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Topics - ShadySue
51
« on: March 01, 2014, 08:21 »
I had a totally mensis horribilis, after a surprisingly decent January (on iS at least). Despite having 1 more dl than January, and an EL (125 credits: $15.40  ) my $$s are -14% on Jan. Compared to Feb 2013: dls -20%; $$ - 35% Worst Feb for $$ since 2009. GI for January: 2 sales for an insulting total of $3.91 (sic)Alamy: 4 sales: two 'normal' current-average $$, 1 distributor (first in ages), 1 UK newspaper scheme (very low value) FAA: 0 (put my single greetings card price up). Wishing I hadn't renewed for this year. Still, 11 months to go ...
52
« on: February 27, 2014, 19:29 »
"
Hello!
We have some very exciting news to share with you. You have been selected by our content team to be part of the first group of contributors who are being invited to work with our Moment mobile app, a fast and easy new way to contribute more of your imagery to Getty Images using your smartphone.
Over the coming weeks and months well continue to add more contributors to this process and eventually all contributors will be able to submit using Moment, but were kicking off with a small group (including you!) to help us get things started.
... ... ...
Moment editorial images will be placed in a new Moment RM Editorial collection on Gettyimages.com.
... "
Wowsers, I never thought I'd get the chance to submit RM Editorial on Getty.
But no, just like Alamy, I'm a second-class citizen with an Android phone (chosen because it was on the Getty approved mobile phone list!) and this new thing is for the iPhone. So I can't 'submit images to them from my smartphone'. Why didn't they just title it 'Submit images to us from your iPhone' and I could have avoided wasting time skimming the email.
Ho-hum.
53
« on: February 27, 2014, 07:40 »
Can anyone remember where we had got to on the lowest credit value we found on iStock?
I just had an EL sale this morning which according to Sean's calculator (thanks for keeping it up, Sean) seems to be for 36c credits, and I thought the lowest I'd heard of before was c41c, and that was way back early last year sometime.
I know they have deeper discounts than those shown on the site for very large buyers, and I suppose on top of that, they'd have to honour any discount they'd offered for site outages.
Anyone know of recent sales for values <36c?
54
« on: February 06, 2014, 11:47 »
55
« on: February 06, 2014, 11:44 »
This topic has been moved to [Garbage].
[Spam]
56
« on: February 05, 2014, 14:35 »
Just a couple of minutes ago, suddenly something happened and now about the top third of my monitor is a lot darker than it was, I saw it happen, instantly, it didn't just fade over a period.
Anyone know if this is fixable or am I in for an unexpected expense (luckily in this tax year, where I haven't had any 'large expenses')? It doesn't really owe me anything, this is its third computer, but it was very expensive at the time!
57
« on: February 04, 2014, 08:38 »
This is just an observation, not a complaint, though ...  (Background: I just had 2 dls, presumably by the same buyer from the same geographic location. One was demoted and I thought it must have bemused them why one pic was so much more expensive than the other. Anyway, out of curiosity, I had a look to see how many pics there are on iS from this location, and there are only 32, and only by three authors: one other exclusive, one indie and myself. NOT ONE of the indie's images show the location named, but the all the files by the other exclusive and myself all feature the location. I just thought I would analyse the best match as there were so few files. I've got to find something to do while there's no point uploading there. Here is the result, where A = the other exclusive, B = me and I = the indie. Pos - best match position, Auth = the authors and DLs = the dls showing for the file. * = the files I had dls on today. Pos Auth DLs 1 A 3 2 I 1 3 I 0 4 A 1 5 A 0 6 I 1 7 A 0 8 A 1 9 A 0 10 A 0 11 I 0 12 B 3* 13 A 1 14 A 1 15 B 0 16 I 0 17 I 0 18 A 0 19 A 0 20 A 0 21 A 0 22 A 0 23 B 0 24 I 0 25 A 2 26 A 0 27 B 0 28 B 1 29 B 4 30 B 2 31 B 2 32 B 0* Observations: 1. It's a low-demand, low supply location, but I'd have expected that. 2. Lobo's assertion that exclusives will "ALWAYS, period" have best match priority seems doubtful looking at the above chart, and bearing in mind that not one of the indie's files is relevant to the location keyword I searched on. 3. They really hate me  I did not look at when the files were uploaded, though changing to Newest puts most of the indie's files near the top (but newest isn't working properly on other searches, and I didn't go into each file). I've noticed in my more usual check searches that the best match in general has changed over the past few days to a week - it was becoming obvious in what was selling from my port (old files with low previous sales). I'm happy to get these sales, and it just shows what an effect best match has. Come on iStock, get something sorted so that it's worth uploading again - that was boring to do, and no doubt to read.
58
« on: January 24, 2014, 09:35 »
This topic has been moved to [Garbage Bin].
59
« on: January 24, 2014, 08:00 »
I know we shouldn't post links to images, but I'd say it's 99.99% certain that this image is not the image the contributor intended http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-450685-impala.php?st=ad94bf2How on earth can this sort of mistake happen? (stupid question with iS, I know). Would someone who knows, or even doesn't know this contributor inform them - I'm banned and can't SM him and CR won't do anything unless the owner of the file contacts them, so it's no use me contacting CR on their behalf.
60
« on: January 10, 2014, 18:32 »
After spotting this thread over on iS's PP forum, http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=358464&page=1 I checked my own preferences and found I am opted in to the PP. As mentioned there, it's odd that this has happened, after they said exclusives cannot have files there - why is there even an option - big waste of bandwidth which they seem to be concerned about. I have been out of the PP since a short braindrain when it was introduced. Any other exclusives who want to be 'out' should check their preferences, 'just in case'.
62
« on: November 25, 2013, 08:00 »
So - we read a lot about how iStock's system rearranges keywords according to viewer and buyer use so that the most relevant keywords come to the front.
In the past, this has generally seemed to me to be 'probably' the case, though I do have a huge anomaly in a particular file, right from its upload.
Last week, I discovered that a file which I uploaded earlier this year and has 4 recorded views and one sale (whoopee!) had 'photography' as its top keyword, though it was near the bottom as I keyworded it. A few days later, I see it still has 'photography' as its top keyword.
But the mystery deepens. I had notification that a file had been accepted, and remembered that I'd forgotten to put a banner in, so I hopped over to the file and discovered a strange order to my keywords. (I have a pattern of keywording so this strangeness jumped out).
Sure enough, my keyword order was: Bluetit, Winter, Bird, Tit, One Bird, Frost, Bird Feeder, Perching, Cold, Ice, Sunflower Seed, Sunflower Hearts, Seed, Seed Feeder, Feeding, Animals Feeding, One Animal, Animals In The Wild, Wildlife, Nature, Scotland, UK, Europe, Beauty In Nature, Colors, Photography, Horizontal, No People, Differential Focus
and the new order, less than five minutes after I got the notification, and with 0 views, is:
Bluetit, Winter, Bird, Animals Feeding, Scotland, UK, Europe, Seed, Perching, Animals In The Wild, Ice, Frost, One Bird, Sunflower Hearts, Horizontal, Selective Focus, Nature, Photography, No People, Beauty In Nature, One Animal, Bird Feeder, Sunflower Seed, Tit, Feeding, Cold, Colors, Wildlife
(BTW, 'colors' is wrong, it should be colour (image type), don't know why it's changed, but I see it has changed in several other recent uploads too. I'll deal with that.)
Please don't focus on the particulars of this image. I can see similar apparently-random changes in several other recently-accepted images.
What I'm concerned about is not that one file, or even the group of recent files, but the principle of how it happens that inside 5 minutes of acceptance, the keyword order can have changed so much, and so randomly, at a time when the contributor information manager (or whatever the title is) says that they are focusing on 'razor-sharp relevancy' in Search.
Theoretically, my files should stay as I ordered them until there's some relevant buyer action on them.
64
« on: October 19, 2013, 15:30 »
I got a sale today which alerted me to a file which had been demoted. In passing, I thought I was slightly surprised that it had been up for 2 years without a sale, though it's not unique.
However, bracketing the merits or demerits of the actual photo, when I was looking at it, I noticed that the reordered keywords were very strange. Then I noticed that the main keyword had been wrongly DA'd, presumably automatically, since I uploaded.
The photo is of a cooper. At the time I uploaded it, cooper was the only DA available. Now, there are six DAs:
Cooper - Texas (Delta County)
Cooper (Named Automobile Manufacturer)
Cooper (Manual Worker)
Gordon Cooper
Henry Cooper
Gladys Cooper
and my file, which of course was of a cooper (manual worker), had been auto-DAd to Cooper - Texas (Delta County).
But I had no idea that the word had been expanded. I know that DS had been ading new keywords and new DAs, but I haven't noticed it being updated for ages.
It's a bit unreasonable to expect us to go through all our files checking to see if words have been randomly wrongly DAd.
How are others coping with this (other than the too-facile 'stopped uploading to iS')?
65
« on: October 08, 2013, 07:41 »
A former close colleague from work emailled me last night to ask me to photograph her daughter's wedding next year.
I'm not going to do it because I don't have the equipment, insurance or any experience with any sort of photography that involves directing other people.
This is not an attempt on their part to save money. The daughter is the last of her peers to get married, and she hasn't liked the look of any of her friends' wedding pictures, which effectively rules out any of the togs within at least a 25 mile radius.
She isn't really the sort of young woman who would like a formal or 'fashion' style and that's all that I can find on a quick Google of photographers in the nearest city. I'm sure she wants more of a 'snapshot' look, not because it's currently fashionable, but because that's the sort of girl she is. But even I know that getting a 'snapshot' look is like Dolly Parton's comment, "It takes a lot of money for me to look this cheap!"
As I can't make any direct recommendation as to a photographer to look at, what sort of things can I advise her on while finding someone to meet her needs? Obviously, I'll advise on double checking to make sure the tog isn't using stock images. I have no idea how to check if the tog has used models for their portfolio. This could be important, because another thing the mother often mentioned to me after weddings (as I was the 'person interested in photography' I got all the 'wedding photographer stories' at work) was the amount of time the tog spent taking the photos, which of course drives the guests nuts, especially those who don't know anyone else there. So if they've only used models, maybe they'd take hours getting everything perfect.
NB, this isn't a request for bids. Although they weren't asking me to save a few bob, they're also not in the market for jetting in a photographer. I want to be able to give some postive advice when I email them back with my declining of the job.
66
« on: September 23, 2013, 16:00 »
A new sort option to sit alongside New, Best Match and Popular. "We've added a new sort to the Search Grid. We've prepared a few key points to provide you with some earlier answers to the questions we are sure you will have:
How is Fresh Match different from Best Match?
Best Match is a multi-layered algorithm that returns our most relevant search results in a mix that balances price tiers, exclusivity and popularity among many other factors.
Fresh Match starts with the same most relevant results, but simply sorts them by Date Uploaded (newest first).
Why the Try It flag?
The Fresh Match concept promises a fresh mix of relevant content for popular, single-word searches, but can sometime return older assets for obscure or multi-word searches: If our most relevant Ninja Penguin is from 2012, it will still display as the first image in Fresh Match (its not fresh itself, but it is our freshest most relevant asset).
The Try It flag reflects our strategy for this new Sort. We are going to let customers try it for a while and watch the analytics. If customers are drawn to this new sort option, we will continue to evolve the technology underneath it to improve its delivery of our Freshest content."http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=356442&page=1Still no incentive to upload new, well-keyworded images, when they'll still sink rapidly, even instantly in the Best Match, so will have little chance to gain any relevancy for either the best match or the FM, and in many cases are lost among many spammily tagged images in the New search.
67
« on: September 16, 2013, 14:17 »
68
« on: September 01, 2013, 04:46 »
iS: Compared to July 13, $$ up 25%, making it my second-worst month in three years. That was almost solely down to better rpd, as the dls were only 4% up. Compared to Aug 12: $$ down 18%, dls down 30% Compared to Aug 11: $$ down 35%, dls down c60% In the second week, I thought things were turning for the better, but the last two weeks, especially the last week, were grim. Pretty certain collections is impacting me hard, as some of my old better sellers were promoted, without deserving the + price hike; and some of my low-supply, low demand images were demoted - they sell as occasionally as ever, but at a much lower price. Insanity. GI: Although I reported no GI July sales in another thread, it turns out I had two, but the $$ were so small, I didn't notice at the time. Oh - I must have had some more files made S+  . Last month I had a bit over 20% of eligible files waiting to transfer to Getty, but now it looks like almost 30%. Alamy: Over 40% of what I made at iStock, despite being caught up in the mass refund that many people reported over there early in the month. Holding steady while iS freefalls. FAA: 0 - my own fault, still havent put anything new/arty up, though I have a work in progress. And for those who say you cant make any money from Flickr, my 50 cheque came in from last month.  Small change to many of you, but I make no effort to sell from Flickr, so it's an inexpected and welcome bonus. 
69
« on: August 26, 2013, 05:00 »
I have a project in which I need to set the shutter speed and aperture, but the ISO needs to vary according to natural light conditions - but I need the camera to do thi automatically.
However, I've just been right through the Busch guide and must have skimmed over the info.
Can someone point me in the right direction, specifically for the 5D2?
TIA
(PS, it's that specific, no alternative methods, e.g. me constantly switching ISO manually, will work in this case.)
70
« on: August 16, 2013, 11:13 »
They always used to say that the order your wrote your keywords in didn't matter, and that the best match would rearrange them to relevance over time. Over time hasn't meant much recently as new files have fallen so quickly. However, I've been dripping up marker files for months now just to see if it becomes worth properly shooting / uploading new work. I remarked the other day that a file arrived in my portfolio at position 28 out of 391, for its most important keyword, where it still is. However, just before I confirmed the upload, I discovered I had forgotten to keyword 'passerine', so I added it in at the beginning. I doubt if many people search on 'passerine', but it's perfectly possible that someone might want to see what's available in passerines of a certain geographical area. So, passerine became my first keyword, and on a search for 'passerine' only, my file was an is 13 out of 3255. I noted that but couldn't be bothered going into the previous and next 12 to see where 'passerine' featured on their keywords, but did think that the proportional difference was notable. I also wondered if the new 'similar' feature was going to hit new files which are struggling to get views, therefore have no chance of gaining keyword relevance. I did notice that that marker photo shows up reciprocally on the files which appear in its similars, but that several other tests, there is no reciprocation. Anyway, it's official (if a post from Lobo counts as official - it's as official as we're going to get). "I've seen mention of how newer files are experiencing some weirdness with their similar offerings. This is entirely related to keyword order. However, as newer files have actions performed on them the keyword weight of the more relevant keywords will increase the relevancy of the similar files that are provided. We are going to put together an updated Keyword Guide for early September. In the mean time I would suggest people try and add their most relevant keywords before adding their more general keywords." (my emphasis). http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=355588&messageid=6927338Hmm, "keyword guide in early September". We're still waiting for the newsletter or at least 'information' he was going to get to us by the end of July. Maybe that was just about the similars thing, but how can we know? If they changed the relevance of upload keyword order shouldn't we have been told about it as soon s they knew they were going to do it? DM users are unhappy about this (IIRC DM alphabetises keyword order (?): http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=57564&messageid=6926950 (ah, other people were suspecting this about the same time as me - that post was made yesterday before Lobo's recent announcement.
71
« on: August 12, 2013, 05:15 »
Thanks to whoever mentioned earlier that my email was showing in my profile (I read the post on my phone and didn't reply and can't find the post now). That must have somehow got changed, as I had it marked it 'not public' to save me from spam. My spam has risen from about 1 or 2 a month or fewer, to 10+ a day in the past 5-6 weeks. I suspect the floodgates are open for me now; but if anyone else is getting more email spam than normal, they could check their profile here 'just in case'.
72
« on: July 27, 2013, 06:31 »
From the iStock forums: Posted By lostinbids: "I think what seems a bit fishy to me is that out of the c95000 exclusive photos accepted in the last month only 231 have been made S+ (and over 75% of those accepted as S+ are from one contributor!)."Posted By fotoVoyager: "How do you know those figures?"Posted By lostinbids: "Go to the istockphoto home page, under browse click latest uploads, then scroll down to 'more attributes', expand that and check 'exclusive files', scroll up and check 'photos'. Then you can use the price slider to see the number of files in each collection."]"Go to the istockphoto home page, under browse click latest uploads, then scroll down to 'more attributes', expand that and check 'exclusive files', scroll up and check 'photos'. Then you can use the price slider to see the number of files in each collection."http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=354349&messageid=6920094
73
« on: July 18, 2013, 05:42 »
74
« on: July 10, 2013, 14:17 »
Just got this email. Ha, proves I never manage to guess what they'll do next. I'm not in the PP, but feared the lower standards/rapid sinking of new images was their prelude to forcing non- or low-selling files to the PP. But it seems exclusives can no longer add files to the PP. Fine by me, but some exclusives may feel otherwise. Notification: Partner Program and Exclusivity- July 9, 2013
Early next week we will be removing the option for Exclusives to opt in to the Partner Program. This means Exclusives will no longer be able to add files to the Partner Program (thinkstock.com|photos.com). Any files that are currently a part of the Partner Program will be grandfathered into the Partner Program, but we will also provide you an opportunity to remove these files at any time.
NOTE: Exclusive Content that is currently backlogged (anything post June 17, 2013) will NOT be moved to the Partner Program sites.
This change is a small part of our larger plan to highlight and promote Exclusive content only available from iStockphoto. We have a number of other enhancements queued up for release over the next few weeks. These initiatives will be focused on Search, additional User Interface changes, and optimizing our Exclusive offerings on the site.
As we get closer to those launch dates we will provide some additional details on what is coming up.
Please feel free to comment on this decision in the Partner Program discussion thread we've started http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=354886&page=1No use writing that, as I'm not free to comment there. So I'll comment here: "what a relief!" Wonder what's 'coming up'.
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