Welcome to Alamy, there seems a trend here of photographers looking to Alamy and Photoshelter.

Right. I'm only uploading my junk to the micros now, and if it gets rejected 'tant pis' as they say round here.

I have a feeling that the micros are gradually going to discover the truth in the saying "If you pay peanuts you get monkeys". And it's possibly one reason why IS is pushing its exclusivity deal so hard.

You don't need an expensive flash meter nowadays ... or even a cheap one.

Here's a simple way of getting the exposure spot-on under flash using nothing more than a sheet of pure white paper (stuff out of your printer will do, provided it's not recycled).

Set up your shoot.

Set the exposure to a good guess and than take a trial shot with the piece of white paper in the scene (get your model to hold it, or place it strategically).

Look at the histogram. It will have a spike on it for the white paper. If that spike is jammed hard up against the right side you're over-exposed. If it's somewhere down to the left you're under.

Adjust your exposure to get the spike just nudging up against the right-hand side. No more.

That's it. Exposure spot-on. Easy-peasy.

Sorry.

Ignore that. I've found it ... under 'sprache' (where else?).

Quick on the uptake ... that's me.   

A thought ...

Does anyone know, or is it Written anywhere ... will the exclusives be told what keywords have been kindly removed from their images?

I know they'll be able to check by comparing what they've submitted with what's accepted, but that's kind of unwieldy and not many people will have the time to do that.

What if a relevant keyword is removed and they don't know anything about it?

Sounds like a disadvantage to me.

I just roughly calculated per hour output from my first 3 months and it seems like I do it for $1 per hour :-) So far it's pretty expensive hobby only :-)

Yeah ... you'd earn more asking "... do you want fries with that?"

Are you only in it for the money?

For some reason I didn't get the 3rd announcement.

Maybe they realised that I've no intention of going exclusive with them and tried to save on a teeny bit of bandwidth   

Could someone post it here please ... or at least the text. I'd like to see what I'm not going to accept.   

P.S I've calculated that, for me, it would require a 6-7 times increase in earnings to make exclusivity even remotely interesting. Of course, it's obviously an individual thing, but I've simply added up all the income I got from all the other agencies I sell through over a certain period of time and offset that against what I've earned at IS over the same period. As far as I'm concerned it's the bottom line that counts. Forget about all the win a free trip, get your images approved faster, contribute to Getty crap.

Hey thanks!

I use Nikon Capture - version 1.3.3 - and you're right. It is horrendously slow.      It's even slower with the images I'm getting from my D3.      

But I'm sticking with it on the (maybe wrong) principle that Nikon know best how to convert their own RAW files (the NEF format).

I'll download the new version.

Usually with a little effort you can describe anything in 7 words or more. 

Or just 7 words ...

The Universe - A large place, mostly filled with nothing.

 

And Hi from Gland in Switzerland (Sounds a weird name for a town in English, but it means 'acorn' in French).

I see someone called Dinostock is slap bang in the middle of the Atlantic. On a boat?

I voted yes.  If you're in this to be a "business" then you need branding, name recognition and a whole lot of things that "Cover of Time magazine" gets you into.

I think you're wrong there - certainly as far as stock photography goes. Buyers don't care who took the image. They don't search by name but by subject.

If you're doing wedding photography or portraiture it may possibly help. But, again, I'm not sure how much.

I mean ... if you're looking for a good car mechanic and some guy says to you, "Hey, I'm a great mechanic. I won awards for servicing tractors." what would you think?

I'd probably think ... Yeah, great. But what will you do to my car?

Yes, I can brag now, and I most certainly will, but I seriously started considering other options.

Interesting. I found one of my images on a magazine cover too. Not nearly as prestigious as Time (congratulations on that one) but a glossy publication aimed at very rich Chinese.

On the one hand it's satisfying. On the other hand it's galling that they paid only $20 for it. I don't want to spread the news too widely in case I get the inevitable question "How much did you get for it then?" 

I too am considering my options. And I don't think we two are the only ones.

Quote from: Bateleur on June 06, 2008, 01:13

There you go ... HermanM posted his response just as I was typing mine.

We're beginning to see a movement amongst the good photographers whilst the snappers stay on the Microstocks and post "Yay! iShutterstime rocks!" on their forums.

And I wouldn't say that everybody who praises microstock is a "snapper".

Nor would I ... and I didn't say that. The microstocks have a lot going for them, and they've certainly opened up the market.

A lot of excellent phogs are there.

I agree with you 100%. My post wasn't meant to be anti-microstock. I was just observing what could be a trend, one which would be good for photographers.

As it is, you've got to agree that getting paid $28 for the front cover of Time (or, at least, part of it), and without any acknowledgment of your work, is a significant underpayment and does the photographer down.

In the past, getting your image on the front cover of a magazine of that stature would mean that you had it made as a photographer.

It's interesting that it isn't until page 2 of the Shutterstock forum thread that someone says anything more that "Way cool!!!!" and it isn't until page 4 that someone comes out with it "Am I the only one who see a dark side here?"

Let's face facts. Time got a superb image at a giveaway price. I sense - from this thread as well as from talking to other people - that an increasing number of those who can produce such images are beginning to realise this, while others are still burbling "Way cool!!!!!"