And today's worst (not as funny as office party, but it still illustrates the point)
cattle Botswana. My photo was of a "Cattle Egret" in Botswana, both words in the caption and essential keywords, no way out of it. But it certainly wasn't what the buyer wanted.
Hmmmm. I did ethics at Uni (back in the day. I've forgotten it all now!) Interesting question: whether to claw back some money from the excellent charities to invest in marketing and getting a really good search architecture, for possible long-term gain (in a time when returns per image are dwindling). Answer in 5000 words.

@JBarber - now I'm lost.    Horseshoe Road Inn?  Apologies for my ignorance.

Horse you rode in

You're right Lisa, very educational! Maybe when this Yankee gets to Ireland/Scotland I won't sound like such a corky American!

Oh yes, you will!

@ Sue - I'm the same with adverts... I did something similar over an ad not so long ago... The Worcestershire sauce ad was around many years ago.  Not sure if the pronunciation was common in the Southern States or peculiar to that woman.  It seemed quite a struggle for her to say it, and I wished I could make it easier for her by climbing into the telly and saying 'It's pronounced Woostersheer' - so much easier!

Please tell me your joking- we say "Wooster" as in Bertie! (i.e. Wooster sawwwsss). In sloppy, everyday speech, more like 'Woosta', or maybe nearer yours, 'Woostscha"

Quote

Images since Saturday will be available in searches soon."

This is, surprise surprise, BS. Images are still not in portfolios after 4 or 5 days, anyone with any sense will deactivate recent uploads because the tech team at IS  basically don't know their ass from their elbow.

Och, I'm not sure. The current best match sinks new images like stones, so it won't make much difference.

Now they're discussing 'staging' photos for editorial at iStock. :-(
And some don't see why that is wrong (I suspect that might be a difference between general American and UK sensitivities on what 'truth' means).
Exactly why textbook publishers don't buy there just now.
Unless, of course, they're going to make a real distinction when searching between 'real' editorial and photos which can be used to illustrate editorial articles in magazines with a caption 'posed by model'.
I'd like some sort of check button to indicate that an image is natural, unposed and unaltered, in 'available' light, even to be applied to existing images.
Addded: I see someone has posted the obvious, that a staged photo (e.g. of a kid-on homeless person) should go into the main collection.

In fact I have some sales on alamy that are just about the same I get at IS. And the license they give in alamy would be equivalent to a pile of EL's on IS. What I mean is that I sell images on alamy for about $6 with a license, that would cost almost $300 in IS.

Here's the down.
Alamy give big discounts to two main groups. Newspapers and textbook publishers. Their main market at the moment is the UK and Europe.
Speaking of the UK:
Newspapers are in big trouble, and some have already folded. They are not going to spend $300 on a non-specific photo. Also, on iStock, a print run has to be 1/2 million before you have to buy an EL, which apart from some huge newspapers doesn't happen often.
The UK economy is in a total mess. I was a uK teacher until very recently and know for a fact how much per capita has been cut. In my case, by 1/3 in the session 09-10, and to 50% of that for this current session. Projections were that the cuts would be even more swingeing for the next four years at least. That means very little budget for books. So the only way publishers will be able to stay afloat is to severely cut the price of their books (again, several educational publishers have gone out of business recently). And the best way to do that is by reducing the prices of their images.

iStock, on the other hand, offers deep, unadvertised discounts to huge corporations who spend lots on credit packages. So your 250 credit EL might be worth very little to you.
Remember that the $300 cost EL is worth a lot less to you, and will, for most of us, be less still in January, that drop being even worse for exclusives, who lose their 10%.

The Alamy vs IS for editorial will not be a simple decision.

Quote from: ann on December 15, 2010, 20:30

and ps, there are other fields for what some have complained, should be available: Probably what the original thread started out asking.

Number of People
   Any
   None(1)
   1 Person(0)
   2 People(0)
   3 People(0)
   4 People(0)
   Groups or Crowds(0)
    
Ethnicity
   Any
   African(0)
   African American(0)
   Caucasian(0)
   Chinese(0)
   Indian(0)
   Japanese(0)
   See all ...
    

But again, these can lead to poor results for the buyer. vide my Japanese drums showing up as Japanese ethnicity.

Also people. For example, my recent good sale had three totally unrecogniseable bits of people. I was going to clone them out, but then I'd have had to mark it as 'manipulated' so not 'strict' editorial - and one, though completely silhouetted, was the driver of the vehicle, so pretty essential (but tiny). You can hardly see them, but they're there and must be accounted for. Fair enough, for MR purposes, but not for search.
But if someone was wanting a photo of 'three people', I can cast iron guarantee they didn't want to see my photo. They wanted three clearly visible people.
For example, someone searches for 'London' and ticks 'three people', they want to see three clear people in London, not a London cityscape and 'spot the indistinguishable people'.
Of course for MR/editorial purposes, you have to state whether or not you have people, buts of people, blurred people, silhouetted people etc. But that doesn't mean that these people should be automatically returned in a search for people.

It's all about the buyer. Not forcing them to try to think of some way of avoiding returns for unrecognisable people.
Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think should be compulsory reading for everyone involved in search architecture.

Quote from: ShadySue on December 15, 2010, 20:51

Quote from: yuliang11 on December 15, 2010, 20:42

Yes , istock definately has more traffic , possibly just 0.30subs or 17% comission from maybe a  5usd sales. at alamy, 1 RM sale  per year from alamy would possibly cover your entire year sales in stock.  i think contributor should start to take a stand against bullying agencies.

You'd have to get a very good RM sale for that. Many RM sales are made with deep, deep discounts, and iStock has ELs, which would apply to some editorial sales, though their print run is very high.

most of my editorials are only getting 1 sub download and the photo just dies. i get EL when i'm lucky. anyway i think i have trust issue with istock. i think contributors should be vary agencies with dodgy practices. Do not forget what someone did to you and said it is fair cause it will happen again someday    

It'll be a matter of working out what will sell best where. If it's my small obscure home town, Alamy would be the place for it. It'd never sell on iStock, and if something newsworthy happens there one day, I might make a few Alamy sales. I'm guessing I'll stick with Alamy for most of my editorials, especially as I won't reach 35% on iStock when I hit gold in a few weeks.
Times Square - well, there are 9825 TS images already on Alamy, so it might be better for the contributor to get in early on iStock. Sadly that would undercut the traditional editorial market, which of course is what they're aiming to do.
Looking at the sales I've made on Alamy, I doubt if I'd have made more than a couple of sales from any of them on iStock. Looking at the pics that haven't sold on Alamy: same. So still better off on Alamy.

BTW Sue... I'm off to bed, but thought I'd leave you with this... I wonder if you had the advert up in Scotland where an American lady from the Southern states pronounces Worcestershire Sauce as 'Wer-chester-shyer sauce'?  What a mouthful!  Pretty complex, no?

@ PixelBitch... 

Maybe, but I very seldom see adverts. So much so that I emailled everyone last year with a YouTube version of what I thought was a very new advert for IrnBru, and it had been out since 2006!
There's a small town/large village near where I was brought up called Strathaven, pronounced Stray-ven, and I did part of my teacher training near Milngavie pronounced Mill-guy.

Yes , istock definately has more traffic , possibly just 0.30subs or 17% comission from maybe a  5usd sales. at alamy, 1 RM sale  per year from alamy would possibly cover your entire year sales in stock.  i think contributor should start to take a stand against bullying agencies.

You'd have to get a very good RM sale for that. Many RM sales are made with deep, deep discounts, and iStock has ELs, which would apply to some editorial sales, though their print run is very high.

But I'm also always intrigued by the misunderstandings that can occur from something like a very slight difference in pronunciation.

There was a programme on TV many years ago about DC Thomson and The Beano. There was a related item in the Radio Times describing the classic cartoons, including "Pansy Potter, the Strongman's Daughter" with the cryptic aside, "it rhymes in Scots!". We spent breaks at work trying to imitate all the English regional accents we could think of to find one in which it wouldn't rhyme, but failed.