I'm both a photographer and a 3D... artist(?) and this discussion is quite interesting indeed.

I think that 3D is not suitable for photorealistic human renders yet, but when you see the evolution of 3D for the last 10 years, it's quite clear that we are only a few years away from this goal IMHO. Maybe 5, probably 10 years, my guesstimate.

Concerning microstock, I would say that 3D and photo are quite complementary: depending on the subject, 3D may be the best option however. This is the reason why I try to master both techniques.

But I don't think that 3D has to be photorealistic anyway: there is plenty of room in microstock for non-realistic 3D renders as there is room for illustration.

For me it is not a matter of whether you are right or not, but it's just about good or bad behaviour.

In fact I never encourage myself people in such threads and I do not think you are completely wrong, but I consider myself not wise, skilled and experimented enough to tell people they should stop trying. So I just do not participate to such threads.

I think that Yuri Arcurs is a good example of what a successful microstocker should be: very confident because he knows he is one of the best, but still trying to participate and give good advices to others less successful people.

On the other hand, Laurin Rinder is a lot more rude and direct, but he is still trying to help peoples and give good advices.

You are neither as successful and definitively not as good as Yuri and not as experimented and wise as Laurin. You are just very confident and your portfolio is not good enough for me to justify this attitude.

Am I the only one that thinks it's not hard to take ten pictures that will pass inspection with flying colours?  I could do that in twenty mins sitting at my kitchen table.

If you get turned down to sell your stock, perhaps you should go away for a few months and learn how to use your camera properly?

You may not be the only one to think so, but you are the only one who is arrogant enough to tell it.

Your post only demonstrates that it is not necessary to be a nice human being in order to be a good photographer 

You are not Laurin Rinder: you are not old, wise and experimented enough.

And BTW, your web site is bad: I can do a better one in 10 minutes while drinking my coffee.

 

Agree with Leaf, $1-2 per month per image is an achievable goal.

However, this is valid only for a normally skilled photographer: some extremely talented photographers will get a lot more and I'm afraid that some not-so talented photographers will never get more than a few pennies from their portfolio.

So, the first question you have to answer is: which category do you belong to? 

As a result, it does indeed explain why many say "If you work hard, the possibilities are endless": your earnings will strongly depend on the size of your portfolio and building a big (and diversified) portfolio require a lot of work.

3d stuff is amazing.  I have messed with Daz 3d, but never really tried to sell anything from Daz for stock.  I'm afraid people are going to recognize the models they created...and even though I posed and lit and rendered them myself, I've heard the authors can still get pissy about it. 

You can sell 3D images created from Daz models or other 3D models, or at least for most of them (you have to check the EULA for the model you use): http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/faq/0/-/?id=114&_m=d.

mmmh yes looks quite real but for real reality you have to add dust-spots (and noise, purple fringing etc.)

You are totally correct, but this is exactly what modern 3D softwares are trying to achieve: add defaults to the perfect 3D world.

I think that 3D softwares are currently not able to create true photographic pictures, but we are quite close.

Have a look at this animation http://www.image-metrics.com/node/330

And think about the 3D softwares available in 5 or 10 years.

Simplify Media (two words)... available here on swiss store.

I don't have tried to share my library yet, but I can access mine. My network monitoring app tell me that streaming is done at 48kb/s.

It allow to access yout music library which is on your computer at home, not the one on your iPhone. And your computer need to be running indeed (not in sleep mode) and the "server" app must be running too.

And i agree i think there is TONS of potential uses for applications, and the fact that it is open to everyone really offers a huge potential developing network.  I think the app store is what is going to really make iphone popular -( unless the google app store becomes more popular ) 

Both can be popular: there is room for several successful platform I think.

Because the default possibilities of the iphone are surprisingly limiting- no video, small camera, no mms, no memory card, no changing of the battery, etc. etc.  I am frustrated with apple lots of times that they make things so 'easy' to use that they remove useful functionality. 

I'm afraid I don't fully agree even if you are definitively not completely wrong 

The default are the current default: new features will come through applications (Apple or thrid party) or OS upgrades: video and MMS could probably be part of them. But my feeling concerning MMS is that Apple decided not to make it available on purpose: the future is e-mail and Apple rarely make any compromise when they think that a technology is obsolete (remember first iMac without a floppy disk?). I almost never use MMS myself anyway.

The "small" camera seems quite sufficient to me: I'm not sure a 5MP camera on such tiny captor would be really better... this is just plain marketing crap   

Memory card? Why not, but 16GB is quite a bit of storage for such a device I think. And remember that with wi-fi/3G, it should not be that complicated to make an application which allow to access some network storage: 32GB on your iPhone or 1TB with all your photos or movies on a network storage accessible from everywhere?

Removable battery: the battery is easily removable on the 3G iPhone (not soldered), but there are indeed some screws to remove and it is not intended to be changed often. But why would you need to change your battery that often?

Remember that industrial design put some constraints: I guess that the iPhone would not be so thin with a removable battery.

And remember also that this is just the begining of a new range of products for Apple.

ok.. i don't want to turn this into a pro or anti mac thread so i will stop... if it turns into that, i will split the thread into 2 threads.

I agree: iPhone discussions are quite rude these days 

For me "Twelve out of twelve answers are correct" 

Thanks  I'll check out the free program and go from there.

I've started doing 3D about one and half year ago as a hobby and I consider I'm still in the learning stage and I've spent quite a lot of time at it: 3D is definitively a complex thing, not because it is difficult, but because there are MANY thing to learn.

There are in fact several different domains involved in a 3D render: modelling, rendering, texturing, lightning and optionnaly animation, dynamics, hairs etc. Each of these domain do require quite a lot of work and you almost need to know all of them to create a good 3D render.

But I find it extremely interesting.

And the software do indeed add quite a bit of complexity. I agree with dnavarrojr: C4D is the easiest package to learn IMHO and it is also one of the best.

Are the images created out of thin air or does the computer use an image for reference?

3D images are rarely created "out of thin air": a reference is otfen used for modelling the object and many textures do use photo.

In the picture I've posted above, the fabric texture and the wood texture are based on a photo and the coffee foam as well.

My portfolio contains in fact a majority of 3D renders and the do very well, even on IS.

I've recently purchased Maxwell Render and my first tests are quite amazing: you can produce with this engine 3D renders which are almost like photos!

There is a plug-in in C4D and the workflow is quite simple.



But now I need a new computer to achieve high resolution pictures in a reasonable time   

It is true that Paris has some arguments that prevent anybody (with a penis) from actually hating her too much.

I'm indeed not sure The MIZ have such arguments.

And please, don't post any link to his very own sex tape 

So much figures and colors just to tell everybody you don't like IS 

But it seems they don't like you either or at least IS reviewers 

Thanks The Miz for sharing your thoughts!

AFAIK, before becoming a microstock agency, Mostphoto was actually some sort of photo sharing site: the result is that many contributors became stock photographers just because they where just here before. It's amazing to see how many contributors never heard about model releases or copyright... at least it was the case a few months ago.

I may be wrong and it is not that important: Mostphotos is indeed an interesting site. The problem is that many (most?) contributors just have no sale at all here.

Yesterday I had my first sale in months: a 12� commission is nice indeed, but I have had more sales at LO before and you know what happens.

araminta thanks for calling me serious!  (Still a few months off that...but it's coming)

overall 498
7 day   140

sold   1715      just cruisin'

Your rank confirm that you are serious indeed 

My overall rank is 303 and my 7 days rank is 350 today but usually varies between 250 and 500... which means that I'm going the wrong way, but very slowly