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Topics - Bateleur
51
« on: July 03, 2007, 04:26 »
I've just joined Stockxpert and I've been trying to FTP my files (using FileZilla). Trouble is ... I do everything they tell you to do (connect to ftp://stockxpert.com, normal setting, use username and password for access) but I just get the message 'Unable to Connect' I e-mailed them a couple of days ago, but haven't had a reply yet. Anyone on here got any advice? Thanks
52
« on: July 02, 2007, 12:33 »
Cameras cost a bomb, really good lenses cost an atom bomb, and even accessories ain't cheap.
But has anyone got any photographic accessories that they've made for nothing (or next to nothing) that they find really useful?
Care to share your inventive genius?
Here, for starters, is one of mine - a simple reflector. I cut an A4-sized chunk of particularly stiff cardboard from the side of a box and, using contact adhesive, covered it with crinkled aluminium baking foil. It makes a great little reflector that can be hand-held to direct diffuse light just where I want it in macro shots and portraits. And it's small enough to slip into the laptop pocket of my carrying bag.
Any more ideas out there?
53
« on: June 21, 2007, 11:42 »
Maybe I'm being neurotic here. If I am, don't hesitate to tell me, I can take it  but I've just received a message from someone who bought an image of mine. The image is the back view of a wheelchair athlete (so unidentifiable) zooming along a path, and the questioner asks ... I have just purchased your great picture of a wheelchair racer that I believe I know. Can you tell me if this was taken at last years (xxx) championships in (yyy) ? Thank youGiven the awful warnings of the microstocks about model releases, and the fact that I have no model release for the person this image, should I confirm/deny the facts? What would you do? (P.S. I've removed the identifying words from my questioner's message)
54
« on: June 20, 2007, 10:14 »
Way....hay! Congratulations, Nico, for winning the Canon in the Crestock competition. I knew you'd do it with that brilliant image of the greyhound. It was streets ahead of anything else submitted. Enjoy your new camera ... lucky dog 
55
« on: May 17, 2007, 12:26 »
Anyone living in the UK and in a competitive mood? Here's another photo competition you can enter for free, with several categories ... http://www.currysourlives.co.uk/Good luck!
56
« on: May 13, 2007, 10:23 »
Does anyone know of a way to copy-protect image CDs? I've just come back from photographing a Swiss wrestling (Lutte) festival. I went privately, but when one of the organisers saw me at work he asked if I sold my photos. I said 'yes' and became the sort of official photographer on the spot.  He wants me to send them a CD of the images. I know you can watermark photos, but I'd like to protect my investment of time, knowledge and equipment, not to mention copyright, by making the whole CD copy-protected. This means that I can sell the CDs to individuals, secure (I hope) in the knowledge that they can't be copied and distributed within the wrestling club. Can this be done? All advice gratefully received.
57
« on: March 28, 2007, 02:39 »
Every now and again people post on forums about the hassles they have experienced when photographing in public ... officious security guards, teens deliberately kicking your tripod, suspicious parents .... But ever had anything good happen? I've had a couple in the past few days. I was at the Geneva Motor Show using a telephoto and tripod to photograph a model from a distance, with dark slightly out of focus silhouettes of spectators in the foreground holding up their cam phones to snap her. A guy from the neighbouring stand came up and wanted to know what I was doing. I thought he was going to hassle me, but when showed him and explained my objective and he invited me upstairs to their special lounge for a better viewpoint, and gave me a drink. Then yesterday I was at an autoroute (freeway, motorway, autobahn) service station, photographing a bridge over the road, very graphic, girders receding to a vanishing point, etc. using myself as a model, walking into the distance ... man in the industrial landscape sort of thing. The manager came up and wanted to know what I was doing. When I explained he gave me several vouchers for the caf downstairs. Quite restored my faith in human nature, they did
58
« on: March 23, 2007, 04:23 »
I've just received a completely blank e-mail from Dreamstime ... or apparently from Dreamstime. No text, no subject line, nothing. The address of the sender is [email protected]I'm reluctant to reply to it directly as, with scammers these days, you never know. Anyone else had one of these?
59
« on: March 15, 2007, 02:10 »
Anyone installed Microsoft's Vista yet? I haven't, but I'm told that the wallpaper images that they supply with it are 'stunning'. Apparently quite a number of them were shot by a guy called Hamad Darwish who's only been wielding a camera for about 2 years. There's a fascinating interview with him here: http://www.istartedsomething.com/20070203/interview-hamad-darwish/Maybe I should open an account with Flickr in the hopes of hitting the jackpot
60
« on: March 13, 2007, 04:43 »
... just a bemused observation. I submitted an image to the micros of a row of spiked fence railings, taken from a low viewpoint, silhouetted against an evening sky. Diagonal composition. Very sparse, almost zen-like, with plenty of space for copy. Shutterstock rejected it as - " not suitable for stock." iStock accepted it. It's gained a 5 star rating from 6 different reviewers there and has sold twice (as a small and a large) in its first week online. Ah well ... you've got to develop a zen-like attitude in this game.
61
« on: March 11, 2007, 03:37 »
I've just bought myself a scanner (Nikon Coolscan) and I'm starting to scan some of my trannies, mostly Kodachromes, going back years and years.
Does anyone else here scan? Have you got any tips, advice, or can you point to any tutorials? It's not as easy as it looks, and the instruction book is not exactly helpful.
62
« on: March 10, 2007, 04:41 »
Okay ... okay ... okay ... this isn't exactly up to date, I know but ... Someone on another forum I belong to sang the praises of an ultra-small film camera, produced by Olympus back in the 1980s ... the XA series. He posted a link to a web site: http://www.cameraquest.com/xa4.htmSo out of curiosity I took a look and ... ... Hey! I bought my wife one of those, way, way back. A quick rummage through the cupboards brought it to light and it is indeed a little beauty, so solidly made, it feels really classy. I try to live by the maxim 'Always carry a camera', but lugging a Nikon DSLR around gets a bit tiresome. This is so tiny it will slip into my pocket and can be used for taking photos in the most unobtrusive way. In fact, it looks like a simple point and shoot, but (with a scanner, which I've just started using to deal with my millions of trannies) I think this may give way, way superior results. Apparently it's even superior to the traditional spies camera, the Minox. I'm just off down the shops to get some new batteries. Anyone know anything more about these little beauties? Or got one of their own in a cupboard somewhere?
64
« on: January 28, 2007, 10:06 »
Most days I look at the 'Best Image' and 'Worst Image' on Crestock. It's often revealing. Some of that guy's 'best images' are great. Others ... well, I can't see what he finds impressive in them. They seem pretty mediocre to me.
But the 'worst image' archive is truly amazing. Do people really submit images that bad?
The latest one, on this weekend, is about the most unbelievable I've seen. It appears to be a shot of a house taken through the window of a moving car. But there are a whole load of trees and assorted other roadside vegetation in the way.
Is someone winding Judge Ross up here?
65
« on: November 04, 2006, 02:51 »
My sales absolutely crashed on iStock yesterday (Friday 3rd November) ... so much so that I thought it had been a public holiday in the US.
But no, I checked, it was a working day.
I know all about 'ebb and flow' but this was ridiculous, worse than an average weekend.
Anyone else experienced this, or am I suddenly an outcast on the great IS?
66
« on: November 01, 2006, 02:26 »
Since the change at of keywording at iStock, how have your sales gone? Please fill in the poll (to the left). It's anonymous.
Please assess this according to the number of images you have sold (the bottom graph on your Stats Page which shows numbers as a monthly comparison), rather than the monetary amount.
I know that cash is more important ... the bottom line and all that ... but the reason for choosing numbers is because the sale of just one extended licence for a single image, or a big print purchase, can boost your cash earnings for a month and distort the picture.
67
« on: October 31, 2006, 08:57 »
Last night I was messing about, trying to get a picture of a comet that is in the sky after sunset at the moment (Comet Swan, if you want to know, but not visible to the naked eye). I wasn't doing it with the idea of getting saleable pictures, but just for the challenge. And I turned my film speed up to ISO1600. So ... guess what happened? This morning I came across a big old Russian helicopter, lifting trees for planting into an inaccessible garden, all against a perfect blue sky. Just as it had finished work I remembered I hadn't changed the film speed setting back down again  They're great shots, but noisy as hell and quite unsaleable. I've learned a lesson. Always change your settings back again immediately you finish something. And check before you start shooting again. Check and double check.
68
« on: October 30, 2006, 01:37 »
I subscribe to a UK science magazine. In this week's issue there is an article about building a railway tunnel underwater and it's illustrated (in part) with an awful photograph. I can't post a scan because I'd probably run into libel problems, but it's a picture, under-exposed, of some pretty much featureless water (sea? lake? river?) with some land in the far, far background. The horizon is crooked, and there's a balding man's head, side on and totally out of focus, taking up about a quarter of the image at the bottom right. Looks like it was snapped (that word used intentionally) from the deck of a ferry and is the sort of thing you'd get if you pressed the shutter release by mistake. Of course, I checked the credits to see where it was from. Getty! Now I'm gonna sit me down and cry.
69
« on: October 28, 2006, 06:23 »
I just found this site offering the most amazing deals on photographic equipment ... http://www.aigars.co.uk/It looks totally genuine and very professional. But further research revealed that it seems to be a highly sophisticated scam. Check out this page ... http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~gisle/blog/?p=62The bottom line is always, if a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is. Be careful out there.
71
« on: October 10, 2006, 04:22 »
Wey-hey! Something's changed with the Alamy search engine. It's always been a mystery to me how it came up with images from a search. I've a simple image of a green poison bottle, isolated on white, which I've been playing about with, trying to suss out the ranking order, and work out ways of moving myself up closer to the top. Nothing seemed to work. Last week, entering the 3 keywords 'green', 'poison' and 'bottle' put me way down towards the bottom of the two pages of images that came up, after a whole slew of images of firemen putting out a car fire (what's that got to do with green poison bottles?) Now, suddenly, exactly the same search puts me on the second row of the first page, and the firemen have been relegated to the bottom. Yay!
72
« on: September 25, 2006, 08:37 »
Over on another photographers forum there is a discussion going on about cleaning dust of digital camera sensors.
All sorts of suggestions are being made, one of which is to use scotch tape.
It sounds a bit drastic to me, and I've asked the poster to describe how this is done, but I haven't had a reply yet.
Anyone on here know the scotch tape method? Is it any good? Safe to use?
73
« on: September 20, 2006, 02:28 »
I have just discovered, to my horror, that four of my images on iStock - two of a small 'fender bender' on a highway, one of a model (who is a close friend) drinking a cup of tea in the garden, and one of a friend's house - have all suddenly had the keyword 'anus' attached to them.
I know why. It's because I had the word 'after' in the descriptor field.
What ineffably brilliant iStock programmer equated the word 'after' with 'anus'. (A fixation maybe?) And hadn't he/she the wit to foresee the result?
I have tried to remove this word myself, but nothing seems to happen. I've contacted support with a complaint, and got the standard bland reply. So what now? I know that iStock is totally covered with their contract and model releases. And I'm left embarrassed.
I've posted a warning in their forum - though I fully expect it to be locked or even deleted.
But I'll post it here too, where there's no censorship. I suggest you check your keywords too.
74
« on: September 14, 2006, 02:35 »
Is it just me, or is there a difference between the tone of the iStock and Shutterstock forums (the two I read most)?
The IS forum tends to have a harsher, meaner tone to it. The people who post on SS tend to be gentler with newbies and those who don't always make the coolest of posts.
Am I right about that? Anyone notice this too? Any ideas why?
75
« on: September 06, 2006, 16:42 »
Some sites (e.g. Shutterstock) pay a tiny commission for every new photographer you enrol. Is it worth it?
On the one hand, you're getting paid a little bit for other people's sales.
On the other hand you may be increasing the competition for yourself.
Then again, you may refer people, they get excited about it, but then get rejected, which could bounce back on you if you're friendly with them (e.g "You told me about this great site and encouraged me to join, and they've told me to 'get lost'. What sort of a friend are you?")
So, are referrals worth it? Any experiences with this, or views on it?
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