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Messages - hqimages
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26
« on: May 07, 2010, 01:11 »
Wouldn't you be tempted to do still shots after going to all the trouble of model/styling/make-up etc for a video shoot?
I'm still not sure why you think it is so simple.
I'll elaborate, once again. You said "a usual shoot". A usual shoot involves strobe lights, and, for most, shooting handheld, going solo. A video shoot involves hot lights, numerous pieces of hardware, like a tripod and a glider or a boom, plus, possibly people to do follow focus and audio. As well as talent who can not only smile and look good for 1/125, but can successfully act to convey a message. And other things.
So, you said "since you have the studio/model set up anyway, what's the biggie to shoot some video as part of a usual shoot". There, I told you "the biggie". I'm sharing information. That should make you happy, right?
I'd rather you didn't speak to me, permanently.
27
« on: May 06, 2010, 17:57 »
Because the lighting for photo with strobes is 100% different from video lighting. Also, there is the question as to whether still models can perform for video, and also if the contributor can direct video as well. It isn't just "hey, I'll push the video button on my camera".
^^ This is the reason I haven't strayed into video yet. My photo shoots already last an average of 5 hours, with many going over 6. No time in there to completely change lighting setups and add video.
Maybe some people are managing to do it, but for my work flow I would need to do separate shoots for video, not to mention the time it would take to learn a whole new skill set.
Wouldn't you be tempted to do still shots after going to all the trouble of model/styling/make-up etc for a video shoot?
28
« on: May 06, 2010, 17:44 »
We planned for a really long day, and alternated back and forth between still camera/strobes to video/hot lights,
Well, that wouldn't be "shooting some video as part of a usual shoot", would it? That would be a concentrated effort to have multiple lighting scenarios, as well as talent that is proficient in acting, as well as a director who is skilled in motion.
Or you could just push the button.
It is shooting some video, as part of a still shoot (as in, they shot BOTH still images and video with the same model, on the same day), as a photographer that is not used to doing video.. that's what it is.. why you feel the need to dig/poke/antagonise people that are sharing information.. well, you must have a very fragile ego that needs constant reassurance. Yes you're right Sean, well done.. now let's get back to sharing information and ideas in a positive way.
29
« on: May 06, 2010, 17:26 »
what's the biggie to shoot some video as part of a usual shoot
Because the lighting for photo with strobes is 100% different from video lighting. Also, there is the question as to whether still models can perform for video, and also if the contributor can direct video as well. It isn't just "hey, I'll push the video button on my camera".
Ever the ray of positive sunshine and joy I see  I like this article for anyone making the first steps from commercial stills to combined commercial stills and video in one shoot: http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/content_display/features/pdn-online/e3i38514fc7c3e49c476a2e817a0aa249a4We planned for a really long day, and alternated back and forth between still camera/strobes to video/hot lights,
30
« on: May 06, 2010, 16:54 »
Since flyers and whatnot don't actually play video, I would say the still image is still needed  But yeah, why not shoot video? Technology now allows it on ur dslr, and since you have the studio/model set up anyway, what's the biggie to shoot some video as part of a usual shoot, it's just diversifying ur portfolio, and getting another customer in there that needs video, or offering video to your existing clients that dabble in some web work.. I welcome the opportunity to learn more about how this video thing works, now that technology is allowing me.. As for it being a fad, I think a lot of web designers will use it, especially with html 5..
31
« on: April 24, 2010, 10:14 »
He's adorable that guy.. awww...
Most annoying thing about Alamy from buyers perspective, he says 15 quid for low res web use rm, I can't find em, I do see a 100 pixel x 150 pixel thumb for that price though, and it goes up from there.. oh and your client (or you) has to remove it every year and replace it with a new one.. mmhm.. not one for web designers anyway!!
33
« on: April 23, 2010, 13:27 »
[I believe you should have put "graphic designer" in quotes. Obviously a real professional would not be stealing images and using them without a proper license. You can feel good that neither you or you clients are going to have their a$$ sued off, which certainly this other "designer" will.
I recently had a local aerial/dish installer do a job for me. I complimented him on his web site, which is how I'd found him, and it turned out that he'd had one of those letters from Getty demanding something like $15K and/or massive legal retribution for the unauthorised use of one of their images on his site (a picture of a workman on top of a roof). The bloke himself knew nothing about stock imagery or how it worked. He'd simply paid a local "designer" to produce his website for him and had no idea where the images had been sourced from but assumed the price he paid had included their legitimate use. There must be a lot of dodgy developers about even in the most developed economies.
God yeah, there are cowboys everywhere.. the worst part is they price down so hard (some not even registered for any kind of tax), that the customer doesn't understand why your price is double.. I would imagine people get caught ALL the time, and I'm glad, cowboys ruin any trade they decide to infiltrate, whether it's roofing or graphic design (although in roofing a lot more dangerous to hire one!!!!). End of the day you can pay for a cowboy or pay for a professional, and if you pay 400 quid (or whatever price is lowest of the low) for your web site this kind of thing is going to happen.. people are always shocked though, and then you ask them how much they paid for the job and it's like well, you shouldn't be shocked really, what did you expect at that price? Thanks Danoph I'll take a browse!
34
« on: April 23, 2010, 10:05 »
You know, I think a lot of this is because of what the web sites push the photographers to produce too, I think a lot of them maybe don't know how to handle a really creative/different upload, and possibly reject them because they are just not 'stock' looking.. maybe.. but then how can they evolve, they just keep approving what worked in the 90's and 00's with no real progression in the stock look/feel..
35
« on: April 23, 2010, 09:59 »
I recently came across a graphic designer in my town that gets all of his images via google images, does he get a fund from clients for images, no, does he pay for his, no. Unfortunately this is what we have to compete with, so microstock is a great way to go for certain clients.
I believe you should have put "graphic designer" in quotes. Obviously a real professional would not be stealing images and using them without a proper license. You can feel good that neither you or you clients are going to have their a$$ sued off, which certainly this other "designer" will.
Google images, for anyone who doesn't know it, is not a free image source! It only indexes and links images that are already used somewhere else by someone who licensed them. They are NOT a source for stock imagery.
Exactly Lisa, I even explained the microstock model to him, and explained that he could get an image in the same (terrible!) resolution he gets from google images, but legally, for only 2 dollars or thereabouts (maybe smallest size on istock, thought the price for the best res would be too much for him to take in,  ), which he can pay out of his own profits if the client doesn't want to, it's so little money.. but as far as I know he's still doing it.. and yes I think 'cowboy' is the term really, lol!!
36
« on: April 23, 2010, 01:35 »
What this site offers might be just a bit too diffrent from what you need, dont know, but take a look.
http://www.photocase.com/en/
Oooooooo.... interesting, thanks zenpix.. taking a look around but yes, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about!
Yes, interesting. Saleable? Maybe. Take the homepage photo. How often is a picture going to sell of a hand in a lion's mouth? Probably rarely. How much resources would it take to set up shots like that? Probably more than the average high volume selling boring smiling model. Low volume + high effort/cost = low sales/profits.
This is what Vetta or RM macro is for. Are you willing to pay higher prices for stuff like this? Or do you still want micro pricing?
Yeah I still want micro pricing, as I said above, we use micro for a client that has given us no budget for images, I have a problem with Vetta anyway I think the pricing is wrong, i posted here at the time but I found two images of seniors citizens, one priced at Vetta prices as part of the collection, and the other, with literally one persons head angled being the one and only difference, at normal prices. For obvious reasons I don't want to make that spend on a Vetta image, to then find a virtual duplicate at a massively lower price after.. so in my eyes Vetta has a problem, also you're talking about images that possibly have saturated the market already.. I just would like a collection of alternative microstock shots, possibly a different web site to istock, so that we are not always stuck with the one supplier.. but no worries, I'll keep looking around!!
37
« on: April 23, 2010, 01:24 »
where's the problem ?
just browse any decent RM agency and there's millions of smiling and non-smiling business photos ready to fit any design.
the real problem is buyers want to spend just a pittance and even dare to complain if the photos are boring
and seen everywhere else.
buyers talk and talk but never want to spend a single dime more.
do they want some obscure model in some hard to find position and location ? just head to Alamy, there's so much junk there you'll never find anywhere else.
Pardon my language, but this is the most ignorant statement I have read so far. It has nothing to do with whether the buyer will get rm, I would LOVE to have the kind of client that would tell me to go source images at RM sites, and they foot the bill, trust me, that's my dream job right there. The problem is not the buyer, it's the client. When I purchase microstock images, it's for clients that do not have any budget for images at all, we pay for the images out of the profits (out of our own pockets).. so please don't be so inconsiderate and jump to assumptions about 'buyers'. I recently came across a graphic designer in my town that gets all of his images via google images, does he get a fund from clients for images, no, does he pay for his, no. Unfortunately this is what we have to compete with, so microstock is a great way to go for certain clients.
38
« on: April 22, 2010, 18:26 »
Posting an emoticon (  ) doesn't really make a point.
So why did you just do it?
39
« on: April 22, 2010, 18:24 »
Not whining.. simply giving my experience from a buyers perpective is all.. no need to hate  Yes, I am familiar with istock, use it everyday for my company, simply looking for a good alternative also (and you just proved my point in how difficult this can be, indeed yes there are not enough images on that web site).. and yes, I do shoot also, for obvious reasons it's not practical to shoot for every client, and not every client has a budget for images full stop..
To the person that posted months ago about a bad attitude in this forum towards others, this kind of post is exactly what they were talking about, and I see where they were coming from, still the snarky few need not ruin what is a pleasant exchange of information and opinions for others, so I'll post regardless..
No, that's whining.
You would be the expert
41
« on: April 22, 2010, 18:14 »
Yeah, it's definitely a numbers game. Contributors sell more shiny happy people, so they make more images. It's harder to carve out an individual niche, so people gear their portfolios for what the majority want.
I wonder though do the majority still want shiny/happy in a recession? Are there more buyers like me that need to veer away from that!? Pity more don't post but..
People do post sometimes in the request new content forum on iStock.
However, download figures suggest that happy/shiny is still by far preferred, at least in the Main Market.
Have download figures for those images been the same between let's say, Jan-Mar this year compared to two years ago, same period? I doubt I'm the only one wanting more recession based images..
42
« on: April 22, 2010, 18:12 »
What this site offers might be just a bit too diffrent from what you need, dont know, but take a look.
http://www.photocase.com/en/
Oooooooo.... interesting, thanks zenpix.. taking a look around but yes, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about!
Be careful: I just saw - in the very first search I made - a silhouette of a sculpture that I recognise. It's modern, and I'd be astonished if there were a property release attached to it (of course, there could just be) .
Suggests they might not be as careful as some other sites about releases.
Yeah no, it's a viable alternative to istock I would like and although those images are more 'anti-stock' looking, which I like, there's not enough there to consider it, plus there are some images that imo shouldn't have been approved.. pity though it has potential, and I like their 'about us' spiel, maybe in time..
43
« on: April 22, 2010, 18:10 »
Yeah, it's definitely a numbers game. Contributors sell more shiny happy people, so they make more images. It's harder to carve out an individual niche, so people gear their portfolios for what the majority want.
I wonder though do the majority still want shiny/happy in a recession? Are there more buyers like me that need to veer away from that!? Pity more don't post but..
44
« on: April 22, 2010, 18:01 »
Oooooooo.... interesting, thanks zenpix.. taking a look around but yes, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about!
Well if you couldn't find anything suitable out of Istocks 23,000 images corresponding to a search of 'business team' I think you might struggle at Photocase. You get choice of just 185 images, none of which appear to have anything to do with the search words. Very creative though __ in their use of keywords anyway.
Designers have never had such an extraordinary choice of images available to them, from a huge number of contributors drawn from all over the world and for very little money. Not only that but there's over 100K brand new images appearing every week. It is barely credible to me that you are whining about how little choice you have. You could always go and shoot stuff for yourself and show us all how creative you can be.
Not whining.. simply giving my experience from a buyers perpective is all.. no need to hate Yes, I am familiar with istock, use it everyday for my company, simply looking for a good alternative also (and you just proved my point in how difficult this can be, indeed yes there are not enough images on that web site).. and yes, I do shoot also, for obvious reasons it's not practical to shoot for every client, and not every client has a budget for images full stop.. To the person that posted months ago about a bad attitude in this forum towards others, this kind of post is exactly what they were talking about, and I see where they were coming from, still the snarky few need not ruin what is a pleasant exchange of information and opinions for others, so I'll post regardless..
45
« on: April 22, 2010, 17:38 »
What this site offers might be just a bit too diffrent from what you need, dont know, but take a look.
http://www.photocase.com/en/
Oooooooo.... interesting, thanks zenpix.. taking a look around but yes, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about!
46
« on: April 22, 2010, 17:31 »
I think a lower volume of 'real', and unusual images will still trump a bigger amount of over-saturated, over-processed ones.. that's in my opinion anyway
While you're entitled to your opinion, the current evidence doesn't seem to back it up.
Styles//trends will, of course, change.
Exactly, well I can only speak from my own point of view, I don't know anything about trends, all I know is that personally speaking as a designer, what looked cool in the boom and in the 90's, 00's, isn't as effective now. That's in my little corner of the advertising world.. the recession has changed things somewhat as to what look is going to sell..
47
« on: April 22, 2010, 17:29 »
I don't agree
I think a lower volume of 'real', and unusual images will still trump a bigger amount of over-saturated, over-processed ones..
Yeah. Buyers talk the talk, but they don't walk the walk. Which isn't bad, I mean, but they say they want this or that, but they seem to be happy buying what is out there. Although I do get the sense they are getting tired of a certain set of models, as mentioned in the OP.
Trust me, I have bought the typical stock shots for my company in the past, a few years ago, but never again, I've learned too much since then about the market, and seen too many of the images we bought absolutely everywhere (no exaggeration).. why would I lie anyway? The images I now seek out are ones I haven't seen before, that use more obscure models, or even people that seem like they aren't models at all, someone's Mum, brother, husband whatever.. real images, that's the current way things are going..
48
« on: April 22, 2010, 16:19 »
Last year we lost 2 big trees in our front yard and the dandelions took over. Now it's a sea of yellow. It's just not possible to remove them all one-by-one, or to use an herbicide while trying to get new grass started at the same time.
All I can do is try to create conditions that cause the the grass to predominate, and the weeds to die out, over time. I water a lot and I applied something that is supposed to prevent the existing weeds' seeds from germinating.
Some people don't see dandelions as weeds but think of them as beautiful wildflowers.
Lol, there's the problem in a nutshell Thanks for all the replies, I would say, keep doing what you do, keep it real (so important, these shiny happy people are just not real enough to actually sell anything to ordinary people, specially in this recession), and maybe give exclusive images to some other sites besides istock if you want another site to succeed.. I think a lower volume of 'real', and unusual images will still trump a bigger amount of over-saturated, over-processed ones.. that's in my opinion anyway.. thanks guys
49
« on: April 22, 2010, 08:28 »
And here we go again: http://www.veer.com/products/marketplace/Click on big business, portraits, teamwork, practically anything, and yet again we have siai syndrome, same images as istock... Is there no gallery can offer fresh business images that we HAVEN'T seen before, or do they all wet themselves when Yuri uploads his portfolio and push them to the top of every category, cos by God I'm sick of those models..
50
« on: March 25, 2010, 18:59 »
If it's a studio shoot with inexperienced models, I'll always sketch out my ideas, and even ideas for poses for the models.. honestly tho, I'd much rather not have to direct him/her to that extent, so if I can throw them in there and they knock out pose after pose great, I'll just shoot away, but it's good to have some ideas sketched down roughly in case they do need more direction, and also in case you have specific results you need out of the shoot, eg. changes of clothes, backdrop, pose, beauty, full-body, styling, lighting. Like I might want to shoot the full body quite dark and dramatic, but do the beauty shots flooded with light and angelic, so I'll sketch out my lighting set up for each one, with some notes for props, make up, clothes, poses for each look.. I don't always stick to the shotlist, but I always check it to make sure I haven't forgotten anything very important.. if things aren't going as planned, take a break, or change something, or take a break while changing something!! If it's an outdoor shoot, I don't bother with anything like the above, it's a lot more spontaneous, and you're at the mercy of the weather (Ireland ), so you get on location, and just shoot while walking around and getting good spots, one thing you could do is check the location beforehand and just see where you think will be good for each shot, so you might have water in one area, a cool rock close by, a field beyond that again, and that's your three shots, faffing around with bits of paper on location just bothers me, so it's all about the model really and you can still direct her, it's just what looks good on the day, that suits the model, suits the weather (eg. a shot list is fine, but on the day if the sky is white and you wanted moody, you might shoot her against a rock instead or whatever!) I think your two rules are PERFECT..
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