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I can't remember if it was this Spring or last year, but writing to scout is a waste of time. Rejected for color balance or some vague lighting reason, when the shot was perfect color balance, outdoors at Sunset. Maybe the reviewer never saw Fall colored leaves on tress in India? What difference does it make? I mean is my time worth begging to have a photo up on their site so I can make $1.50 on it, one download a year? If it's rejected, I give up. Is it that important to claw away at their face to make IS recognize that I have a useful shot, even if it would make $10 a year? I don't think so.

Does anyone think that Scout cares if they (I assume it's a position not one person) gets 1000 appeals a day or ten? Maybe my not appealing is helping everyone else, but not wasting time asking for some reasonable review. If Scout is overloaded, there will just be more easy refusals, because the workload is overwhelming and it will drag down the process for everyone, when there are too many frivolous challenges. I'll do my part and give up trying.

You were right, scout was a waste of time.  Oddly though, scout was far quicker than non-exclusive reviews which are now taking over 2 weeks.

I wonder if the exclusive policy is going to have a lot more secret violations than before ... I wouldn't do it, but I can see how some people would be tempted to go exclusive to get the more favorable commission, but have one or two other accounts out there so they can get sales on rejected images.

Is anybody here getting isolations past reviewers, which were not done in studio with white background?  I just did a quick search of recent images and found very few.  Of the subjects I searched for, most of the photos looked like studio pictures of toys or computer-generated cartoons rather than real-world objects that had been cut out.

I'm trying to understand what is going through their minds.  I've had these isolations accepted in the past, some of which sell well, including a few of them right up until a couple of weeks ago, then .... the axe fell.

If they are saying, don't bother cutting out an image captured in the real world, let the shagging customer do that then they should just say so, dammit.

I've been firing a lot of these into scout, far more than I ever have in the past.  It's frustrating because reviews are taking almost 2 weeks and presumably scout is also getting filled up with appeals to reason by other frustrated contributors.

Like I said before ... I can shoot boring copycat studio images of models and toys too, just tell me if that's the only thing you want me to upload.

You can find out if someone has a studio and hires professional models in 5 seconds, just glance at their portfolio. 

Doing a survey doesn't give good data because you will not get a representative sample, and in any case people will lie or exaggerate.  But that may not be the point ...

I didn't get the survey but from the sound of these questions I'd say they're thinking of culling the herd.

It appears that something has changed, as I have posted in another thread here.  A string of approx. 90% acceptance switched overnight to 90% rejection for me, in the same series of photos taken of similar subjects, lighting and processing.

BME at IS ... evidently because my portfolio was growing and maybe because of customers using up their credits.

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At some point this has to be a wake-up call for whoever is making decisions about Istock, doesn't it?   

That's exactly what I was thinking when I read the comments in that thread.  Besides the possible organization problems I speculated about previously, I wonder (again) if istock listens too much to its (top) contributors and not enough to its buyers.

Not that you have to be a genius to know that you don't mix up identical-looking cans of soup on the same shelf at wildly different prices.  The real bargains belong in bins in the aisles or in other places where the bargain-hunters can zero in on them and the fancy premium goods should be set off in more swank-looking displays for the discriminating buyer.  All you need in this case is extra check boxes or sorting options.  OR, quit trying to be both Kmart and Sachs 5th Avenue at the same time, and create separate micro/mid websites under the same corporate umbrella.  It's hard to see how jumbling up similar-looking cheap and expensive products with only tiny, ambiguous symbols to differentiate between them is going to be anything but a failure.

I agree that in studio shoots with strobes the problem is not hand-shake but finding and maintaining focus.  But I'm not sure that a monopod is the best answer.  It may be if other factors are well controlled.  For example a good camera with a top-quality lens - not so much optical quality but speed and accuracy of focus.  Also I suspect that possibly a pro model is good at holding a pose yet still appearing spontaneous and natural.  If all these other factors are controlled, then maybe a monopod will help prevent one's hands from jiggling the camera enough to throw off focus in the split second between focus lock and exposure.  DOF is also a factor, shallow isolates the subject better and may be in the lens's "sweet spot" but deeper results in better sharpness of the subject.  A large studio probably helps so you can keep the subject well away from the background.  In other words while skill is important, $$$ makes the world go round.  You can see how an image factory has an advantage in this area because of better equipment, more space and better models.

In my shooting it seems that around 1/2 of the studio shots have to be discarded because the model's eyes are not "tack sharp" due to focus not being spot on.  I take a lot of shots of course but frequently a pose that I really like hasn't a single sharp image.  If I manage to stick in this industry and thrive, I will have to eventually move up to better equipment, bigger studio and then maybe a really good monopod.

Quote from: pet_chia on September 28, 2010, 20:40

Crowd is out, elite is in.

I think you're partly correct. it is too early to refer to that as regrettable. I'd modify your comment--crowd is out, and exclusive means something else now. take it or leave it.

I agree, it may not be regrettable, in the scheme of things.

One analogy that occurred to me is this - traditionally, in North America anyways, if you put in several years at college or university (or in a traditional apprenticeship) with low or no pay, you don't really learn a tremendous amount or become incredibly intelligent or anything.  But what you do is separate yourself from the pack.  Your sacrifice bought you a ticket to get into a (relatively) elite group of people in a "club" for lack of a better word, in which they allow you to take home a better-than-average salary.  Generally speaking, the greater the sacrifice, the greater the (eventual) reward.  This foregoing of current revenue in order to gain a greater income in the future is called "time preference" by economists.  The people who were in a hurry to get $$$ dropped out of school and quickly reached a plateau of USD40k (or whatever) as truck drivers and store clerks, whereas the people who lived in relative poverty through college and possibly grad school took longer but ended up with jobs paying far more money.

Not coincidentally, the microstock industry may be maturing into something like this.  The crowd must be weeded out and barriers must be put in place, because if anyone can do it and make big bucks for little work then everyone WILL do it, and the $$$ will quickly be diluted.  I suspect that the same time horizon of 3-5 years will evolve in the stock business, during which you will have to suffer with low commissions and high rejection rates before "graduating" into the "club".  If you don't drop out.

As for exclusivity, it may also evolve until you're practically an employee of a single stock agency.  Relatively few people in the real world end up as anything other than an employee, and I believe that a large number of people who are nominally "independent" end up in practice working for long periods of time for the same shop.  Lots of engineering and technical consultants work like this, and many lawyers too from what I gather.  A relatively small number of elite and famous (in their industry) people - who because of their skill and reputation can write their own tickets - might be the only ones to remain true independents instead of being more or less "locked in" to a single large client.

If it's any consolation, having to put in the time and (probably) having to make a long-term commitment to an agency is a natural evolution.  Like anything that happens in a free market (without legal i.e. violent coercion), this is the path to greater wealth for everyone involved.  Good workers and honest companies rise to the top, bad ones sink to the point where they are forced learn from the best and improve.

... FWIW, I'm having a fabulous week so far at istock, but that doesn't mean I'm going to sit around and keep waiting for for some dramatic change to the Sept 7 'bad news.'  Decisions have been made, the process is moving forward.

Glad you're having a great week.

My sales this week are lousy, and worse than that the review time is abysmal and I've been getting a string of 100% rejections - the isolations are always "too feathered or too rough" and the non-isolations are "lighting".  These are images from the same series, the same day, same outdoor lighting, same subjects from different angles, and identical processing to images which during the two weeks before were nearly 100% accepted.

I know that you can quibble with practically any complicated isolation - when you have a complex object there are always decisions to make about "how round or how sharp" to cut around a protruding bump in the blurry back of the picture, and some areas don't look "right" even when you trim precisely around the object, just because some things look funny when isolated.   But c'mon, nearly 100% approval to 100% rejection?  Stop yanking my chain!  As for outdoor lighting, get real.  Either we leave saturation alone and get "flat dull lighting" or we crank it up and get "overprocessed". 

It could be just a run of bad luck, but I fear they're going to have a policy of extreme cherry picking of only a small number of new, non-exclusive images they wish to be seen in the company of their "collections".  Smells like they're going midstock, if that's the right word for this (apparent) policy.

Since the announcement my sales stopped, then had a flurry of activity and have now stopped again. I'm guessing that buyers are using up their remaining credits. The question will be if they buy more when these ones are gone or if they will start purchasing at other stock sites.

That's about the same as what I experienced.

I think they're up somewhat overall, however since Sept. 1 it's like a firehose being switched on and off from week to week.

... The secure.istock data might suggest they are losing customers by the hundred (assuming it isn't still just reflecting the annual august slump) in which case top management will be going into panic mode ...

Not sure if it's due to losing customers or because of some other factor (best match changes or maybe random chance) but about 4 days ago my download numbers plunged, like they were switched off.

At more or less the same time, my run of 100% acceptance of isolations and keywords switched to 100% rejection for files of the same subjects with the same keywords and same isolation techniques.  Of course there is always SOMETHING you could pick at in any isolation, and I did find what I think the complaints were about in some of the rejects (but not others).  My point is that the previous accepted files probably had similar things that were tolerated.

Just wondering if the "no more Mr. Nice Guy" approach to forums was also applied to things like best match and inspection.

I don't understand the math or the logic behind istock's policy.  The top contributors who make the most sales get the top commission, but they say that this commission rate is unsustainable.  So they cut commission rates, disproportionately at the lower end of the contributor scale and for independents.  This discourages the smaller, independent contributors who quit istock and stop uploading.  So istock is left with a small number of large, exclusive contributors, whom they are paying at or around the commission rate which they claimed was unsustainable.  Am I correct?

They should make the math more clear and make sure that they understand it.  Then, they have to make sure that their contributors and customers understand it.

If it costs approximately $0.50 (or whatever) to review an image, then they should factor acceptance rate into the commissions paid to contributors.  If a contributor's average image makes say $0.50 per year then they should get a higher commission than someone who brings in only about $0.10 per image.  It costs more to store person B's photos on the server (compared to revenues) so they should get less money for each sale.  If someone is an exclusive and their images cost more, then it should be reflected in higher revenue per image, so they should get more money that way.  There is therefore no need to set different commission rates for exclusive versus non-exclusive contributors.  If someone makes only a small amount per year, it costs more to deal them because istock has to cut checks in $100 amounts instead of $1000 or $10000 per check for top earners.  So this should also be factored into commission rate.  Call these canisters, gold stars, or whatever you want.

Istock doesn't have to publish their exact costs per image or other detailed figures (this would be tipping their hand to competing agencies), but they have to come up with a simple, logical and fair formula such as this.

Also, istock can probably do without the social, clubby "woo yay" aspect.  Sell stock, pay your contributors, end of story.  People are more than happy to create their own separate, independent, professional and social organizations (forums, meet and greets, etc.).  Istock should save their money for running their servers and for advertising instead of trying to be not just an agency but a social forum.  AFAIK the other industries which use the agency model, such as fashion and acting, don't try to be a club for their clients/contributors but just concentrate on business.  We should be so lucky!