Obviously iStock see some value in creating these lightboxes, but I can't help but wonder if such things as these lightboxes and the currently languishing latest images feed are looked at by proportionally more contributors than buyers.

Quote from: djpadavona on August 11, 2010, 21:55

I'd believe it if Thinkstock actually had some clout.  Which they don't given their pitiful Alexa numbers.  They are growing, but their numbers are still laughably low.  SS was undercut by FT in my opinion 2 years ago.  The other agency sub plans seem to undercut SS too.  Everyone seems to want to blame Getty on this issue.  I bet they only wish Thinkstock had that type of industry power.

Here's another interesting statistic:
http://google.com/trends?q=istockphoto.com%2C+photos.com&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

Guess who owns photos.com?

I don't understand what Getty wants to achieve. Why do they direct buyers towards sub sites? It must bring less royalties to them and ofc also to us. The only plausible explanation is that they wanna eat into Shutterstock sales. But is SS really such a pain in the ass that they are prepared to sacrifice IS?

If you change the search term istockphoto.com to istockphoto or istock you get a very different graph, of course if you take the .com off photos.com the result is very different yet again!

A look at this weeks most popular may indicate otherwise, and may also 'refudiate' the exclusive best match bias too!

Maybe this is a hint:

� 2010 Crestock Corporation. A Masterfile company. All rights reserved.

Traveler69


http://www.stockxpose.com/photo/7334.html
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-1935592-cherries-in-a-basket.php

Quote

As laudable as your efforts are they are a mere drop in the ocean compared to images available the file sharing sites, which have been going since the 90s one way or another.

I'm sure most folks here will have their work freely distributed on them, I know I have, for example there are 5619 pages and counting on just one site, heroturko.org , and nothing seems to have been able to be done about them.

Have you found a best-selling image of yours on one of these sites? Maybe that's the difference. Once it happens to you, the threads that show on the board have a little more interest.

It's not that I never cared before...with having to work a full-time job to pay a mortgage, I don't usually have all day to sit and cruise the boards and play detective, even for my own work. Sometimes the threads float to the bottom before I even have a chance to see them. You can believe the Image Sleuth section is going to be noticed by me a little more now.

In the past couple of days I have spent hours on this, hours that could have been used to make real money. But this is costing all of us money, too. If someone needs help, you can be sure I will do my best to help and I would hope others would help me, as they have just done.

Maybe it just takes everyone looking out and helping everyone else on this matter.

OK off my high horse now. 

Yes I have found more than one of my best selling images packaged up with similars from others in one nice downloadable themed chunk on HeroTurko. But that is but one portal to a spiders web of mine of countless thousands of such bundles including many complete discs from getty and corbis etc etc. That they have not been able to stop this over many many years would indicate to me that I would be wasting my time trying to do anything about it. Before rapidshare and torrents from the mid nineties onwards every photodisc, Digital Vision etc. etc. cd was available through hotline and limewire or a few bucks to someone in the far east.

I have to report that there is a whole generation that believes that digital files are free game. Where I work, in a small design agency, we take on student work placements and their personal laptops are crammed full of unpaid for software, videos, images, songs, fonts etc. Like it or not, like shoplifting  and other forms of 'shrinkage' this is a cost of doing business in the digital world.

Wearing another of my hats as a manager of a moderately successful semi pro rock band that cost of doing business is so high that it's nigh on making it unsustainable to record anymore. Reviewers leak albums out before their release date and they are available as torrents that all but the most dedicated fans will help themselves to before the official stuff gets out. To add insult to injury many torrent sites will note the number of downloads.

The depth of this festering wound really does mean that the abuses on flicker, stolen images on others portfolios etc. that can be addressed are just scratching the surface. Fine if you do get a result, but in the micro world cost-benefit-wise are you really gaining anything?

And in the macro world when it comes to getty tracking down a misused image with its crawler and seeking thousands from the often unwitting small business owner who used one of the aformentioned students to design a website does the photographer get his commission?

Quote from: suemack on January 05, 2010, 03:06

Quote from: alias on January 04, 2010, 17:05

^ flickr is definitely allowed and lots of people have websites with galleries.

from the Photo.net tos
'You also grant us a perpetual non-exclusive worldwide royalty-free license to use, reproduce, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display your User Content on the Site and to promote the Site'

This section of Photo.net TOS does not seem to have any impact on whether you can or cannot display your stuff on Flickr.

But it probably does have relevance to the OP and iStock.

The charts haven't been working since IS stopped giving out exact dl figures of other peoples portfolios. That figure was probably the amount of dls so far in the month that they stopped.

There was a glitch last week that accidently deleted a heap of dollar bin files that hadn't sold in a month and when the were re-instated they acted as new uploads in as much as they appeared to be getting new ratings - that's probably why those 30 day new upload figures look odd. Otherwise those charts are still working within the limitations of the fuzzyness applied earlier this year.

Interestingly I've seen a Coca Cola advert on UK TV during summer using the same 'look' as the much commented on image so that look it must be out there in the general zeitgeist at the moment.

Im sick of the silly ignorant rejections. I sent a friend of mine 10 Images that were rejected for  You know   "Over filtered" the only thing I think they teach them. i dont use filters so It's always funny.   Anyway He's Exclusive and has all the little BS hats, crowns and stuff they give you. He submitted them and Bingo all 10 approved. there ya go. Your Mileage may vary. I'll just submit through Him from now on. for what they pay, Who in . are they Kidding?

Believe me, ignorant rejections are not in the sole ownership of non exclusives.

For example I posted in a thread on istock this week, I had a series of images of a stormy sea rejected for 'noise', this after a previous image of the same subject in a previous storm had been an IOTW and a  "punctum" finalist. I got them overturned and since then 3 were sent to 'vetta' and one was published in istocks recent coffee table charity book.

Only this week images made from the same source material to be in the same series as ones that sold in their thousands last year were rejected as non suitable for stock.

It's easy to be paranoid, but when you're dealing with poorly paid conveyer belt human inspectors snafus and stupidity is commonplace.

As for why a company may wish to stress white people in their advertising campaigns, that is an entirely different matter.  But I don't think it's as sinister as race bigitry.  They also don't usually feature overweight people, bald people, people with bad complexions, scares, etc.

That's why I don't have any self portraits in my portfolio   

I am constantly reading comments where photographers compair their work with Mac donalds Jobs, minimum wages, lifeguard jobs or security guards, etc.

I never thought about myself on such a low income level. I more compare my work and myself, my improtance and income to an academically educated batchelor or master.

Cheers, Lisa

Ah, well educated but no common sense.