Sometimes people bite back, and you have been criticizing me endlessly during the last couple of years. So let's look at your arguments, Sean.

I have to say Yuri that I am incredibly impressed with the patience you have shown this far.  I kid you not, every time you make a post here I predict an over/under on how long it will take Sean to chime in and turn whatever you say (or anyone who praises your work for that matter) into something negative and ugly.  For me, I simply feel sorry for him.  "Me, Me, Me!" is a sad way to go through life in my opinion.  It can be argued by the darkest pessimists of the world that there is no true altruism.  Even if you were to turn around and give every penny you earn back to the community you would receive a good feeling therefor a form of reward.   It is simply impossible to make everyone happy.

As for your original post I agree on all counts.  I've had a large number of images sitting in the queue at Dreamstime waiting week to week for me to keyword.  I'll get out of the uploading mode so it turns into about 70 images every 6 weeks or so for me.  Not very profitable.

SS is paying me pretty OK and their upload/review process is 2nd to none making it a much more pleasant experience in general.

IS I just cannot justify uploading to.  15% is scandalous at best and a little piece of me died inside every time I tried to upload through their archaic, unintuitive system.

I truly wish you the very best of luck Yuri.  I understand that if you allow other photographers to contribute to Peopleimages your income flow from the other sites would have to be shut down.  I predict that you are going to do it anyway down the road when your customer base increases so count me in as an eager contributor.

All the best,

Mat

I agree with the others.  You stole from a fellow contributor and are now looking for sympathy about not being paid for your thievery?  Good luck with that.  Your forum name is appropriate in my opinion.

Mat

There are complaints on the Fotolia forum about the loss of extended licenses. The Moderator says he's looking into it.

What I am seeing different is that in the traditional upload process you cannot opt out of offering extended licenses.  However, in the mass index program you still can.  Also, the default does appear to have changed to yes when asking about free images. 

As soon as I hear back about whether this is a short term glitch or an intentional change I'll post in the FT forum.

Mat

This is a disappointing practice to say the least.  That being said, I think it pales in comparison to 123rf's practice of deducting promotional credits from the purchase price and ultimately commission. 

We as contributors have no say whatsoever in how many credits they choose to give away and based on my royalty rates I'm finding after breaking out the calculator my assumption is that there are more giveaways than purchases. 

they don't "kill more people than any other animal in Africa". That dubious honour belongs to the Plasmodium parasites.

In defense of my poorly written script, I don't consider Plasmodium parasites to be animals.  Admittedly, I had never heard of a Plasmodium Parasite until I just googled it. 

On a side note, when I was in Tanzania I had so much fear of mosquito's going in...malaria pills, I brought nets, all kinds of thought and effort went into preventing a mosquito bite.  I saw a grand total of 1 mosquito.  1.

Hi guys,

I've been working on updating my personal work web site (again).  It's a dramatic change from my old flash site.  It's not complete by any means and I don't expect it ever will be as it should be evolving fairly regularly as new shoots come in to play. 

Any initial thoughts?  Love it, hate it, could care less either way?  I'd like your opinion.

www.mathaywardphoto.com

Thanks,

Mat

I do a lot of concert photography and am finding the 5D Mark III to produce some great images.  The downside is that it isn't as fast as the 1D Mark III, the upside is that I can really push the ISO for a dark show without a lot of noise issues.  One guy I know is pushing it to 12,800 during shows.  I haven't gotten that carried away (yet) but it's great to know I could.  Here is a show I shot this week:  http://www.1077theend.com/Foster-the-People/11810657?pid=249494

2. This common sense approach to uploading doesn't explain the sudden cliff we all fell off a few months ago at FT, unless FT just rolled out this "constant uploading" algo recently.  

From what I understand, this is a fairly new change so it does actually explain the "sudden cliff."

-Mat

I got confirmation that the search algorithm does create an advantage for photographers that upload on a regular and consistent basis.  In theory, the more you upload the great the visibility of your images. 

I just noticed that it now alphabetizes model releases.  This in itself is a big time saver for me. 

No way, don't do it!  They can change the metadata and claim the image as their own.  That is a shocking request in my opinion.

That is pretty funny.  I bought a 5D Mark III a few weeks ago and brought it to a wedding I was shooting with the intent of having it for backup and maybe a couple of creative shots here and there.  I was planning to use my 1D Mark III for my main camera as usual.  Once I started playing with the 5D though I realized the quality was so much better I barely touched the 1D the rest of the day.  I did not expect that at all.