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Messages - cascoly
4101
« on: August 11, 2009, 15:40 »
as a seattleite - i have to agree - OR's beaches are the best - the WA beaches in the olympics are close, but most of the WA coast is just lng stretches of sand -- none of the cliffs and haystacks of OR.
on the OR coast, stop for the Newport Aquarium it's excellent [as is the Rogue brewery also in Newport]. if you make it to central OR, the High Desert museum in Bend is also highly recommended [along with Deschutes brewery] - reat photo ops at both museums
s
4102
« on: August 11, 2009, 13:03 »
my favorite OR beaches are the southern ones - bandon, cape arago, et al up tp coosd bay. the rest of the coast is more than worthwhile too. eastern or - john day river & fossil canyons and desert, tumalo falls near bend, crater lake http://www.redbubble.com/people/cascoly/art/everything/tags/oregonfor WA, mt st helens, rainier, n cascades highway [yu can't really see much of the park w/o backpacking, though cascade pass trail, is crowded but a good scenic dayhike. in seattle, the hiram chit locks have salmon climbing the fish ladders, with the fremont troll nearby. the asian art museum in volunterr park also has great views of the city - take the ferry as a walkon for the best views of the seattle waterfront & skyline http://www.redbubble.com/people/cascoly/art/everything/tags/seattle
4103
« on: August 10, 2009, 19:09 »
>>>>>>The real time cruncher is to come up with those 7-word descriptions.
usually i just insert 'a', 'the' , 'in' etc soemwhere to pad it to 7
i do like the new bulk edit - just wish it didnt default to selecdting the first image - it's easy to overlook that and end up including it with 6 other images in a diff category
s
4104
« on: August 10, 2009, 19:05 »
i started uploading to 3d last week - have about 350 images & 8800 views, with first sale last friday netting $4.8
and, the support so far has been excellent
s
4105
« on: August 05, 2009, 15:51 »
i had 5 sales at yay bet 6/08 and 1/09, generating about $40 for a payout. 2 sales since in mar & apr, then nothing. i had 3700 images there in jan, just over 5000 now.
they're one of the easiest to submit to, otherwise, i would have given up
s
4106
« on: July 30, 2009, 21:21 »
Actually this is the full text of the rejection I believe cascoly is referring to....
Rejection comments
Not suitable for stock lack of commercial appeal. Issues with composition, subject matter and technical quality- not quite suitable for Veer Marketplace.
I think if the rejected images were technically good then the reason should just be....not quite suitable for Veer Marketplace
The reason you quoted stated that there were issues with technical quality.
I thought cascoly was referring to one of the other ones, which simply state: "The subject matter is not suitable for Veer Marketplace" or "The subject matter is outside of Veer Marketplace's current needs"
Sorry about that.
right i was referring to both the veer and other generic rejections - saying it's not suitable for them is of course their right, but it'ss still pretty useless information - a simple 'rejected' would give the same info. this is esp'ly true since most times i get one of these type of rejects, other reviewers at that site have acceted or will accept such images in the future ! and, as others have commented, i dont pay much attentin to these, and jsut move on. s
4107
« on: July 30, 2009, 21:15 »
the point that OP and others have been making is that veer rejects images that the big 5 accept [and sell], yet they don't have the courtesy to give a decent review -- "not suitable for stock" is BS - my application was rejected without any meaningfull comments - and they expect i'll just send them another set w/o knowing what they're looking for? i dont have time for guessing games with an unproven nano-stock site
i'm willing to try new sites, and will give them awhile t meet their claims; i still have portfolios at cut, most,panther, albumo, tho none of them have sold much; i still upl to yay since the submission is easy, again, even tho sales are slow.
but it's nt worth spending a lot of time uploading when there are batch rejections. i've stopped upl to FT for that reason, and 123 has been getting there
s
in the first place, Veer is NOT an unproven nano-stock site.
in the second place, you just said you stopped upl to FT for the same reason. so maybe you should ditch the ego and start looking for valid reasons to the rejections.
finally, even if Veer is unproven nano-stock site as you incorrectly call them, i would prefer a new and unproven site to be strict so that they can indeed produce sales , rather than have them give every tom , dick and harry 100% approval like all the previous new sites. after all, it's sales we are looking for, not 100% approval.
ego is irrelevant -- if you read my posts you'd see i SPECIFICALLY said that the images in questions were accepted and sell at the other major sites. my complaint was when a site declares those SALABLE images to 'not be stock worthy' , it's up to them to describe what makes their reviews so different -- therwise it's just a waste of time trying to guess what they want. a great example was LO - their reviews were almost always personalized and were definitely wrth paying attention to. generic rejects in bulk just show lazy or underpaid reviewers i've got no problem if a site is restrictive, the proof is in the sales. in veer's case, they just opened, so s they can hardly be said to have a proven record in this particular area s
4108
« on: July 30, 2009, 21:03 »
releases arent required for all macro work -- i sell images thru corbis without releases that would be required for MS. when i got my originals back from getty a few years ago, about 500 [1/3] were images that would otherwise need releases.
alamy otoh thinks anything that looks like a human needs a release
s
4109
« on: July 28, 2009, 16:58 »
But with my age (71) I cannot hold a camera steady as I used to so on many occasions I use a monopod and image stabilized lenses and that combo works very well.
the photography i like to do doesnt usually give me the luxury of schlepping a heavy tripod, so i've also gone with a monopod - worked well in the Andes at over 16,000' another unintended sideeffect of monpods for older photographers, besides getting you into places that don't allow tripods, is i've had many people make room FOR me when they see i'm using a 'cane' s
4110
« on: July 28, 2009, 16:48 »
..... But I am getting more rejections than accepts on Veer. I just don't think I'm good enough yet. I may be giving up too. At the rejection rate I'm going, I'll be lucky to get 50 good files up. If Veer is like other sites (I'm sure they will say they are not), you have to have over 100 photos just to start seeing any kind of sales. the point that OP and others have been making is that veer rejects images that the big 5 accept [and sell], yet they don't have the courtesy to give a decent review -- "not suitable for stock" is BS - my application was rejected without any meaningfull comments - and they expect i'll just send them another set w/o knowing what they're looking for? i dont have time for guessing games with an unproven nano-stock site i'm willing to try new sites, and will give them awhile t meet their claims; i still have portfolios at cut, most,panther, albumo, tho none of them have sold much; i still upl to yay since the submission is easy, again, even tho sales are slow. but it's nt worth spending a lot of time uploading when there are batch rejections. i've stopped upl to FT for that reason, and 123 has been getting there s
4111
« on: July 24, 2009, 17:32 »
..... Sometimes I have a clips that could be cut off at 20 seconds, but I go up to 30 and don't submit them to Revo since I don't want to spend the time to create a separate file.
when i have longer clips i submit the longer ones to other sites, then either reduce the clip to < 20, or make 2 clips of the 30" one and submit both to revo; if the other sites pass on the long version, i then have the sorter versions to try steve
4112
« on: July 24, 2009, 14:38 »
my experience is just as you describe - there's no simple rule - here are some of my city skylines -- http://cascoly.com/trav/panoramas.asp of seattle & ny - i submitted the seattle dockyard as editorial [since i didnt want to scrub out the logos on those containers, but sme agencies that dont accept editorial at all, accepted this one!] steve
4113
« on: July 24, 2009, 14:29 »
I blogged my impression of three stock footage sites:
http://thedigitalbard.wordpress.com/
GREAT blogs - plenty of info for anyone trying to enter this new area. -- i've been submitting t SS, pond, revo, motionclips for about 2 months now -- no sales as yet, so no comparisions possible. for acceptance, i've found pond takes 90%+ while SS is about 60-70% and revo about 1/2 -- but many revo rejcts can be resubmitted and the reviewers have been extremely helpful in bothintitial review [specific suggestions for how to fix the clip] and for followyps i'm considering submitting to canstock & zym also -- any ideas? [i'll get arund to istock eventually but their submission process requires multiple conversions and upl's, and their performance in MS is minimal. steve
4114
« on: July 14, 2009, 18:44 »
Canstockphoto just recently began accepting video as well
heres my referral link
http://www.canstockphoto.com?r=741
best of luck!
i tried the link but couldnt find any footage - just a brief ention they have it somewhere -- is it not public yet?
4115
« on: July 14, 2009, 18:39 »
i'm just starting video stock, and have about 70 clips approved on SS and 120 on pond5 in the last 2 months -- i would have considered FT since i already sell images thru them, but this pricing is absurd and i'll definitely stay away
zs
4116
« on: July 09, 2009, 18:06 »
Well I've tripled my IS income after exclusivity, which makes up for anything I might have lost so far as non-exclusive. I have no issues with that, which is why the question isn't so easy and why its not so clear cut.
that's great -- what % of your sales was from IS before you switched? s
4117
« on: July 09, 2009, 17:49 »
EXACTLY! of course a kitten is going to sell more than a picture of a jar of oregano [one of my pairs] -- the problem w the game as it stands now, is it really has little to do w actual sales potential -- eg, show a picture of a kitten that didnt sell, and match it with a landscape that did -- the answer now will be misleading.
basically the game as it is now just reinforces what you know going in - and as such is a horrible way to teach NEW reviewers.
another factor that the game ignores entirely is the search engine itself, and the data that feeds it -- images with better keywords and descriptions are going to be found more often than those that do not.
steve
4118
« on: July 09, 2009, 13:18 »
Here's the big question - is the time you save with iStock over time as an exclusive equal to the time you will spend in the future uploading to these sites? All hypothetical though 
that's easy -- here IS exclusivity wins - but that's not the real comparison -- you need to factor in the lost sales at those other sites. 2 yrs ago dt & is were my best performers. now is barely registers, and ss and dt trade off 1st place each month - if i had gone exclusive with any of them, i'd have missed out on 60-70% of income over the last year or so. the new exclusive site would have to have DOUBLED income immediately just to break even for me, i've stopped upl to FT - it's just not worth the time, but continue with ss, dt, BigStock, sx and is in that order my bottleneck is editing and IPTC captioning - i've got about 500 images that just need iptc right now. once done with that, i just setup ftp to all sites as the last thing i do [takes maybe 1' per site] steve
4119
« on: July 08, 2009, 14:58 »
..., if you have dulpicity over 5, 15 sites, you reach payout a lot later, if not even reaching payout on many ie. Crestock, because they sell little. IS, DT, because of their high payout point.
Being exclusive means a buyer has to come to one place to get your images, which also mean your sales would reach payout sooner, instead of selling 1 at Crestock, 3 at Dt, 5 at StockXpert,etc.. and not seeing a payout cheque too regularly.
This alone makes exclusiveness attractive to me. of course you're assuming that all the people who visit those other sites will come to IS to buy your images instead -- not very likely; your exposure on IS will be increased, but you're getting ZERO exposure elsewhere; re payouts, it doesnt make that big a difference - maybe get a payout every other month rather than every month. in software, royalties are usually only pad quarterly steve
4120
« on: June 28, 2009, 17:23 »
while BigStock claims to accept editorial, in reality they reect just about anything that they don't consider 'newsworthy' - ignoring probably the majority of editorial pix
DT and SS take about as many of my editorial as of fr, and sales are similar to RF [including many rejected by BigStock]
steve
4121
« on: June 28, 2009, 16:52 »
couldnt find anther recent general discussion of MS footage sites.... what sites do you submit to? which sites produce the best sales? after a month, here's my stock footage site update [no sales yet, so my comments are basedon ease of submission and review policy] active: pond 5 - accepts almost anything http://preview.tinyurl.com/rb6sc4SS - not as selectiVe as the image side! most picky about camera shake revostock - toughest so far, but detailed comments [like LO] and simple re-submit process motionclips - more stringent than SS others: interclips -- only takes PAL, so an extra step, so far no review after 3 wks, and no replies to emais stockx - anther hassle in getting permission to upl istock - havent gone thru initiation yet - seems ike a lot of extra wrk in re-szing, multiple submits, etc ---------------- steve
4122
« on: January 01, 2009, 02:04 »
views/buys is pretty much a worthless stat -- some pix sell many w few views, others get hundreds of views w no sales - the distrbution is so broad that there's little correlation
steve
4123
« on: December 29, 2008, 15:22 »
all the examples mentioned are possible expenses; mileage for trips is one of the more tightly regulated sections, so i dont usually keep track of that at all-- i'll expense entrance fees if my sole purpose is to take pix; but i dont deduct ski lift tix even if i take pix that day
for specifics, the IRS phone line has been helpful -- eg, looking at the difference between earned income [sched C] and royalties [sched E] -- you dont pay FICA on royalties, so that can be useful
steve
4124
« on: December 29, 2008, 15:17 »
Examples of Model Releases for minors are available at all the microstock sites. You'll need specific releases for each agency to which you upload images.
you can use just one MR if you word it properly -- i dl'd all the releases for agencies i submit to, then redacted to 1 doc that covered any specific details for each agency. i sent a copy to the stricter agencies and they said it would be fine; your mileage may vary steve
4125
« on: December 29, 2008, 15:14 »
each MS agency has different rules on what it will accept -- some require that the seller actually have TAKEN the image, others just that the seller controls the copyright.
as far as hiring your kids and getting the copyright from 'work for hir', i'd guess the kids are too young to sign anything, so it might get tricky
if you do it properly, you can run a business at a loss for 3 yrs, but if you dont show a profit by the 4th, you will be liable for taxes on the prior years.
like many others here, i've got a lot more info on MS at my website
steve
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