On the plus side, it shows in a very public way the difference between a family snap and what a pro portrait photographer would produce.

On the down side, "If it's good enough for the royal family..." - why pay for a pro?

I imagine they just saw a nice pic and thought it might be nice to share with the general public, who will lap it up.  For the royals, this is their equivalent of putting a photo on facebook to show their friends.

Quote from: Silken Photography on July 30, 2013, 18:27

Done! 

The update sounds great, although would it be possible to throttle the upload as well?  My husband gets annoyed when I completely kill our internet by flooding it when uploading.

I don't know how complicated that is to implement, so don't worry too much about it if it's too much for now, I can work around it (I already do when uploading to our smugmug account) but it'd be nice to have.

just got confirmation that it can be done with the new library! i can define a speed limit for each upload slot. given that we have 8 slots, if you upload in parallel mode then if you want to upload at a max of 400 kbps you can set a limit of 50 for each slot..

Oh that's just ace, thank you! 

Thanks for the recommendation for netlimiter as well.  I'm going to take a look and see if that'll help with other programs I use that like to hog all the bandwidth.

Done! 

The update sounds great, although would it be possible to throttle the upload as well?  My husband gets annoyed when I completely kill our internet by flooding it when uploading.

I don't know how complicated that is to implement, so don't worry too much about it if it's too much for now, I can work around it (I already do when uploading to our smugmug account) but it'd be nice to have.

I got sucked in by my desire to have a top-notch carry-around camera and all the good reviews and my pre-order came in yesterday.  So far, so good, but I haven't had much chance to really play with it as I've worn the battery down twice already, and I have to do this other small thing called a paying job.  Anyone else looked at one or picked one up? 

The best camera is the one you have with you...

Of course mobile phones will never replace DSLR while camera technology works the way it does (who's to say what the next camera technical revolution will be though).  But they have different purposes.  If all you ever want to do is upload snaps to facebook et al, why bother with a DSLR?  You could probably even print reasonably decent small photobooks with mobile camera shots.  A mobile phone can replace a DSLR for a lot of people, regardless of the technical differences.

I bought my first DLSR because I felt frustrated with the limitations of my point'n'shoot.  I simply couldn't capture what I saw in my head with those, and my DSLR gives me worlds more creative range.  I have no plans to give up my DSLR and have a lot of fun with it.  But I still carry a p'n's, or take photos on my phone if I don't have it to hand, because often even a lower quality photo is better than no photo at all.  Indeed, most photos on my cat photo blog are mobile uploads, often poor quality low-light shots, but the characters still show through and that's the point in that instance.  I have photos that make me smile, and for that purpose I'm not too concerned where they came from, as even if I can't print them I have other ways of displaying and enjoying them.

I shouldn't comment but this is niggling me.  How can 70% of your 20 photographers be in the top 10 in the world?

More relevant to the topic - There are a lot of interesting trends to watch in this industry.  Mobile photography will definitely have a place, a good eye can do a lot with a small camera and the technology will only improve, but you are limited to editorial when selling any with people.  And one trend I've seen in forums is buyers saying they want "real people", but they can't find any "good" ones, and it turns out that often "real people" doesn't really mean real at all.  Although consumers are starting to turn against overly air-brushed and plastic looking models, I'm not sure they're ready to face the other extreme of actual real people, warts and all (sadly and wrongly in my opinion, but that's the world we live in).

I know that one!  Top song.

I think if anyone is going into something new, having little or no experience in it, and immediately worrying about how much money they'll make, they're already doomed to failure.

When did creative endeavors become so focused on the numbers before the craft? Maybe it was always like this, I'm just noticing it more today.

Instead of worrying about how many images you need, how about worrying about learning your craft and getting good at what you do. And enjoying it. The number one thing I read around here when it comes to people wanting to leave the business is burning out on image production. If you don't love what you're doing long before you decide to make an income from it, you're in for a long, hard road ahead.

Is stock photography necessarily that much of a "creative endeavour"?  It can be for some, probably many of us, but if you're serious about it then it should primarily be a business where you find your niche and then you target it, regardless of what your creative spirit might prefer you to do.  I know times have changed significantly but isn't that what Yuri did?  Focussing on numbers first is good business sense in any industry, I suspect it just feels a bit alien as many of us (myself included) approached it the other way around (ie, arse-backwards in the business world! Making images and having fun first, then numbers later).

Mebe sounds like an experienced photographer who looking to diversify revenue streams by branching out into stock.  S/he asked a perfectly reasonable question to try to find out if it was even worth their time.  It's not like $50 a month, generally speaking, is an extraordinary amount of money.

Mebe - I haven't made $50 per month but I'm not too far off it in the last six months, across 11 sites with 100-200 images with no people, although only the top six sites have been worth anything, and they match the top six in the poll on the right.  The kicker as someone else said, is the payout limits, which I've only hit on Shutterstock and iStock.  Stock is very finicky and you have to pixel-peep to ensure your quality is absolutely spot on, which may be a change from the photography you know, but I've found that learning curve interesting and useful.  Your old photos may not be up to scratch because of this though.  Do listen to rejections when you get useful feedback, but don't take them to heart and not every rejection will make sense, but some will and give you something to learn.  Definitely make use of an English dictionary for your titles, descriptions, and keywords.  Be warned it will be time-consuming.

My husband had a job as a software engineer at a company once. They never got around to fixing the billing system properly, just added quick fixes. After a couple of years it was so buggy that my husband had to spend 28 hours every end of month going through and correcting the numbers manually. If he didn't do that, no bills were sent. No one else had any clue what to do. He complained monthly, but the bosses said there were no time or money to do decent repairs.
When he quit, they kept paying him full salary for more than a year to do these 28 hours/month, while they hired 4-5 people to make a brand new billing system on the side.

I think something similar is happening with the PP-payouts. The person who knows what to do has quit, fallen ill, or died. Or maybe he just took a vacation. If he gets back to work, we will get our money. If he died, it will probably take a year or so before we get anything.

It may not be a "he", but yes, I've seen similar situation happen plenty of times.  Bean counters the world over don't seem to understand the importance of regular feeding and watering of your IT infrastructure; you can't just continually bolt new things onto a building and expect the underlying foundation to take all the extra weight it was never designed to bear forever.

It seems they run thus stuff live...you'd think a company of their size has an internal test server that is a clone of their system

Test systems are rarely the size and complexity of the live systems.  They should be, but you need invest time and money to make them that way, and the IT department need to be given both by upper management to do that.

I must admit, when this topic first started, I thought it was a bit premature, but 5 days into July it's beyond a joke.  But I'm only complaining because I'm impatient - I decided to wait until May's PP came in before I claimed my first istock payout.  I do feel for people who are relying on this, I'd be livid if my employer delayed paying my my weekly salary.

There is definitely something going on with the old data. You just have to put your mind at ease and think deeper about it, especially the part where I mentioned whiskey.

For example, now when I go on a hiking trip with the camera, I make sure I delete all old images from my memory cards.  Why to carry all extra weight?

Ok, I'm going to assume you're trolling.  I was just trying to put people's minds at ease, but whatever.

Quote from: Ron on June 27, 2013, 15:53

Why give up a $60K day job for something completely unsustainable?

you couldn't pay me 60K per year to take a day job.

I'd give up my day job, which pays considerably more than that, in a heartbeat to work on photography full time, if I didn't have other priorities that I want even more than being a full-time photographer.  Repairing and renovating our currently flood-damaged and otherwise crazy-layout house so we have a cosy home to live in for the rest of our lives is one of those priorities, the other is private but very important to me.  Oh, and since I was an irresponsible young adult and currently have practically no pension, I should probably get a bit more money into that first (oh, the excitement!).

I'm hoping in ten years or so I can give up the day job, take that hit in income as I know photography will never provide an equivalent, and work my butt off making a living in photography, but from what I've seen so far I doubt it'll be microstock that provides that living for me when I do.

I would resubmit the image with a note saying that this file was previously rejected for copyright, but that it's a private swimming pool and a no brand toy, so there's nothing in it that under copyright. 

The rejection may have been a mistake.  It happens sometimes.