I wish I had more like that...they don't come along very often unfortunately.

Each sales model has it's market and if one gets it right micro can be lucrative too...there are several artists who do well.

I'll certainly slow down on micro submissions for a while...but to ignore it would be silly as it is a growing market.

pb,

after a sale like that (sorry, i'm drooling), don't you feel you should concentrate your work in rm and not bother with microstock anymore? obviously this experiment has failed for you rm guys.

The only way to truly verify their authenticity is to get an approval code for the purchase from their credit card issuer...but even that is uncertain these days.

Proceed with caution...you are asking all the right questions...hope it works out and you make a great sale!

Quote from: hofhoek on May 19, 2010, 07:02

Thanks for your concerned reaction. Yes, I mean enhanced license and I'm also a bit worried if this is a legitimite request. I am not sure. They do have an address with phone but no website is found yet. I have asked this today by email so I'll see what will be the reply. My other concern is if they are for real that I have no idea how to get all these images (a few hundred I have) available for them to see without giving them the possibility to copy them. If anyone ever had a similar request how did you handle this? It would be a great chance to sell quite a lot of my images but I have to be sure it's no scam.
 
Thanks

EDIT: I have only a small portion of my images of the subject they are looking for on Dreamstime. Although I don't see how It would breach my contract with Dreamstime. I'm not exclusive to them and can sell my images anywhere I please.

Again, it's up to you to find out as much as you can. If it's impossible to verify the authenticity of a buyer who wants "hundreds of your images" then don't bother.

As much as I'm happy for you to get such an opportunity it sounds too good to be true. Also I'm wondering why one buyer would need hundreds of images about one topic?

This may all be legitimate but naturally it requires some communication between you and the prospective buyer. Selling 200 images as ELs with a 20% discount compared to what DT charges could put $7000-8000 in your pocket. If you're really talking about so many images or even more you need a lawyer to draw a contract for you. I can't see how you would be able to handle such a transaction yourself.

Maybe Sean or some other pro can chime in here.

Absolutely spot on...I remember being asked to work for a lower fee and being told that on the next job of course I would get a higher fee...bollocks...I always used to call them on it and decline. One particularly sweet moment was when a trendy young photographer fresh out of college underpriced me on a shoot I'd done for a client 3 years running...then 2 weeks later they called and told me he'd screwed up and they wanted me to do the shoot at my usual rate. There is no shortage of clients who will try and take the piss...and sadly no shortage of desperate photographers willing to fall for it.

Quote from: ap on May 13, 2010, 17:03

when i started in photography last year, i was offered credit in exchange for a photo in a calendar of a popular and well known sports co. since i wanted to show solidarity with my new photog brethens and not give something away for nothing, i refused.

now, seeing this calendar full of beautiful photos minus mine own, i'm starting to regret this decision. i think it would have opened the doors to a young photographer and the money would have mattered not. but photographers keep insisting that this would be a detriment to the photo industry...i think in all arts related fields, name recognition is a lot more important than monetary reward, esp at the beginning.

You might feel you should have taken the credit, ap, but I believe you made the right decision. When people find out those calendar images were given away, you will have a whole host of impressive companies wanting to work with you...for free. It's easy to negotiate down with a company if you ask too much money, but once you work for free it's pretty difficult to go up from there.

Veer existed in their own right for quite a few years before Corbis came along and bought them...to suggest that they do not know what they are doing is profoundly ignorant. It is the micros that are new, and have come along and undercut on pricing and greatly contributed to it being so tough to make a living shooting stock these days. Perhaps Veer are wanting to establish a viable microstock collection with out descending to the level of those sites that take all comers just for the numbers.

[/quote]

This still doesn't explain why your rejection rate is far higher than any other micro I contribute to, and that includes iStock, the most rigorous, demanding micro in the business. Streamlining the upload process doesn't save us much time, when most submissions end up getting rejected anyway. Since Veer's rejection rate is far higher than all of the successful micros (this is borne out by complaints from many other contributors, not just me), your needs must differ substantially from the rest. Saying you want high quality, commercially relevant photography and illustration is a pretty generic statement, since all micros make the same claim. It doesn't tell me anything specific about why Veer's rejection rate is by far the highest in the business. This from a new micro with no proven track record! If you don't want certain types of content, you should state that clearly, so we don't waste time uploading imagery that Veer doesn't want in the first place.

The only reason Veer has made it this far is because of the Corbis name, and now this new Dash for Cash program.These things can't keep you going forever, people will become disillusioned, as I have. Where are the downloads? We need something of substance! Please show us some respect and have a little consideration for the value of our time.
[/quote]

Sales have slowed right down, as have the sales amounts...been questioning whether to bother uploading more work. reminds me of that good old Aussie saying if this car were a horse I'd shoot it.

It's all been done before...we just need to do it our way to reflect our times...and those that can't do that copy those who can.

to me the cupcake is to close, Milinz's stuff inspired me to do some fire. Some concepts are the similar but I'm not the same league and there is no way they could be a considered a copy (if I got that close I'd be pleased with myself, but wouldnt submit to sale anywhere).

but we have 'draganizing' an image, 'the dave hill' style, ring flash fads etc etc. I'm sure now with PS5 we'll see a big run on grunge hdr / tonemapped images.

i have magazines from the 50's & 60's with pretty girls holding phones doing the 'our operators are waiting to take your call', the clothing / hair etc styles are different but it is the same concepts etc. I dont think stock was around then but they may as well be stock shots. Not much is new...

I'm a Getty macro contributor as well as micro...March RF sales on Getty...35 sales at an average of 34.62 from a collection of 212 images...micro comes nowhere near that return. If you can get images on Getty macro then do it...micro returns are a pittance in comparison...and becoming more so each month.

Now that Getty's artist's picks has reopened I'd like to ask photographers who submit to both, Getty and microstock, if they would be willing to share their experience regarding if one model makes more money for them as a whole than the other. Also, is there any criteria regarding what images goes where, how do you determine which images to place with Getty and which to place with the micro agencies. I have some new images and I'm just not sure where I should place them. I had 5 images selected to Getty / Flickr just a few months ago and before I could add more, they closed the artists picks for six weeks. From what I have read so far regarding this, and it hasn't been a lot, sounds like overall people make more money from images placed on Getty versus the micros. I'm not talking about per image sales, I'm talking their overall RPI for X amount of images on Getty versus X amount on the micros. Hope that makes sense. Thanks.

You have a link to upgrade to a pro account but it comes up with an empty window. You could at least email present contributors offering the upgrade and a 48 hour time frame rather than have us keep checking to see when it can be done...and you may get more takers that way.

We just wanted to give everyone an update.

We've made all of the necessary changes to the site that should free the restrictions on our paypal account. We have let Paypal know and they will be reviewing the changes we've made. Hopefully all will go well and we'll be back to normal within a number of hours.

Once the new changes go live to satisfy Paypal we will be waiting 1-2 days to roll out the new features that got us into this mess in the first place.

WARNING: For anyone who has been considering a pro-account with us this 1-2 day window is your last shot at getting in at the $20.00/year for your first year. When we launch the new updates we are raising our prices to a staggering $50.00/year. The big new feature launching is a very cool and very slick pro-store/page customization. Your own logo, choose a font, you own backgrounds, colours, etc.

Try the Zeiss ZE 100 f2 Makro...more expensive but the Zeiss optics leave Canon for dead

I find it unbelievable that a company will not pay you out for your royalties if you quit and have not reached payment threshold,  this is totally unethical if not illegal.

At least Veer pay out at the end of each year regardless...but then again...if they all did that they may need to drastically rethink their business plans which may count on most artists never getting paid out.

The site is new but it has blood on it's hands! StockXpert and the old Thinkstock have been bumped off.

Quote from: cclapper on February 03, 2010, 16:50

I also believe that Thinkstock has been around for quite awhile.

I didn't realize the name had been around already.  Still, the site in its current incarnation is new.

Well that's a lot more positive scenario than 'the end of macro rf is nigh' that was floating around earlier.

I should imagine there would be a macro artist revolution if they put our images on the sub site...I for one would stop submitting to Getty if that happened

Hey Loop,

 I was just messin with you but I am impressed by your reply I found out a bit of info for certain that they will not be moving any images from contributors that they will only stick to Holly owned when it comes to Macro RF being added to this new collection, along with other micro work they have recently acquired through their purchase of Jupiter. In a way this removes a great deal of competition from the old Getty site for Macro RF because people with content at Getty will no longer have their work hidden behind any holly owned stuff, it will all slowly move to the new sub site. Still have to wait and see.
 Seriously though Loop, if you wanta put a wager down drop me a PM, it will make a bit of fun out of all this guess work

Cheers,
Jonathan

Don't really see any quality RF macro images on there...just their wholly owned stuff and it all looks very micro to me