http://us.fotolia.com/id/48868177

how can they feature a pic at their homepage and then offer EL for 10$, at least tell the contributor NO?

Caveat venditor! Take the time when doing submissions to change each EL separately by hand. A diabolical trick by FT.

Edit: Dunno if anyone knows how to get in touch with 'Konrad Bak' or whatever his name is but I think that he doesn't realise that he's being 'swindled' in this way. All his work 'pre-ELrobbery' at FT is priced at 100 for an EL. All recent work (594 files) is priced at 10. Methinks it was not his intention to give EL's away for less than the price of an 'M' sized file!

Quote from: OM on February 16, 2013, 20:06

As long as keyword spamming goes 'unpunished', it remains profitable in the mind (and maybe in sales) of the offender.

For sure, I agree (joking, NOT cynical). It's highly profitable for the contributor alone, and also, if others does not spam - IMHO.
The problem arises when
- other contributor's images are placed far from the first pages due to spamming
- buyers who really want to find something and have no option 'don't show this image anymore' option, see the same image when searching different terms...

I'm a buyer sometimes and I'm struggling to filter out some aggressively upcoming images I just don't want to see anymore...

A strict keyword policy is very good for an agency, it helps a lot the buyers to find exactly what they want, not just browse the huge mess again and again...
I think, the loose keyword policy and the slow page loads is responsible for the huge earnings drop at FL...

I agree absolutely about spamming making life hell for the buyer. I am also an occasional buyer as well as contributor and the FT search is just horrendous because of spamming and other really annoying quirks.
One example was a search for golf clubs. Depending on my search entry, 'golfclub', 'golfclubs', 'golf club' or 'golf clubs', I got 4 completely different results; varying from ~70 results for the incorrectly spelled 'golfclubs' plural to 16,000 for the correctly spelled 'golf club' which of course the search enters as 2 separate words. Whilst on the subject of golf enter the word 'tee' and you get a load of images of 'tea' because some (presumably German-speaking contributors) have entered 'tee' when they mean 'tea'. Some months ago I entered 'tee' and actually got images of 'tea' with only 'tea' in the keywords. That suggested to me that even their algorithm was confused by the various languages! That latter problem does, however, seem to have been fixed since then.

Perhaps FT doesn't realise that silly search and allowing excessive keyword spamming will eventually drive customers away.

Ancient history perhaps but George Carlin had it figured out a while ago.

Don't like bad language? Don't watch!

George Carlin -"Who Really Controls America"

You Know What Bothers Me? Sold today EL 4200 x 2800 for 2.5$. I mean who cares about FT and their keywords.

With every submission to FT you have to adjust your EL price. FT sets it at 10 as standard but you have to manually change it for every image submitted to avoid selling an EL for $2.50 to you.
I set all of mine to $70 which means I get 25% on a sale.........but then again, I never sell EL's at FT.

Quote from: gostwyck on February 16, 2013, 06:56

The modern trend for many food photographers (of which Loftus is one) is to use natural light with the aid of a few reflectors. However he has the luxury of upping the ISO to 3200 or even higher which we can't get away with shooting for microstock. If you look at Oliver's books (I have most of them) they tend to favour the grainy, slightly under-exposed 'rustic' look. Lofthus doesn't normally use a basic DSLR with a kit lens either, more likely a top-of-the-range Hassy.

And to add ...

Medium format digital backs have poor high iso performance compared with dslrs.

From what I can see he is not using the kit lens for this shoot - other than in the segment where he talks about being able to get in close with it. It looks like the 50mm f/1.4 D to me. It's Jamie who is using the kit lens, on his D3200.

I might be wrong but would guess that these videos are mostly (at least) also being shot using DSLRs rigs.

The number one secret of great food photography (I was told) is - work with great chefs and great food stylists. Most food photography is commissioned and is shot in dedicated kitchen studios with great natural light.

Yep. Camera looks like a D3 with fixed focus 50mm (?) f1.4 except at the end when he picks up the D3200.

Never had a problem with payout at FT once the required 50 credits minimum is reached......the problem I have is now reaching the 50 credit minimum! On FT I have 3X the number of files I have on SS. However, on SS (with one third of the same files I have on FT)  I achieve a regular monthly payout of 120+ credits and on FT I have to wait 2 months or more to get 50 credits!

Duh, I make that a 15X worse performance!

I don't know whether this info is particularly useful but my bro-in-law runs a small family portrait studio and does all his own printing with Epson inkjets. He has 2 big printers; one of the 7600 series and a 9600 (I think. Could be wrong about the model numbers but his largest machine prints around 100+cm wide). The machines he acquired used from pro-photographers( mainly advertising) who had only used the printers for printing their 'show portfolios'. The discounts he got vs new machines were huge. Both printers use large volume ink cartridges (110 or 220ml)  of the pigment ink types.

In an attempt to reduce his ink costs he approached various local commercial print shops that used the same/similar ink cartridges and asked if he could dispose of their used cartridges for a small fee. Most agreed to allow him to pick up their used cartridges for free and their cartridges are rarely empty. In fact some contained quite large quantities of residual ink which he emptied using a hypodermic and filled his own printer cartridges. His business is not doing that well at present but he assures me that he has enough top quality Epson ink to last him a few years.
Rolls of paper are often bought cheaply too when a dealer has to shift part of the old paper stock off his shelves to make way for new.

Just to say that high quality printing can be done on a budget.

I wonder how many iS exclusives will actually make the move if they leave principle aside and do the math. How much does an 'average' iS exclusive make per download and how much will they make per dl on SS? On SS, EL's, ODD's & SOD's are a nice bonus and happen perhaps more frequently than one might imagine but the majority of dl's in the first months will be @ $0.25/$0.33.
How much (%) does an iS exclusive lose by going independent and how biased does the iS search become against them as indie?

The iBorg make it difficult to leave once initiated, methinks.

Quote from: viorel_dudau on January 14, 2013, 07:04

The user is blocked on Dreamstime. But please note that our support didn't receive any message on this matter. So, I suggest you should notify the agencies on official channels too, instead of just posting on the forum.

I can see here 7 pages of messages on this topic, started 2 weeks ago, but how many messages have you sent to agencies? 

I contacted support on Dec 27th with link to this thread. A week later, I got a nice email thanking me for bringing it to their attention, and assuring me that they take matters of theft very seriously.

Well, after that they appear to have taken down his port, removed the four images reported by vitamine on the first page of this thread and promptly re-instated him (minus the 4 images he got caught on). FT did the same and now he's uploading new work to both of which at least a couple of shots that he claims are exclusive to FT are also in the SS collection.
For FT it'll probably take a letter from a customer who bought a download at 2x or 3x credit price to write to FT to say that he's pissed cuz he coulda got the same image on his SS subscription.

this gets even better guys, exclusive file at FT but selling at SS

http://en.fotolia.com/id/43707320
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=109069004

Yep, that too.........always thought that was a hanging offence at FT (claiming exclusivity whilst selling elsewhere).

Done the same with his latest uploads too:

http://en.fotolia.com/p/200409482?order=creation

http://www.shutterstock.com/portfolio/search.mhtml?gallery_landing=1&gallery_id=161170&page=1&safesearch=1&sort_method=newest

Now that's just greed.

Quote from: Oldhand on January 13, 2013, 16:35

Maksymilian Skolik - LMS STUDIO, Częstochowa, Poland

Looks like he owns a studio of some sort....

All very intriguing..

he can have all the studios he wishes, there are already 2 photographers saying he had no authorization, if SS doesn't do anything regarding this matter I will make sure to tell all other

At FT he calls himself ' food pictures studio' :      http://en.fotolia.com/p/200409482

What is interesting is that the pics posted here at the beginning of this month have been removed but also at FT he has most of his port re-instated and is uploading again.

Maybe he agreed to remove the shots he got called on but insisted it was a simple mistake..."won't do it again, honest officer!" IMO Max Plank is a serial kleptographer.
Still, these days with all those shareholders screaming for more profits, they (the agencies) maybe going for a 'workaround' if he's TooBigToFail.

The whole problem (as I see it with FT) is their appetite for promoting new work from regular uploaders. Submit 10 shots, a couple become a 'hit', sell 30 times at sub prices and then disappear, replaced by another shot from another regular uploader. The flurry of activity around your new seller(s) encourages further uploading but at the end of the day (say, over 12 months) you discover that each of your successes has only produced $10 in revenue.......divide that by the non-successes and there's no reward for the effort involved.

Have to laugh at the FT forums where the mods and FT acolytes encourage contributors to upload like uploaders possessed with all sorts of contrived arguments to convince you that you're not uploading enough and that the competition is so fierce, whereas, quite simply, FT is having the c*** beaten out of it by SS (and maybe others too).

I started with SS in July, having been solely with FT for 4 years. My SS port is one third of the FT size yet my SS revenue (in 6 months) is twice that of FT in 12 months.....go figure... I do!

I use Leaf's microstock group keyword tool.  Works great....  Thanks Leaf

Me too. Thanks Leaf. Don't see a whole world of difference between the SS version and Leaf's one actually.