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Messages - NikonScott

Pages: [1] 2
1
Alamy.com / Re: do you set restriction?
« on: February 17, 2009, 13:33 »
I do not think it is worth the time to do the extra work for editorial use only restriction as that will limit the potential uses.  I think the warning that Alamy has is a good one and I think it is well understood by their buyers.  It seems to that the micro agencies feel that Micro buyers are not to be savvy enough to understand proper usage . . .

Keep in mind it is the legal responsibility of the end user to correctly use an image, if they use it they will be the infringer, not you (this is pretty accurate for US law as I understand, but I am not an attorney).


Scott

2
If you are interested in selling images Image Stream looks pretty good, take a look at www.imagespan.com.  I think they wind up less expensive than PSA, and for me I want to move as far away from PhotoShelter as possible as I was one of those that invesed much time and effort only an organization that was not really ready to move forward.

Scott

3
Computer Hardware / Re: Epson 3800 and papers for printing
« on: February 06, 2009, 12:29 »
If you likethe look of Epson Luster, I would suggest you try the Ilford Gallery Smooth Pearl.  I think it looks nicer to my eye and the paper is slightly thicker.

Scott

4
A friend on mine got an email invite from Getty from his Flickr account last week.  She has not told me the details as of yet, but we are going out shooting this weekend.  So I can say it is definitely happening.

Now I did not get an invite from them.  .  .

Scott

5
General Stock Discussion / Re: My day with Yuri Arcurs
« on: December 11, 2008, 16:54 »
In the medical profession there is a mantra, watch one, do one and teach one.  This is almost the major tenet in medicine and many other areas. 

I know from teaching while I was in graduate school many many years ago taught me almost more than i have learned in my entire 4 years of undergrad training.  I have continued teaching my entire professional years (I shoot very part time) and I continue to learn every year and see new insites from looking at the material one more time, and then there are the questions the students as that can really give you ideas and insite. 

Moral of the story, teach and you will learn and grow more than you would otherwise.  Besides the more good deeds you do with your community the more good things will happen for you. 

Scott

6
Alamy.com / Re: I passed QC
« on: December 05, 2008, 13:35 »
Congrats to both of you.  Racephoto had some good advice in the thread posted above.

I keyword in Either Lightroom or Expression media and the keywords get carried over, just have to move them to the two other catagories once they are accepted.  The process is a bit slow, but not to difficult as you can drag the keywords from the comprehensive box to the other two boxes.  The real drag is all of the clicks for the other parts of the panel.

Remember a huge number of keywords can harm your rating if they are not completely relevant.  I have a small collection and I rekwyworded to only about 10-16 per image and after the last Alamy Rank came out I jumped significantly (about 4 pages with 102 per page) in the bhz ranking.  Good thing is you start in the middle of the ranking as a new contributor.

Scott

7
As Lsafx says in her post, go to a small business consultant and/or an acountant.  The path is full of details that are not easy to understand and everyone's needs vary. 

In many towns you can contact the small business bureau and they frequently have peole that can walk you throught the local info you need to understand what you want to do and they do it for free.  Incorporating can in most cases protect you personal assets, but that said it is not always true.  Being a SP does not personal asset protection most of the time. 

Having liability insurance can also be important depending on the types of activities you have, again consult an accountant, attorney or business advisor.

Scott

8
Alamy.com / Re: Two Essential Links to Read from Alamy
« on: November 14, 2008, 12:28 »
Keywords are your friend at Alamy, if you use them wisely, be careful the ones that are not directly related the image will hurt you.  For example, several months ago i reworked my keywords to a very small list for each image, my number of views decreased (also due to the turning off of stemming), but my zoom rate (CTR) increased.  With the last reranking my ranking via BHZ moved about 3 pages with a view of 105.  If some of the terms I used are foreign, please, spend some time in the Alamy forums and much of it will make sense.

I will be reworking my keywords a bit more after spending some time understanding the search terms buyers are using.

Scott

9
I find it funny, and it may actually cause part of the sizing issues at Alamy, if you state a size as uncompressed 48 mb, the resolution does not matter.  But they do state the 300 dpi in their specifications which is kinda dumb in my opinion.

Scott

10
Adobe has a set of presets to mimic the starting points ofthe various cameras manufacturers presets.  You can download them from Adobe Labs.  Matt Kloskowski's Lightroom Killer Tips (http://www.lightroomkillertips.com/2008/presets-camera-profile-presets/) discussed this a while back.  I tried it out on my laptop and it worked pretty well, for me using CaptureNX just interrupts my workflow so I have not been using it for a while.

Scott

11
I talked to these folks at Photoshop World and what the offer is tracking of licenses and they provide a web portal that is partially customizable.  The behind the scenes information they track for you looked easy to use. When potential clients visit the site, they will not know they are not dealing directly with you.

The market they are going for is to support creatives that want to rights manage their work. I know several photographers that have had trouble doing rights management of their work and at least one of them is trying LicenseStream out.  I thought they gave a good presentation, they offer nice upload tools for Lightroom and Expression Media.  If all of your work is RF, I see no advantage to dealing with them.

Now your responsibility in the realtionship is to drive your clients to the site.  They will not help you market your work.

Scott

12
Alamy.com / Re: Alamy Measures - Wow, usefull stuff
« on: October 20, 2008, 16:16 »
I upsize in Photoshop in a single step.  I created actions to upsize each of the cameras that I use.  For the D300 I upsize by 118%.  I do not have photoshop in front of me right now, but I go to image-->image size--> click on the triangle change from pixels to percent and enter the appropiate percentage.  If you do not know the appropriate percent, photoshop calculates the size each time you enter in the percentage. 

I am also in he school of thought that you do not crop, as that to my simple mind when preping and uploading images is just to complicated as I can not use my actions any longer.  I love automation!

I also have at least one image recently accepted that was from a 2.7mp D1H and it has had several zooms recently, hopefully that will lead to a sale or two.

Scott

13
Computer Hardware / Re: Your Dream Screen
« on: October 15, 2008, 17:29 »
If I had the extra cash I would purchase the 21" Cintiq as well.  It has an Eizo screen and wacom functionality.  I used one once and have lusting over one since then. . .   So I agree with sharply.

Scott

14
iStockPhoto.com / Re: "submarine sandwich" keywording question
« on: October 15, 2008, 17:23 »
Yet another term to try is po'boy or poorboy as that is what they were called wher I grew up, but I bet that is not in the CV either.

Scott

15
Software - General / Re: Adobe Licenses
« on: October 14, 2008, 18:29 »
Adobe has a nice policy on educational software, it can be used for professional work.  They see it as an investment, get you hooked and you will keep upgrading after your education is complete.  When it comes to upgrade time the license per software package will vary.  (Now, Microsoft is not as generous with educational software!)

As photographers we should be very careful and make sure that the intelectual property of others is respected, as we expect that respect ourselves.

Scott

16
Newbie Discussion / Re: Image management
« on: October 07, 2008, 11:54 »
iView Media Pro was purchased by Microsoft several years ago and is now called Expression Media and is now at version 2.  I really like it.

To track stock I create a catalog set for each agency with subsets of submitted, accepted and rejected.  With some of the sorting I can readily find out if s file has been sent out and where it has been sent out. 

I think this is a great approach.

Scott

17
Alamy.com / Re: Alamy Measures - Wow, usefull stuff
« on: September 19, 2008, 11:46 »
Of my four initial images, 3 of them were taken with a Nikon D1X, about 5 mp camera, so just because you do not have 10 mp camera does not mean you can not get accepted and compete.  In fact the only image that has sold for me so far was one of those intial 3 images.  So give it a try. 

Remember, Alamy only looks at the technical merits of the image and with good technique it is not problem.

The new measures are very interesting and i think it can hel pus figure out better keywords.

I also was a bit depressed about PSC closing, but it has gotten me more focussed to work a bit harder to get into an bigger possiblly better more boutique agency.

Scott

18
General Stock Discussion / Re: Copyright protection of photos
« on: August 26, 2008, 11:43 »
Copyright is a complex topic.  Scott Kelby's blog (scottkelby.com) had an interview with Ed Greenberg several months ago (also part of a photoshopusertv podcast as well), Ed is an intellectual property attorney and he gave some good advice to follow.  Also there is another blog of interest photoattorney.com and Carolyn Wright has good advice there.

The short story is you have the copyright when you click the shutter.  If you are infringed, you will need to register within 90 days to get more damages, if you do not register you will get less damages. 

Scott

19
As noted in the previous post.  The user of the image is the one that infriges, not the photographer.  Of course one needs to get the opinion of an attorney familar with these issues for a real answer.  I have heard several copyright and trademark attorneys criticize Dan Heller as he has given some information that is not correct, so use his advice with some caution.

Dan Greenberg, a copyright attorney, has stated why do photographers go to photographers for copyright information?

Scott

20
Alamy.com / Re: soft and lacking definition
« on: August 12, 2008, 11:23 »
If you scan a 35 mm slide with a 4000 dpi film scanner like the Nikon coolscan 4000 or 5000 you will get about a 52 mb file.  Probably, 50% of my alamy pics are done that way.

It is interesting that others have gotten a different bent on the articles than i did.  Maybe, I should reread them.

Scott

21
Alamy.com / soft and lacking definition
« on: August 11, 2008, 13:32 »
A friend just sent me these to links.  I do not look at Ken Rockwell very often, but these looked interesting:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/unsharp.htm

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/lens-sharpness.htm

Scott

22
An accountant friend of mine has suggested to me that the IRS has been pickier with companies and withholding of late. 

The IRS as many of us know is part of the US government, but does not share anything other than money with the rest of the government.  It seems to me that dealing withthe W9 or W-8BEN forms are worth the time to get your maney and not have the US make interest on the money.  I think filing a tax form to get your money back is more difficult than the paperwork to prevent the withholding as you will need to get a tax ID number to file anyway.

Scott

23
Alamy.com / Re: Soft or lacking definition rejections
« on: August 05, 2008, 16:02 »
melastmohican and roadrunner take the following as suggestions to how to improve your success rate at Alamy.  As RacePhoto outright says upsizing is not difficult.  Upsizing a maginal image will result in a soft or lacking definition rejection (I know that from experience). 

I also do not like the one bad image rejects the entire batch, but it makes me take one more step and closely look at the images I plan on uploading.  I do like the fact they only look at technical aspects of an image for acceptance and you do not get not suitable for stock rejection.  For every good thing there is usually a balancing bad side as well.

Also, just because a photo was taken at iso 100 and f13 or you have used high quality glass does not mean you have a high quality image, being very critical when you look at the upsized image closely is a must or you waste your upload time.  Like RacePhoto suggestes your focus point may not have been in a critical area. 

Also I have had several iso 800 images accepted as well as images taken with a 5.1MP camera.  I have learned not to send selective focus images or other artsy images to them as I now know they will be rejected.

Scott

24
My guess that Alamy requires a minmum size is probably historical.  They started accepting digital submissions a while ago and at that time digital SLR's were not available, but if you scanned 35 mm slides you got about a 51-52 mb file.  I suspect the 48 mb size allows for a small crop of a 35 mm scanned slide.  This makes there images a little more uniform in size.  I have to upsize my 12 mp by 117%.  I think you need a 16.6 mp camera not to need to upsaize for Alamy.

Scott

25
If this keeps the 48hr review time up and going I think it is great.

The only QC issues I have had were of my own problem trying to submit images that were a little more artsy then they like (ie, softfocus). It seems to me, from reading the complainers about QC problems, I have gotten the impression that many think anything they shoot should be accepted.


Scott

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