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Messages - OM

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651
Didn't know that Fotolia had either editorial or rights managed images? Musta missed it.

Edit: My mistake. Misread it!

Quote
Starting today, AP Images customers will be able to buy editorial, rights-managed and royalty-free images, including millions from Fotolia, on APImages.com, solidifying its standing as the industrys first one-stop-shop for all imagery needs.

652
Where I come from that would be a chicken coop - what exactly do you do in a beach hut anyway?


You keep your bucket, spade and deckchair in it and can sit inside with a nice cup of soup when it is cold or raining, which happens quite a lot in Thorpe Bay (I know, I'm from Southend).

BTW, a full-page advert in the Daily Mail would set you back about 33,000, so you can deduct that from the price of the picture. As he also managed to plant it in The Sun http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4267828/Shed-snap-is-sold-to-firm-for-50k-38k-more-than-the-shed.html  I think it is fair to say that he is already showing a profit.

What's more, when he sticks the pic on billboards advertising his services people will stop and say "hey, look, that's the picture the birk paid 50 grand for", thereby maximising the impact of the posters.

Yup, I'd say he's made a pretty shrewd deal on this one.


Exactly as it was intended to work! Wonder if photographer actually has the payment on his account yet and the percentage of 50K that he actually gets?

Edit: I trust that the examples on that site are deliberately 'distressed' to prevent theft because I cannot detect anything sharp in #2 and there appears to be severe chromatic aberration in, at least, one of the others.

653
I recently set up a site using Viewbook for my paintings and am happy with the $90/year plan.  That plan doesn't offer a real text page so I used links to Google Doc for all the propaganda that I needed.

Thanks for the tip about Google docs, Etien. I too have a $90 Viewbook sub and wondered if there was a workaround for the limited text availability of that subscription. I think Viewbook is pretty good. Can upload 2,500 photo's and create instant album pages for clients to show only them what you want them to see and it's definitely a better presentation than eg Picasa.

654
Adobe Stock / Re: Fotolia Review Times Question
« on: March 30, 2012, 14:52 »
Within a 10-day period, of 5 images submitted, all were reviewed and accepted within minutes. 7 days later, all 4 images took 3 days to be reviewed (unusually long for me), 3 were accepted and one rejected. One day you're hot and the next day you're not. ;D Try as I might, I cannot detect a pattern.

655
Adobe Stock / Re: Fotolia Review Times Question
« on: March 28, 2012, 04:57 »
Couple of weeks ago i had some images reviewed in minutes and now I have 4 or 5 images waiting since the weekend.
On FT forum others report the same extended wait and I see that the new images page still has the same first images as on Saturday/Sunday. Maybe the questionnaire is keeping them occupied. ;)

657
Adobe Stock / Re: Fotolia survey
« on: March 24, 2012, 07:47 »
I got it and filled it out.  Which seemed silly considering my tiny portfolio.  I have done enough surveys, both built and taken, to recognize what they are after.  A lot of the questions were worded so that they will prove that reducing commissions did not have an affect on contributors.  You usually see something like this when management has decided on something but needs "proof" they are right.

Did receive it but haven't yet looked at it or filled it in yet. I'll reserve judgement until I've seen what they are after but with the general level of distrust (or should that be 'disgust') here, you'll no doubt be right about their survey intentions.

658
Oh I'm sure that the algo changed at the beginning of March but not for the better, at least not for me. They're always tinkering with it which makes FT so unreliable as a source of predictably income. With a small portfolio, I cant really call anything I see as hard evidence but when robynmac reports a 50% decline in the last year at FT on such a large portfolio, I'm more inclined to trust my 'gut' feelings that something has changed yet again.

659
What I don't get is WHY don't new photos sell?  Fotolia has become basically a subscription agency that sells a few downloads.  Subs buyers typically want fresh photos, so why don't they sell at Fotolia?

My dowloads are up a teeny bit this past week - but I barely remember some of the stuff that is selling so I don't know what they have done to the search to drag this old stuff up!

What method does Shutterstock use to get its new work in front of buyers? With FT, the only chance of getting seen fast is to be 'chosen' for the recent upload page. Then you can get a hundred+ views and, say, 8 sales within the first day. Then at least you're on the search map. 

660
February was good but March is truly awful for me. Don't have many images there but sales were always regular until now.Anything priced above 1 credit now only seems to sell as a sub so that there's little point in getting above silver as the max credit of 3 will be hammered back down to 1 within 6 months of no sales. Very few newly accepted images have even been seen 2-3 months later and I'm sure there is some favouritism in the choice of images for the 'recently accepted' page. The same names seem to crop up rather frequently but maybe they're just the most prolific uploaders.
The oft repeated mantra of 'upload many and upload often' doesn't fly for me when I see my new uploads remaining invisible for months. Probably all got to do with over-supply/lack of demand and those at the top of the tree (corps) squeezing those below for every cent they can.

661

This stinks as badly as those mass mailings going out from law firms demanding settlements from people they've already decided are guilty of piracy. They get a list of IP addresses connected with downloading a movie owned by their client, they get the ISPs to turn over lists of names and addresses connected with those IP addresses, and then blast out thousands of letters demanding large sums of money or else they'll take the case to court.

Only they never take the case to court because they know they don't have a case, and they just hope for lots of unquestioned settlements. And in some cases, the people getting these letters never pirated a thing in their lives. Someone could have cracked their wifi and used their connection to illegally download files. Or in some cases, the victims aren't computer-savvy enough to even password-protect their wifi, let alone participate in bit torrents and such.

It's all just another "guilty without a chance to prove innocence" policy by the MPAA, RIAA, and ISPs.

I get a letter like this from my ISP, and I'm on the phone canceling service that same day.

Course, the best protection is to deliberately not 'password-protect' your wifi.  ;D

662
Time Warner Cable and the MPAA sent these notices to me.  They claimed I was uploading stolen movies or TV programs... and demanded I remove them from my computer.  I called and explained that I never downloaded a movie or TV program in my life (I get DVD's in the mail) so there are none to remove.  Then they said my router was being broken into... could be... except I dont own a router.  Then they said my mac must have a virus.  It does not.  I checked. 

The first two times I clicked through the notices.  Called Time Warner to explain their mistake.  The first person transfered me to a (infringement case) phone machine where I left a detailed message.... and was supposed to get a call back.  I never did get a call back. 

The third time I could not click through the warning.  I called and explained the situation again.  I also explained that I will not be wrongly accused of thievery by a vendor three times and remain a customer.  I cancelled my account and switched to mobile wifi.  No problems since then.

I was shooting a lot of HD videos at the time so I was using tons of bandwith.  I believe I was flagged for bandwith use alone.  Time Warner never provided details regarding what movie or program I allegedly stole or where I supposedly sent it.  They showed no interest in doing the right thing or fixing their mistakes. These notices are not ment to protect content providers like us.  It is a badly managed attempt to protect declining DVD sales... nothing more.   

Deemed guilty by arbitrary decision of a provider until proven innocent...........that's the trouble with these sorts of 'laws'. Try fighting them through judicial process and they'll tie you up in legal knots for ever and any victory will be impecuniously Pyrrhic.

663
Adobe Stock / Re: Fotolia, harder than the others?
« on: March 03, 2012, 09:57 »
Hi there Gti :),
this comes from my experience with Fotolia, where, over the past 3 years, I have one of my highest rejection rate.
655 files submitted
554 accepted
(many vectors - vectors always get in easier).
This is what Fotolia accepts in my case:
- anything isolated over white, be it an onion or a person.
It doesn't matter, as long as it's a true isolation over white, it gets in.
- people - both portraits or 'in action', doing something
Again it doesn't really matter what the model is doing, as long as you have a human being in the photo, it gets accepted

- vectors.
They're getting stricter on vectors, but they used to accept almost anything in vector form. Be warned: this is not valid anymore. However, vectors still have an easier time than photos.
And that's about it.

If you're going to upload landscapes, architecture, nature, and the such, unless your images are extraordinary, expect lots of rejections.
At least that's what happens to me :)

Hope I've been of some help, good luck :)

Concur! I regularly view the 'Recently Accepted' file and despite the occasional addition of what to my eyes is a real asset to the collection, there is just so much nondescript 'pablum' getting in..........indeed, almost anything isolated on white but absolutely guaranteed when it's a human form on white.

664
Surely they keep note because if you try to edit a file, there's a pink box saying:

"Due to low sales, you cannot modify the price until it sells at least X more times"

One could try to write a Greasemonkey script to open each file and look for that text, but it's not easy and probably not worth the time since most sales are subs lately

That's real service for ya eh! They go to all that trouble to ensure that you, as contributor, cannot up the price ahead of five sales but there is no mechanism in place to up it automatically or even to send a mail informing you that the price may be increased at your discretion/or access to their information that it has sold 5 times since demotion!

665
Maybe they keep a note of which files were demoted but you would probably have to email them to ask.
As they stated on implementation of their policy, it's up to you to set the image back to the higher price once you've sold 5X at the lower rate. Can't remember whether whether the placed a time restriction on those 5 sales after demotion.

Doesn't sound to me like there's any automatism in restoring images to the previous price. Solely contributor responsibility.

666
Adobe Stock / Re: Fotolia down for anyone else??
« on: February 15, 2012, 08:15 »
Site not 'down' for me but sales of regular sellers are. Have they messed with the search again this month? 

667
Firefox, I deleted IE I will check it on another computer around here, hmmmm no it is not more contrast they look more muddy in colour than contrast and sharpening boosted.  Thanks  will keep investigating

F.W.I.W. Sorry to be vague about his but I remember reading somewhere that Firefox doesn't render true sRGB and to bring it in line with I.E. that does, I used an extension for Firefox 'Colour Management 0.5.3' (well that 's the version I run at the moment). Maybe the info about Firefox is dated as it has since been updated, goodness knows how many times, since then. Maybe others know more and have some updated info.

668
The problem with this case is really how badly its been reported.

Its only when you read the case that you find out that the second image isn't even a photo, but a photoshopped collage from 4 different photos, and a 5th one from iStock which is of part of a bus put over the top.

If anyone's interested, I've done up a bit of an article hopefully explaining what this all means: http://travelphotographyreview.com/uk-copyright-case-different-same-same

For those who produce conceptual images, if there is a copycat that reproduces a lot of your catalog, this is the sort of case that can help you. The difficult part in most of these cases for people alleging copyright is to prove that the copycat actually had knowledge of your image and set about re-creating it, rather than it being an independent creation of similar ideas. 

For general photography around and about the place, it means very little.


Thanks. Very informative.
"The problem with this case is really how badly its been reported." Yes indeed.

669
Absurd ruling. What about the hundreds of shots of a red telephone box against a desaturated background (in London or a rural location)?. These images are not 'unique concepts' but 'cliches'.

The defendant must have had lousy legal counsel as 10 minutes research should have destroyed the argument.

Exactly my thoughts too. Had the defence looked for picture postcards from say 20 or 20 years ago, they would have found the same views using the same techniques............substitute red telephone box for London bus at will.

670
Adobe Stock / Re: Payment problems with Fotolia
« on: January 21, 2012, 08:23 »
Today must be a record for me. Almost never had to wait more than 5 days for payment and today waited precisely 38 minutes between request at FT and receipt of email from Paypal to say it was on the account!  ;D

671
General Photography Discussion / Re: Nikon D4
« on: January 10, 2012, 19:39 »


And let me add one some of the best images i've seen were from a Doctor student a few weeks ago with a original 5D with adapted Leica glass. WOW. blew my old eyes away. very close to med format. it truly is about the optics.
That is the biggest thing for me when I change from Nikon to Canon............the ability to use others lenses with adapter which is not possible with Nikon.
I know it's not fast to work with but for studio stills it is appealing.

672
General Photography Discussion / Re: Nikon D4
« on: January 10, 2012, 18:17 »
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R6axRwT5V8[/youtube]

LOOOL


It's far too big for her small hands!

673
No probs here either. Completed form also AVG.

674
Adobe Stock / Re: Huge discount offer at fotolia
« on: December 30, 2011, 13:04 »
There is definitely something wrong with their copywriter! But I suppose they think it's 'hip' (does anyone use that word anymore?) and amusing. I would imagine that any expenses incurred by FT as a result of the offer come out of the marketing/advertising pot and not from contributors' revenues.

675
General Photography Discussion / Re: Stand Your Ground
« on: December 21, 2011, 18:38 »
Basically, they showed up to cause trouble and harass security, so they could shoot a video about it. Then, when asked by security why they were there, they lied about the reason. Who is acting improperly?  ;D

My thoughts exactly.  All stunts like this are going to accomplish is to piss people off even more.

Not at all. This 'stunt' was clearly a reaction to the over-rigorous (and plain wrong) policing in the recent past. Happily it appears that the police and security staff are now much more aware of the actual law and the actual rights of photographers going about their law-abiding business. We have a right not be be hassled too and this video can only help in that endeavour.

Absolutely.

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