MicrostockGroup Sponsors


Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - morning.light

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 [6]
126
General Stock Discussion / Re: Sales Are Down Every Where
« on: January 22, 2013, 15:15 »
I'm not sure if my opinion counts as I'm a beginner and have a tiny portofolio, but for some reason my sales on Fotolia went to 0. I used to sell a few pictures a week when I had like 30 pictures online, but now even though I uploaded more than 100  pictures, I haven't sold anything in almost 2 months there.

On Shutterstock I had daily sales in December. Then it died on 23 December and had 0 sales until yesterday.

127
Shutterstock, Fotolia and Dreamstime are taking weeks to  review my pictures. I know this is normal after the holidays, but I was wondering how long will it take until everything goes back to normal.

128
Shutterstock.com / Re: is SS back in focus?
« on: January 20, 2013, 14:35 »
I had a rejection a few days ago that almost made me die laughing. The picture's title was BLURRY abstract shapes and it got rejected because it was blurry  :D

129
Newbie Discussion / Hello everyone!
« on: January 07, 2013, 18:35 »
I'm not 100% new as I've been posting questions for a while here, but I want to get to know the people on this forum a bit more, therefore I think you should know a bit about me too. So, I want to use this post to introduce myself and also to thank everyone for all the help.

My name is Cristina and I'm from Romania ( yes, Dracula's country ). I'm 23 years old and I started liking photography since I was a small kid. I never put too much effort into it though, I just learned the basic stuff, bought a decent camera and was happy like that until last year, when I suddenly got some money from a scholarship. Then I remembered I read some things about stock photography maaaany years ago and thought I should buy a better camera and try to actually get some money out of my hobbies, as I'm just a poor poor student >.<

So I bought a Canon EOS 550D and started reading everything related to stock photography. This was happening 3 months ago. In the past 3 months I managed to get accepted between 20 and 100 pictures on most sites ( except Istock ), got accepted by Shutterstock and made around 10 dollars  :D  All these wouldn't have been possible without this forum, so I want to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart.

So this is my short story. Nice to meet you all!

130
I'm more confused now. I can understand it if they say it in the rules, but they say this on the rules page:

Quote
Submissions must NOT contain any copyrighted material including paintings, other copyrighted photos, copyrighted logos, or any other art/advertisements/sculptures/exhibits or audio which are copyrighted. If submitted material contains any of these or other types of copyrighted content, you must either submit releases from the copyright owners or you must mark the images as editorial.


So the postcards should be ok the way I see it. But apparently I don't see things right, because it's not only about the postcards. I tried uploading some pictures of a famous building in Japan and marked it as editorial, because that's what it said in the rules:

Quote
Editorial - These photos cannot be used for commercial purposes without securing additional rights. They include large crowds of people when it is impossible to get a photo release from each person in the crowd. It also includes buildings that are copyrighted, cars with copyrighted designs, and any photo with a copyrighted logo or property in it.


The pictures were rejected, and the reason was: This is not an editorial image. See http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/ viewtopic.php?t=40005

And that link is dead by the way.

I don't get it anymore...they're denying their own words! Someone, please explain these rules to me...because I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown  :-\

131
I've seen several images of old pictures or old postcards on microstock websites, and I was happy there is a way to sell something like that, as I have a small collection of very old postcards. But then I found a topic on the Shutterstock forum where a member was asking if he can upload his old postcards collection. This was the admin's answer:

Quote
You must OWN the copyright for every single thing you upload. There are some collectors out there who have wholesale bought copyrights from old images. They are uploading them - because they own the copyright. They found the estate that owns them, and purchased the rights.

 If you don't own the copyright, you can't upload it.

 We DO NOT accept public domain images.

 Uploading public domain images - or any image for which you do not own the copyright for - will result in a permanent ban from Shutterstock. There are no exceptions.



Now, I don't get it...why can you upload pictures of products and copyrighted trademarks and sell them as editorial, but you can't do the same thing with some very old and rare postcards? I'm really confused...


Sorry if the question is stupid but I'm just a beginner trying to understand the big microstock world >.<

132
General Stock Discussion / Do collages sell well?
« on: December 22, 2012, 15:57 »
I lived for an year in Japan and managed to shoot a lot of unique pictures, the problem is that I used a normal digital camera. The quality is not so bad, but a lot of noise is visible when viewed at 100%. I resized a few at the minimum acceptable size and managed to get around 5 of them accepted at Fotolia and Dreamstime, but I still have a lot of beautiful pictures, and it breaks my heart to just leave them die in some forgotten folder.

So today this came through my mind. What if I make some collages with them? Each picture would be small enough so the noise wouldn't be visible anymore, but the overall picture size and quality would be ok. The problem is, I don't know how well collages sell and I can't find much info about this ( only some very old topics >.< ). I'd be grateful to hear your opinions on this!

133
I see! I'm glad this crossed my mind, I was about to upload a lot of pictures...and most of them are not very very special I suppose.

I've all but stopped uploading for the year and will resume again in Jan / Feb when sales are generally pretty good again.


Oh, so sales are bad in January too?

134
General Stock Discussion / Are sales in december usually fewer?
« on: December 13, 2012, 16:40 »
Hey there! I got into microstock recently so I don't know what's normal for the holidays. Are the sales usually fewer in december? I just got accepted by Shutterstock and I want to upload my whole portofolio, but I'm afraid not many people will buy images now and I'll lose the "new pictures" advantage until January. What should I do?

135
General - Stock Video / Re: Pond5 video review time?
« on: December 03, 2012, 15:51 »
I see, thank you everyone for answering!

136
General - Stock Video / Re: Pond5 video review time?
« on: December 03, 2012, 14:02 »
Thank you for your detailed answer! Do you happen to know how long is the usual review time for videos?

137
General - Stock Video / Pond5 video review time?
« on: December 03, 2012, 12:55 »
I sent my first 30 videos to Pond5 about a month ago and there's still no reply. I know that video reviews can last longer but...a month!? Is this normal for Pond5?

138
They accepted me on the first application! I'm still shocked as I'm no genius photographer or something.

I bought my first DSLR and began shooting stock pictures just 2 months ago. Istock rejected my application so I thought I should send some pictures to Shutterstock too so I could improve my pictures based on their rejection reasons. And yesterday when I checked my email...I had the biggest shock of my life to see that 9/10 of my pics were approved ( only one was rejected for copyright issues ). I still think it's some kind of prank and I'm waiting for them tell me that I'm not actually a real contributor or something  :o Either that or the reviewer was drunk.

139
@sbonk: Thank you for your answer! I aim to get to 1000 images in 1-2 years but was scared it wouldn't be enough even then. I keep reading that even people with thousand of images are not happy with their income, but as I didn't know what expectations they have, I thought it would be safer to ask before getting depressed.

140
General Stock Discussion / What income should a beginner expect?
« on: October 12, 2012, 05:37 »
Hello there!

I started microstock a while ago and I have around 50 images on Fotolia and Dreamstime ( will try to get accepted by istock and shutterstock soon too ). I know 50 images are not enough to jump to conclusions, but I can't help noticing I barely have a few sales once every few weeks. So I was wondering, how many pictures do you need to have online to start seeing some nice income? And by "nice income" I don't mean getting rich or getting a lot of money.  I know most of the people who shoot microstock want to be able to live on this income, but I'm just a student who's doing this for fun and wouldn't mind some pocket money. Let's say, even 100$ every 2-3 months would be ok for me, at least until I finish university.

Is that possible without having thousand of images online?

141
Photo Critique / Re: Confused about font use
« on: October 05, 2012, 14:10 »
Thank you for the answer!

I used the Midnight font (downloaded from fontspace.com )

They say "Personal use only, no commercial use."  :(


And I'm still a bit confused. Let's say I buy some font. If I sell an image with that font in it, will the buyer have to pay for the font as well?

142
Photo Critique / Confused about font use
« on: October 04, 2012, 11:12 »
Hello!

I just got into microstock recently, but I'm confused about copyright laws and other rules. For example,  I have a picture of a pretty road sign and I modified it in photoshop. I erased the original text and wrote some interesting text on the sign that might make it sell. Then I realized I'm confused about 2 things:

1. Can pictures like these get accepted? It's not a vector, it's just a modified picture with text on it.
2. I shouldn't be able to sell it if the font is not mine and can't find any way to buy it right? What do people who use fonts in their works usually do?


Sorry for the newbie questions >.<

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 [6]

Sponsors

Mega Bundle of 5,900+ Professional Lightroom Presets

Microstock Poll Results

Sponsors