If it's a monopoly or not isn't really interesting. If the market is dominated by a small number of players, the suppliers will get screwed.

It's interesting that open source software seems to be rapidly overtaking the proprietary stuff.

Firefox is ousting Internet Explorer. Foxit is replacing the dreadfully bloated and slow Adobe Reader. Open office is gaining ground over Microsoft's version ... and so on.

I am sure that some of the big buyers must by now have such a vast collection of every possible image that they just have to search through their own collections to find the image they require.

I think that, maybe, you're being over-pessimistic here. I would imagine that most big buyers don't want to run their own image bank. That would mean setting up a storage, classification and retrieval system. Far cheaper to get a new image at a dollar or so a pop.

And, anyway, I would imagine that they won't want to use an image they've used already.

There will always be a market for new, fresh images. I can see it on iStock, which gives the downloads per month figure for each image. Mine drop, steadily, as the images get older ... even for images that don't date.

Or use an old UV filter, smear petroleum jelly on it - thick or thin, as you want - and leave a space in the middle - big or small, as you want.

Eb-an-flo, man. Eb-an-flo.   

Like with most of the stock company's forums, I think there are a quite a few sycophants on Shutterstock's. Whatever the company does seems to be great by them.

Worse than the SS forum  is the iStock one, in my experience.

iStock says, "We're cutting the commission we pay you by 50% and restricting your uploads to one every second Tuesday when there's an 'r' in the month." And the forums fill up with, "Hey! That's sooooooo cool! Thank you, thank you!" posts.

I don't even bother to look at the companies' forums now.

This is the place to be.

I don't know about 'audience' but buyers certainly are. My best-seller on iStock is way down the list on Shutterstock, and vice versa.

And it's different again on Dreamstime ... StockExpert ... BigStock ... Crestock etc.

I've no idea why.

Bizarre ...

I had some that were 'ticking down' and had only 7 or 8 hours to go. Then they suddenly jumped up to 200+ hours.

My latest ones, uploaded today, say 800+ hours. That's over a month!

I wonder if their inspectors have gone on strike.

I once conducted an experiment about 2 years ago on a forum. It might have been here or DT.

The experiments was as followed:
I posted a perfectly accepted image, one that was perfect in my opinion, and already accepted on
all the stock sites I submitted it to ...

The MIZ

What was the objective of the experiment? What were you hoping to discover?

You seem very proud of yourself.

Cranky MIZ

I wouldn't say 'very proud'. 'Chuffed' is probably a better way of expressing it.

It's not 'great art' ... it's not even art ... I'll be the first to admit that. And it may not sell at all. Time will tell. But I got a great deal of satisfaction working to capture an instant that  (I don't think) any other photographer there had thought to try for.

Do you have a problem with that?

An interesting question, and bit of a provocative one too. Thanks for bringing it up.

One of the problems with photography, unlike most other art forms, is that it is very easy to get some sort of result. You can't paint a picture, write a poem or compose a concerto in a few seconds. But you can get a photograph. All you have to do is raise your camera to your eye and press the shutter. It may well be a lousy photo, but it will still be an image.

I've actually had people say to me "Photography's easy. It's just pushing a button."

As we all know, it isn't. Not only do you have to have the skill, you also have to be able to recognise that (as Ansel Adams said) "You don't 'take' a photograph. You 'make' it."

And you've got to be willing to do something about that ... learn the technical stuff, take time to find the right angle or composition, wait for exactly the right light, observe what you're photographing, come up with new ideas, and so on.

And I think that applies to good 'stock' as much as to good 'art'.

I don't know if this is relevant, it's not great 'art', but it's something I took last weekend. Our local archery club had open house. There were many people there with cameras, taking pictures of all the usual things - mainly archers pulling at bows, arrows in targets, smiling family with targets in the background, that sort of stuff. I took those shots too. But I wanted something a little different. All the conventional ones were static shots. I decided to try for a bit of action - to catch an arrow in flight ...



I didn't use 'burst mode' for this. To get it I watched the archer, seeing how he shot to a rhythm, and tried to match that rhythm. Of course, I got masses of 'dud' shots and the whole thing took me a long time. But once I'd got the handle on it I managed to capture the arrow in three different images, and once as it was half-way out of the bow.

I don't think you can teach someone to work like this. No one ever taught me.

Troll alert! Troll alert! Troll alert! Hee-haw! Hee-haw! Troll alert!

Boy ... oh boy!

Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.

 

But ... seriously ... I don't waste time reading the forums on the stock sites. If they aren't filled with sycophantic gushings they're either complaints about rejections or 'Show me your ...' posts. Waste of time.