 'free' is where microstock really wants to be. When buyers see millions of images available for pennies - from multiple sources - they realize that there's basically an enormous oversupply.
Eventually some big microstock is going to throw in the towel and start giving away the images, and run ads on the search pages. Contributors will get nothing - but of course, we'll make it up on the increased volume of sales... 
Seems to be the trend. The hosting site makes money off page views and "free" images, which are almost free now with some of the pricing plans, and the contributors get 
Here's a review. I found one that was more critical last month, but haven't discovered where I read it. Interesting concept based on supply and demand and the availability of "free" information because of the Internet.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/28/review-free-chris-anderson
image hosting barely can cover their own expenses. do you think they all make millions ? think again, Facebook is in deep red, Twitter never made a single dollar so far, Google's net gain is from 5 to 10% of their revenue, and the list goes on. Youtube is LOSING 1million$ A DAY. the only cash cows on the web are poker/gambling/dating/porn/moneytransfer/creditcardgateways sites. anything else is lucky to make a 10% net profit. the free model is all to be seen where is it going in the future. murdoch is going pay-per-read soon for instance and he's right.
15
« on: August 17, 2009, 11:11 »
racephoto, interesting review, thanks.
When free content becomes available, consumer standards drop down to meet it. For example, Wikipedia isn't as well written as Encyclopedia Brittanica. But it's free, so in time, people forget that there used to be something better. One could say that Brittanica was better than it needed to be, that people really only wanted the raw information, not the fine English. But I'm convinced something of value is being lost. And in time, the pendulum will swing back the other way.
I'm guessing that the big money players moving into microstock are spinning grand plans in which the images are just loss leaders, a way to pull in customers to whom they will eventually market other products and services.
microstock will never die, because there's a ton of people willing to upload even for free, look at Flickr for instance. who owns the micros will make money, it's you the microstocker who'll get more and more screwed and you'll realize it before or later i hope.
16
« on: August 17, 2009, 04:49 »
Sergey (Hippy),
WHY do you even want to bother with this forum at all? Very strange, since from the sounds of it you're making soooooo much more in RM than you could ever dream of in microstock. Why's this place rate even a brief moment of your thought, much less so much actual posting? Something doesn't add up. Sounds like out of the goodness of your heart you're really concerned about the sorry plight of micro-shooters. Or jealous of them. Or scared of them.......
it's simple. i come here to learn, and eventually to teach.
17
« on: August 17, 2009, 04:39 »
Hi Sergey,
I would love it if the playing field was more balanced but I can tell you from my experience that Getty are still the largest return per image in the stock industry. I agree you should spread your work to many of these different agencies so you are diversified and Getty is not your only option but they do make by far the largest RPI in the business at this point RM, RF or Micro. I can't say what tomorrow will bring.
Best,
Jonathan
maybe because they strictly edit their collection and only accept the very best, you could do the same deleting your lowest sellers and see an increase in RPI i guess.
18
« on: August 16, 2009, 17:12 »
as for me i do mainly travel editorial so RM is the best choice by far,
i would never sell much on micros and even if it did i dont wanna
dirt my hands with a dozen fly by night micro agencies.
Ah, "travel editorial", aka "un-released vacation snapshots". Are you sure you want all the other travelers around the world uploading to RM? You'd probably never make a sale then...
well in case you never noticed most of the travel editorials have always been and always will be in RM. and dont think millions of pics are enough, try for instance to search for a specific area of your city or a specific event and see what i mean. micros will never beat the variety of RM agencies/ as for the other travelers you overestimate them. most of them are casual shooters and quite slow and overcritic on their work, then they go home and spend nights on photoshop, and guess what ? they sell zero or not enough to justify the whole waste of time. too much photographers are overdemanding and overcritic and too much focused on their gear and the technical side of imaging. and i can tell you, 90% of the "holiday shooters" are shy and so you rarely see good ethnic portraits or they're pityfuly staged. so what ? they end up shooting the usual boring touristic spots that millions of people shot before them. conclusion : very nice pics, very few sales due to enormous competition. i instead focus on people, street people if possible, and i go straight in the people's face, some say my style is "slash and burn" but it gets the job done and you end up meeting lots of bizarre people, i like it, even if it can get a bit risky sometimes... my opinion ? a pictures is worth a 100 words, but a good portrait is worth 100 pictures. and you'll never find 'em on micros, see by yourself, and that's why buyers are willing to pay.
19
« on: August 16, 2009, 16:47 »
exactly.
too much work, and too few money.
that's why i only sell RM.
if you wait for micros to raise your royalties, hahaha, you'll wait a looong time my dear.
you better stop microing and join some serious RM agency instead.
ask yourself how many pros are selling on micros ?
none, because they have very good reasons.
the biggest stockers all sell RM for a simple reason : it pays the right price
and it pays more, period.
quite a number of pros selling on both macro and micro
but not the top pros. and yes, i could sell micros as well, actually it was the reason for which i came in this forum initially. but i concluded it's not worth the hassle. i rather focus on making more pictures in my field and forget about wasting time with shooting food, textures, patterns, etc after all it makes sense, just do what you do best, dont mess with the rest unless it pays well.
20
« on: August 16, 2009, 16:43 »
Congrats Jeff. Nothing wrong with that.
if you're really worth Getty then just apply for Getty Images from their site
and see what they tell you (usually to *) but never say never ....
and you wonder why people sell micro???
if Getty booted him out he can still apply for Alamy, Age, Masterfile, Corbis, etc and anyway, being with Getty is not a gold medal on your chest, if you really want to show off then only your portfolio is what really matters, nobody cares if you're with Getty or Corbis or micros. people joined Getty because of the old legend that Getty has the highest payout in the industry but is not true anymore, not at all.
21
« on: August 16, 2009, 16:29 »
I think you got my post completely wrong. I am not talking about free images or near-free images. It's about giving things for free in order to attract customers, like the example of the band. It's not about giving away photos to sell photos, but for instance distributing postcards or bookmarks that people will enjoy having and may in return be attracted by other products by that person.
it's still "indirect marketing". are you selling photos or postcards ? years ago i did the same making a travel blog with lots of photos in order to sell my e-book. as it turned out, i made some money with advertising and sold very few ebooks, and many of my images got stolen despite the watermark. on top of that i received 5 offers from travel magazines and newspapers to use my images for free (!) .. "we can't reward your work but we'll credit you and your web site" .. *, and one of them was a well known magazine that is not starving nor going bankrupt soon. as far as i'm concerned, it pays much more if you're fast to go out and shoot instead of "promoting" here and there ... of course you can potentially make big bucks even with travel photoblogs but it takes too much time and dedication in the end. moreover,i see plenty of portfolios around selling also their own stock. now tell me, unless it's 100% automated how much time it will take to reply to the client, giving him a link to the hires image, agree on the payment, price, etc ? it's just not gonna happen. if you like this way then better upload your whole portfolio on Flickr with a watermark linking to your site for stock and prints, if you're lucky you'll fish the random sale every here and then but once again is it worth it ? there are 100 ways to promote your pics but none is working as good as putting your pics on a stock agency and counting the money flowing in, fact ! as a stocker i don't give a sh-it about who's the buyer and yadda yadda, i don't even need a portfolio if that matter nor a web site, i don't need promotion at all actually as the only reason i do stock is because someone else (my RM agencies) provide the market and the clients for which they eat their generous fee. 10.000 pics dont pay enough ? good, then make 20.000, or 30.000. *, there's people with 100.000 pics for sale and they're mostly rubbish. if they can do it, we can all do it.
22
« on: August 16, 2009, 16:22 »
exactly and i repeat : it's not just the casual bloggers but first and foremost the top-10 blogs
like TechCrunch and don't tell me they have no money as they claim to rank up 50-60.000$/month in
advertising and yet they steal pictures, rip articles, and even criticize AP for selling articles or snippets
of text.
it's just thievery, no more no less and i've serious doubts that Getty will make money with bloggers, they will
instead focus on template designers et al.
and watermarks dont help much, they steal the pictures anyway with watermark and all.
such an easy life for bloggers eh ?
free images, free articles, free videos, free podcasts ...
i'm all in favor of china-style laws regarding blogging.
23
« on: August 16, 2009, 14:07 »
yes, i see you like microfools.
your only legitimate excuse is that some types of images only sell well on micros,
in that case do whatever you feel pays more.
as for me i do mainly travel editorial so RM is the best choice by far,
i would never sell much on micros and even if it did i dont wanna
dirt my hands with a dozen fly by night micro agencies.
but money apart, no microstocker so far agreed that micros just
dont pay the right price, that's the biggest drawback reading this forum.
there is a point where you better NOT sell your images rather than spend
time selling it for peanuts and that point has been already reached by micros
a long time ago.
0.20$ for an image ? is it a joke ?
on RM the cheapest i sold was 50$.
this is the price i'm willing to sell, for less than that i better get another job or another hobby
and so you should too but you're blinded by the microstock virus, you feel micros are
the new frontier, the new eldorado.
micros are the biggest ripoff in the history of photography, either you get it or you dont.
24
« on: August 16, 2009, 13:59 »
look around you : TECHCRUNCH is stealing EVERY other image they use, EVERY ONE !
and nobody complains.
they also rip a big part of articles from the net claiming it's a small "citation"
(40 lines is a citation ?), and when cornered they rant about "fair use".
now, fair use is only legal in the US, and it clearly states it's only
for NO PROFITS.
but anyway, you must a rare case of blogger who pays for images.
the music industry is doing fine, we should do the same actually,
but pays the bills for the lawyers ?
we should join a photo association that monthly scouts the net
for stolen images, send invoices to the thieves, and deposit
our fee in our bank account automagically.
that's a potential huge business hehehe ...
plugins :
there's an interesting automated addon for wordpress
that grabs CC images from Flickr and add link to author,
resize, etc
with a few tweaks it could be made to work for micros
if they support some APIs but you see everybody is expecting
everything for free so nobody will ever write such an app...
bloggers : wait a minute, it's not OUR fault if they steal
our images.
if it takes a long time to find a free and legitimate
image, so be it, it's not an excuse for stealing the first
good picture popping up on google images !
the bloggers' mindset is pretty simple : "i like this image,
i'll use it" and "nice article, i'll copy it and post it on my blog".
and then people is surprised when they receive invoice from
the RIAA or when Pirate Bay close down and pay millions in damages.
here in europe especially people consider their "right" to
download anything, we've now even political "pirate parties" in sweden, france,
and germany and they're spreading quickly.
thieves will always find a good excuse to steal.
now they rant against the copyright, it's the same old story.
we need more police and quicker ways to denounce thieves.
rockstars can pretty well live giving away their mp3s and
making money with live shows and t-shirts but we photographers
have no such alternatives.
and we're lucky because writers are in worse position,
text articles get stolen every day, or they rewrite
the story from scratch and voila' ... at least with photos
they can hard "re-shoot" the same image.
25
« on: August 16, 2009, 13:43 »
here is one piece of getty anecdotal experience...
i've been doing micro for a couple years now and made the getty application, along with an edited selection of unlicensed 'non-micro' stuff on a web album. they replied to me a month later with 'no-thanks' and further that applicants can never re-apply. such is life. on the other hand, a friend who is on getty for a few years, has reported that business is really slumped in the macro world and that they are taking very few new contributors. 
it's not a mistery that Getty is no more paying 1000s of $ for a single image as years ago, but that's not because of Getty is because buyers are cutting costs and/or going bankrupt. Getty is therefore more and more picky about new applicants, not a mistery either, but once again if you're really good you should try your luck with Getty before or later. they're more catered towards news and sports anyway, not my field actually, for travel stuff i feel good with the other RMs. i guess your friend sent some pics looking too much "microstock" that means too sharp and too glossy, the typical stuff that sells fine on micros but bad on macros.
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