Great, I'm going to render them out like the Statue of Liberty, a set of golden statues.

Then maybe another set with them with a stone texture.

Not looking to recreate the actual monuments in place, a photo makes much more sense in that scenario imo.

Thanks for the input.

Actually, to be totally honest, I'd probably still be submitting to SS if I could get even $1 per sub sale. 

Who are all these corporate designers, with their big important projects that have to be done by Friday,  who can't pay $5 for a photo?  I don't believe that line, never did.  It's pure BS,  and I don't mean BigStock.

It's not that designers aren't willing to pay, they aren't the competition.

The other stock sites are the competition and they are driving each other down on prices.

Let's say "Stock Agency A" decided that paying %50 to photographers is a good idea and started to sell @ $5 for small up to $50 for full size photos with no subscription.

Even with hordes of photographers moving to "Stock Agency A", the other (current) very cheap sites will still have enough photos to attract the majority of stock buyers leaving very few buyers that need VERY good quality that go to "Stock Agency A" to buy photos. In turn, the new stock agency will declare bankrupcy or adapt very quickly to industry norms.

I believe a complete collapse needs to happen for this to change. Prices so low droves of pro photographers leave completely and have only very amateur photographers in their place that will in turn dillude stock agencies portfolio. But even then, the dillution and generaly acceptability of current photos will hold strong for a long time.

That's my opinion.

I'm hardly someone that can judge your stock portfolio as a photographer, so I won't comment with that perspective (the images seem good enough from the thumbnails to be accepted, and a %100 crop could tell us the whole story, like noise and sharpness).

BUT, past acceptance you might have a hard time selling some of them. I'm a full time designer with 15 years or so experience and have naturally bought tons of stock. I could use the first 6 for all kinds of things and they are sellers.

The latter ones are what I would use in a magazine for an article, and those articles have photos taken by photographers on site, I mean there's no sense in using stock photos about TOWN X

The contrast on them are too strong to alter and blend in a composition, so that's out too. Once in a blue moon I'll have the need for one of the last six photos and maybe consider buying one - but even that's a long shot.

Think of it like this ; the fishing nets. Let's say I'm designing a promo to encourage fishing supply sales, your images do not fit at all, they are moody and sad.

A general tourism bureau flyer? An empty road with a guy riding a bike, I'm not sure the client would want to emphasize on a solitary holiday trip.

They look really nice and do trigger personal memories for me, but I've always been bit of an introvert so there's that

I'm not trying to knock you down or anything, just trying to convey what a buyer looks for, so you don't have to build a portfolio of a 1000 photos and watch in dismay as your hard work gets ignored, even though they are perfectly fine images.

My %100 go to buy stock photo is this : Preferably with people, looking generally happy but not the "omgwtfOHYEA" look that gives it a fake vibe. If they're not even aware the camera is there, the better. Generally good looking but definitely not drop down gorgeous. A believable crop of everyday life of people doing XXX (where X is my design subject).

I hope this is of any use.

Good luck

Big thank you to everyone who took the time to contribute and give feedback. Seems IS + SS + FT is the way to go from what I've gathered.

Like I said I'm just getting started serious about building a portfolio and don't want to end up with thousands of files stuck on one stock site and painfully add them to the others down the road. I also don't want my files everywhere so the buyer has the option to grab it from a cheap sub instead of a better earner for me.

Hence the questions before I started off

Thanks again.

I'm in no position to really make a statement, so please regard the title as a question.

From what I've gathered iStock took a huge nosedive around 2010 (+/- a couple of years maybe?). I used to buy everything from there back in 2004'ish to 2007 or so, also had a 1 or 2 images up but not that i had any faith they would sell

Anyway I recently started to upload again and mix my photo's with 3D renders suitable for stock (most of my files are pending at the moment, so you can only see a handfull).

I was hoping to get exclusive ASAP and fill out my portfolio as time went by. After I discovered this site and had a look around it seems that everyone agress that iStock is no longer a good Money earner (well no where near SS).

So i decided to diversify and applied to SS and started uploading to fotolia. Then i said "what ." and applied to DP and DT too.

BUT after reading through each forum I'm shocked (quickly deleted my pending files from DT and will cancel my account on DP when they accept).

I was thinking of going Shutter, iStock and Fotolia (made sure to turn DCP off there), but the royalties seem very very low compared to iStock where $1,5 to $4,5 is where you start at and with exclusive you're looking at $7 or so.

Comparing that to cents from SS made no sense to me. Are your files selling around 20x better on SS that it makes it worthwhile? What am i missing here?

Currently thinking really hard on building a portfolio exclusive to iStock and leaving it at that.

Please help