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Messages - charged
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101
« on: October 16, 2019, 13:36 »
I cannot understand it, if the media says that the sanctions are against the government of Nicolas Maduro and they repeat it again and over again. This have been also said by Senator Marco Rubio and the same president of the United States of America Donald Trump. So why Adobe says that ordinary citizens and businesses are also sanctioned, I don't understand.
While the Right (mostly far-right) repeats the word "socialism" over and over again. Those same people don't realize(or maybe they do) they are contributing to the ongoing threat of increasing fascism in the US. These are the same type of companies and people that supported Hitler. Either from fear, ignorance, or willful intent.
I am neither left nor right, I am an ordinary person trying to survive in a socialist country that is going through a strong economic crisis with the greatest hyperinflation in the world. All this result may be due to the mismanagement of the economy by the government of Nicolas Maduro and former President Hugo Chavez. And in recent times to external factors, which have worsened the economic situation.
Is there some way you can "move" your account to some other country that isn't Venezuela? I have no idea. If I were you, I'd be spending my time figuring out if it is possible to move my account to some other country to avoid the sanctions.
102
« on: October 14, 2019, 14:56 »
Why didn't he get his operation in the UK if the care is better there and free?
Most likely because he could get it done faster in America. Universal healthcare is a safety net, it isn't unlimited health care at the snap of a finger. As far as I know, universal healthcare in all countries that have it, is rationed. The government has a certain budget each year for all its spending, it then decided what percentage to allocate to health care, then the public servants decided how much money to allocate to each type of medical procedure. For people who are lucky enough to be well do to in those countries, most likely they can purchase supplemental private insurance that allows them to get services in the private sector. They pay for the privilege to get more and speedier service. No different than driving on the freeway and paying a toll to drive in the fast lane. Or paying for expensive parking in the busy downtown district. People can have what they want if they want to pay more for it. Health care in the United States being tied to your employer is silly. It burdens the employer. It creates anxiety for the employees (if coverage is inadequate). There is all sorts of surprise billing post hospital visit. Most of the time people can not find out ahead of time what their procedure will cost because the system is designed to be foggy. The same procedure can cost up to 100x different from hospital to hospital within even the same city. The United States pays the most in health care per person of all countries, and yet in terms of health ranks poorly compared to other rich countries that spend 1/3-1/2 of the amount.
103
« on: October 12, 2019, 23:50 »
It's hard to fathom how tone deaf you have to be - how little you understand your contributor community - to post here about how you're taking a portion of profits to donate to charities (all of which I'm sure are most worthy).
Not once, but twice you've pleaded the business needed a larger share of the gross as your reason for cutting royalty payments to contributors (in the time I've been with Alamy).
From my perspective, that's our money that you have decided to donate to charities on our behalf. Don't expect me, and I suspect many other contributors, to feel good about that.
It doesn't really make much difference to me what organisations or people do with their profits. All stock agencies aim to make a profit. If Alamy decided to spend their profit on luxury yachts what difference would it make?.
The optics look terrible for them. How can they say they must cut commissions with one hand and with the other hand gloat what good people they are because they can afford to give money to charity?
104
« on: October 10, 2019, 16:16 »
I'd like to see a live stream of all the new images added each second 
105
« on: October 10, 2019, 15:13 »
how this could change IS and SS as well, as they are US companies?
Yes, I wondered this too, if Shutterstock was also closing accounts, or if it was just Adobe. I guess those in countries being sanctioned will only be able to work with istock (are they US or Canadian?) and a couple others. Which in itself is punishment. 
I've read a couple of different news reports where people were questioning if Adobe was being overly zealous in responding to the sanctions. Meaning, there could have been room for them to interpret the sanctions differently. Though sometimes it is better to be safe than sorry.
106
« on: October 09, 2019, 14:48 »
It is sad for Venezuela...Socialism at its finest or should I say at its worst. It our Dems in America win they are the new Socialist as they even state and brag about it these days. Look at Venezuela and for me I want no part of Socialism. As a side note I have done a lot of conceptual Socialism photos and they are selling very well. Some are pro and most are Anti....each sells but the anti sells the best. .
Would you accept disbanding social security for seniors, medicare for seniors? These are both HIGHLY popular social programs with the both the left and the right. They are social programs. If you were going to point to other counties as bad examples, how about Australia. Compared to the USA, Australia is a socialist country. Australia has gone 27 years and counting without a recession. Unemployment benefits there are unlimited, it never runs out. Universal healthcare is available to everyone. College education is highly subsidized and is available to everyone no matter how poor, and if you were poor enough the government not only cover your tuition, they give you money to live on while you go to school. Currently Australia is running a trade surplus. I think Australia as a country full of social programs is doing okay for itself.
107
« on: October 08, 2019, 18:08 »
VPN probably won't work because he still has to give paypal or bank account which are both revealing country where owner is from. But maybe is worth to try.
Skrill(moneybookers) does provide service to Venezuela
He also have to change his account to say he isn't from Venezuela. Not sure if Adobe Stock requires ID to proof one's country of residence? Anyway, I don't think Adobe would make it easy for people to fool them (but who knows). Sanctions are a form of arm twisting. They aren't meant to be easy to get around.
108
« on: October 08, 2019, 17:21 »
109
« on: October 08, 2019, 15:22 »
110
« on: October 02, 2019, 21:53 »
PSA. If you have a 2015-2017 mac laptop, you might want to call Apple to see if it is on their list of potential exploding batteries. I called them this morning and I was unlucky enough to be one of those customers. They said it takes the service center a week to fix it. You will be denied boarding planes if you have one of these laptops with you.
Edit: Apple called me back to say they double checked after my call and my laptop is not one of those affected.
I'm happy for you.
But how does Apple know which laptops are or are not affected? Is it by serial number? I have a 2015 MacBook Pro, so it's important to me too.
Yes serial number
111
« on: October 02, 2019, 10:34 »
PSA. If you have a 2015-2017 mac laptop, you might want to call Apple to see if it is on their list of potential exploding batteries. I called them this morning and I was unlucky enough to be one of those customers. They said it takes the service center a week to fix it. You will be denied boarding planes if you have one of these laptops with you.
Edit: Apple called me back to say they double checked after my call and my laptop is not one of those affected.
112
« on: October 01, 2019, 00:54 »
BackBlaze is USELESS IF YOU TRAVEL!
I spent 3 months getting a full 4TB of data backed up to BackBlaze. Thought I was in good shape...
Then I took our recent trip and discovered just how wrong I was! Because the main disk at home is not traveling with me, it has not connected to the web for 30 days. BB just deletes the disk in that case. No chance to recover it. No chance to flag a disk as "keep it even if off the net for awhile." Just gone.
I deleted my BackBlaze account. Totally useless piece of junk if you travel as I do. I am out of the country roughly 3 months of each year. Gone for more than 30 days at a time, and kiss your precious backup goodbye.
I will be home in a couple weeks, and then will search for some usable cloud backup that won't just delete a disk because its main computer is roaming...
Backblaze is a great product at a really great price. I have 3TB on their cloud and I only pay $6 a month for peace of mind. If you can afford to travel away from home for a really extensive amount of time, I'd say you can probably afford to have 2 accounts with backblaze. I had 2 accounts for a while. One account is for home computer and the other account is for travel computer. So in that case your data is always backed up. I'm also periodically away from home for months at a time but that isn't typical for most people. So I assume backblaze's 30 day thing works for most people. I'm really commenting to come to backblaze's defense. I really like the product. In your case, what you could do is probably just pay for web hosting space. Use a FTP program to sync your hard drives automatically to the cloud every day, or do it manually. In this scenario your data on the cloud would not be deleted ever. There is no 30 day no sync automatic deletion here.
113
« on: September 29, 2019, 17:41 »
If you are on a Mac, as far as I know spotlight (command + space) knows the metadata on all your files, because it has pre-indexed them. So just use spot light to search for what you are looking for.
Else use Adobe Bridge. Navigate to the parent folder of all your photos. Then go to the menu, view > show items from subfolders. Then this will load ALL your images, could take a while if you have a lot. Once loaded go to the top right corner of Bridge app and look for the search bar. Make sure it is set to BRIDGE SEARCH CURRENT FOLDER. Then type in your search. This part might be quick, because Bridge has either finished indexing your images or it is going through them now. At some point Bridge will return the images you searched for.
114
« on: September 29, 2019, 10:44 »
Malachy McCourt once said, Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
While it is not easy, we all have the ability to choose our reactions to someone else's words or actions. We don't have to choose to be offended.
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Meanwhile, I don't personally find his blog useful to me in an economic sense, our work just don't overlap at all. BUT I do find his his stats interesting out of a curiosity point of view. I'd say keep sharing. I don't see a problem with him putting a donate button. People do donate for all sort of things. Youtube creators have people who donate to them. So do video game streamers. I've seen donations of $50-$100 a pop on the live youtube streams.
115
« on: September 24, 2019, 23:09 »
Now the pace is 1,413,091 new stock images added weekly? I thought the similar rejections would curb the flood.
That is 2.33 files accepted by Shutterstock every second. 201,870 files accepted every single day.
116
« on: September 22, 2019, 09:37 »
Just wondering how I can upload vector files to iStock and have the IPTC/XMP keyword metadata read upon upload?
I did a test this morning. My JPG file already had keyword metadata added by Adobe Bridge. DeepMeta was successful in reading the metadata. While esp.gettyimages.com did not read the metadata. How do I get esp.gettyimages.com to read the metadata? Yes I understand I have already discovered a workable path via DeepMeta. I'm more just exploring my options right now. Sometimes I prefer to use esp.gettyimages.com for different reasons.
Edit: I just tried putting the keywords also in the metadata of the eps file and esp.gettyimages.com also did not read it from there either. So perhaps there is no way to get esp.gettyimages.com to read the metadata for vectors. Thus DeepMeta seems to be the only way.
117
« on: September 21, 2019, 11:12 »
In addition to these, there is also the technology called 'deep fakes', where you replace someone's face in video, apparently that tech is already 'mildly' passable for realism. But they think within a few years it will be impossible to tell it is a fake. And the tech is also mildly passable for faking other people's voices, over time that tech will get much better too.
Yes for sure at some point the agencies will have millions of realistic images and videos that is entirely generated by software. Why wouldn't they? Once the technology is figure out, the cost of production falls to the mere costs of electricity.
Though if you think about it some more, at some point you might not even need stock photo websites. Why not just have a camera look at you, you do the pose you want, and the software recognize what you are doing and generates a photo of a beautiful person doing your pose, and you have the image you want.
118
« on: September 20, 2019, 15:24 »
Saw on esp.gettyimages.com just now. Copied and pasted below.
---------------
Update to contributors on spike in returns on August statements.
just now
There were a number of licenses from one of our distribution partners, Canva, that were refunded on the August 2019 royalty statements and then re-reported at a corrected amount. There were two reasons for this:
1. Some Canva licenses of Essentials images were reported using the incorrect currency (USD instead of AUD). These were initially reported on the June 2019 statement, and corrected on the August 2019 statement.
2. Throughout 2018 to July 2019, a number of other Canva licenses were reported incorrectly to us at double the actual revenue. This resulted in an over-payment of royalties to contributors. These were corrected on the August 2019 statement.
In both examples, contributors impacted by this would see the original license removed and the correct relicense amount reported, which will be lower than the original license. All refunds appear in red on the royalty statement.
If you are seeing a number of refunds associated to Canva, we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused and for not notifying you in advance. Were looking to our processes to try to ensure we can avoid this kind of issue in the future.
The Getty Images Contributor Relations Team
119
« on: September 19, 2019, 21:54 »
Can anyone help me? I want to contact support and ask them a question but I can't seem to find how. I always end up in their faq section.
Right at the bottom of the FAQ page is their link to 'contact us'.
At this moment, however, ticking on that link leads to an error message:
"Oops! An unexpected error has occurred.
The error may be transient but has been logged. If you continue to encounter problems, you can contact customer support.
Click here to contact customer support."
Hahaha, obviously that link just comes round to the error message again, as the error page is the 'contact cusotmer support' page.
Try later or tomorrow!
Later: now working: https://accountmanagement.gettyimages.com/Help/SupportTicket
Thanks for your help, but I still can't get anywhere. I must be doing something wrong. I go to that page and choose the "Royalty Statements and Download Counts" category but then from there I can just see some canned answers and I don't see a way to actually send them a message.
They may or may not read emails at this email address. I have no idea. [email protected]. Or on this link you tried, https://accountmanagement.gettyimages.com/Help/SupportTicket]https://accountmanagement.gettyimages.com/Help/SupportTicket try submitting your question under Technical/Site Issues. Or here https://www.gettyimages.com/customer-support and click on email. Though this link is meant for customers and not contributors.
120
« on: September 19, 2019, 17:00 »
I'd really like for someone to explain this to me.
9 Canva Sales netting me .60 each - all on Aug 22
all corresponding with ...
9 Canva refunds costing me -.86 each - all on Aug 14
It seems last month Canva negotiated a lower rate that applied retroactively too all sales from all previous months. Hence the large refunds and repurchase at the lower rate. My guess anyway.
121
« on: September 19, 2019, 08:27 »
It is not possible to make more than 10% of a living from stock media
$25K a month is 10% of a living?! You must have some fancy tastes!
Nobody believes when people boast of huge earnings. It's obvious they're just trying to boost their ego and probably only earn a few dollars every now and then
Perhaps you weren't around in the mid to late 2000s. $25k a month OR MORE was definitely possible for many of iStock's top sellers back during that time. For a period of time you could see total sales per contributor and you could guess at their earnings from that. Even when the downloads number went into a fuzzy number, you could still guess by looking at the fuzzy number change over time. Now that number is no longer public. There is someone on this forum whom at the time I was guessing was probably making $500,000 per year from selling photos.
122
« on: September 18, 2019, 13:43 »
The best month I ever had was last October when I made just over $25K (I'm primarily video). I was blown away, since I really only do this part time when I feel like it.
I haven't made that much in a month since, but an average month for me now is about $12K.
You just have to find a niche and do your best filling it while not overlooking other subjects. But stay away from subjects that are already heavily saturated. Don't waste your time. I think my strength is seeing shots that most others would overlook. I'm always scanning my surroundings for ideas. If I don't have my camera with me, I take notes in my phone for later.
There's still room in this business, you just have to be persistent.
And no, I'm still not "full time" yet. Maybe soon.
$12k per month is a lot of money. You don't link to your account (and neither do I), so I can't just see for myself what you do. "If" you feel comfortable, could you talk in very vague terms what kind of videos you do, and/or, what is your production budget. Once upon a time many years ago, for a few months I pulled in $25k a month from photos, I don't even make half that anymore. Though times! Back then I was also spending $100k a year on production costs. Now that I own so much stuff, my on going costs now is mostly studio rent and model costs. So a fraction of what I used to spend. If I were to sum up what I've learned in the last number of years since prices started plummeting, it is automation is so important. Over the years I've spent a lot money on custom software that automate as many things that I need to do on the computer as possible. Basically as my earnings keep falling year on year, I keep learning to cut costs from automation. At my peak I use to have 7 freelancers who did post production work for me. Most of that work is all now done by software.
123
« on: September 18, 2019, 13:31 »
I don't sell on Adobe Stock but I did watch the webinar. I wondered a lot why they don't have a controlled vocabulary system like Gettyimages. CV would do away with problems that seems to come up with different ways of spelling words and phrases and would make translation much easier. CV would be a pain in the butt to setup, but once setup would be a more reliable way to search (IMHO).
Also I wondered a lot about the putting the most important top 10 keywords first. That would be a pain in the butt to do manually for all images. Keywording is already time consuming enough as it is, without spending time thinking about which 10 keywords is even more important. In fact in my own experience selling on iStock, I've actually noticed that I had no idea which words customers use the most to find my own images, not until I started spending time looking at the landing page for each of my images and look at the keyword order that has been rearranged by iStock in order of searches. Since I only sell on iStock I could be quite biased, but I think their method of doing A/B testing on keywords and organically figuring out which ones are more important is a better method than the contributor choosing which ones. That is the entire point of A/B testing, that customers know best.
I also thought that when there are 50 keywords all keywords are flat vs 49 keywords or less, then keywords are weighted. Seems not smart. A/B testing would have solved this quirk. There is no need to assume someone is spamming if they have 50 keywords vs 49 if you just did A/B testing.
Anyway, these are just my uneducated thoughts.
124
« on: September 18, 2019, 13:17 »
I posted this link before, newer new studio, he owns the building and it's larger. 2017 - https://www.mystockphoto.org/yuri-arcurs-new-studio/
Nice building, from the outside. Good for him. Jealous. From this link, it reads like he is doing just fine. http://arcurs.com/2017/03/were-back/I was also looking at min wage in South Africa. It is something like $1.50USD per hour. Of cause models would earn much higher, I can hardly believe how cheap it can be in SA. Good for him to relocate to somewhere much cheaper. I personally wouldn't do it. I'm lucky enough to live in the first world, and that is where I'm staying.
125
« on: September 18, 2019, 09:40 »
I guess no one bothered to look at Yuri's Instagram account. He was looking for "new faces" for his portfolio. The address listed for the casting call was in Cape Town.
Good find, now we know he is still doing stock photos. Lots of nice pics on his IG.
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