I had a look at REX, it seems to be all the hollywood stuff, glam news.

I have a unique archive of photos of me taking my Mini across the real Australian Desert, 6000km's of dirt in a small car.  Some really cool photos, but none of them have been published online before. 

Getty & Corbis seemed to be the ones, i would love to get a story in Nat Geo.

Appreciate solid feedback.  I think age has alot to do with it to, alot of the people in the journalist field are aging, this will open a new door for alot of future journalists when a gap widens. Not the same in micro, ten years in and saturation is starting to show, prices dropping.

I dont think you can walk a photographer through, i was impressed by SS feedback in their upload portal.  They actually give you solid feedback you can use  to improve and resubmit the same images.  It was the only agency that has done this so far.

Like Getty, which i have applied to for my special collection, you just wont hear back if your not good enough.  I dont think thats unreasonable.  How many people would ask to contribute.

The point, is to see who to deal with or not.  The point is to see who performs as an agency properly or not.  the point is to see what terms & conditions they have, how they operate, how they scrutinise images and how they treat contributors.  Its a dead market.  I see that chatting in here.  Incomes are dropping, interest is waning.

I have images that should pass, and some that should pass but may need some work. 

I dont think im wasting an agencies time if they come up higher on my list.  It shows they are doing their jobs.  So far out of 9 agencies, i can complain about three. six of them have performed as expected from a new customer.

I also for my own reasons need to know what they "wont" accept, and the only way to do that is to test them.

heh, not exactly, im exploring two things, building software to run a stock agency, and how users interact from social media so they can sell images from social media, instead of stealing them and sharing them.

Micros are going to die, at least for photographers.  Tradition will come back and a saturated market will get stagnant.  I have some ideas to change that a bit by giving creators a bit more power in social networking.  I am aiming at one specific market place though that isnt that saturated and has been bought out.

Just came across this

Interesting and reasonably in depth account and decent coverage of why, and what the law is.

http://www.roniloren.com/blog/2012/7/20/bloggers-beware-you-can-get-sued-for-using-pics-on-your-blog.html

Not sure if its a first, but hey, know your rights, and know you can use them.

Ok, this is not a micro, but i wanted to give some perspective on what im doing. mods can move this if its not in the right place (sorry)

I applied to a common traditional agency which i had never heard of till i started looking around a few months ago.  We just say some of you can guess im sure, but im not going to say.

So, they have a dedicated portal for uploading your test submission.  You upload five images in total.  They ask you for a range of styles.  This makes it a little tougher to decide how to test them.

I select five images, one of which i know will pass, and three i know may, and one i know wont. 

I also note that one of the micros is owned by this company via emails back and forth during my submissions they have listed their company names at the footers.

Coming from the background i'm in, which is mostly working with journalists, i am not surprised by the results, and can make some obvious conclusions.

This agency likes the "handshake", models sell very well in photos, so having model releases and the like, having fresh models with big smiles is where advertising is at.

Again as with SS brighter, snappier images that pop are key, ala naturale seems to be left for editorial work.

I wasnt criticised for my work, but key points to my rejection were,

firstly they dont take editorial work, for which many of my photos show that style, but i know thats my style.  you can see that here http://www.flickr.com/photos/drexxle/

secondly, they didnt see any commercial value in my images.  which is a fair description given the agency and the styles of work that seem to be most popular in general searches.

and lastly, just to have a digg, which i didnt think necessary, was they hit me with poor quality.  I agree with the first two statements, but this is the just like a nail in that coffin.  They were right on the money, respectful and just, then they through this one in. I had touched some images after SS would have passed but were underexposed.

So, all in all, fair, correct, and turn around of about 72 hours from submission to reply, and as with SS they give you another 30 days to reapply.  Obviously i wont be, this is not my "style", so i know i wont fit in.  If anyone can suggest a busy agency that takes the stuff in my flickr, then shoot me a PM, i have thousands of photos like that.

Cheers

You dont have to delete that stuff either, just relocate it to a mirrored system so that its always available (in case of editorial stuff, or if a submitter makes a request)

It is obvious as a business model, if images that sell from old cameras still sell, then an executive decision would be made to keep those images.  There's nothing stopping a smart programmer from automating this on a tri-monthly basis.

Warn users, image has x issues with it, click here to complain, or it will die.

Im happy to delete things that go against any  contract that i may have inadvertently signed.  To be honest, i have never like the RF model, going back before micro, i never liked this model.  And look what it did, saturated the market with the mediocre.

Im going to be going down my list from RME, RM, RF, CC and ill look into other models offered.  I likely will delete some images i pass first tests, and i may not use the image agency again after the initial test.

From a developer.

FTP is one part, this is a file to folder action nothing more.

Once the files are on the server at the other end, they sit in a folder, nothing more.  A script will need to run to pull all EXIF data out to store into a dbase, as it does this it will either move the file or store its location in the dbase.

When you click the front end, the front end reads the dbase, looks for file data, and then loads it into the web site.

This is two specific and different actions, FTP your files, then migrate the files into the dbase.  If there are shitloads of files in queue, then the script to migrate into the dbase might take a while to get to you.

the migration script would likely run on a CRON causing it to be triggered probably every hour.

just goes to show the free for all image grab of the last decade isnt a proven business model. Its either penalise new submissions, or cull the crap.  Ive noticed a trend starting to happen.

Try an FTP Program called Cyberduck

http://cyberduck.ch/

Its free and supports clouds and other offsite storage as well.  MUCH better than Filezilla.

Cheers 

I have edited for other photographers, so selection and post processing ive already experienced. 

And clicking my search link on Alamy, hah apprently im a Muskateer.