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Messages - Holmes
26
« on: January 28, 2016, 03:27 »
istock will never run out of things to mess up
27
« on: January 13, 2016, 02:53 »
Great post Jo Anne!.
One other thing Getty did that helped sink them was their aggressive use of "extortion letters" that tried to bully anyone who may have taken an image off the web that was rights managed. Now, some may have been guilty, but many were not or made an honest mistake. Getty's recruited law firms demanded outrageous payments, many times the fee of the original usage, regardless of reasons or willingness to remove the images. This went on for years and may be still happening. The result was a worldwide association for designers and clients that Getty is an evil litigious, ruthless, empire and should be avoided.
I ran a large design firm and used photos of our work for our portfolio section of our website. The photos had been purchased for print. Getty found the images on our site and demanded over one hundred, thousand dollars in damages. (they never got a penny). I explained to them that the samples of my work gets me more business and then I can buy more photos from Getty. They just wanted their money.
I am sure many companies worldwide paid the extortion and Getty saw this as a significant source of income, but the damage to the Getty name is irreparable.
28
« on: December 23, 2015, 12:33 »
I have a 5DMII but jumped the III to the 5Dsr which I love. It appears to work better in low light and I love the large files for the fine art land and seascape I do. Mostly I shoot other stuff at the 28 mp size and not the 50 mp due to the slower workflow and the 28 is great for most things. The LCD is large and clear for me. I have not compared it to other cameras so dunno how it measures up but pretty happy with it.
29
« on: November 03, 2015, 21:14 »
the NEW search has been whacked for months so whacked is the NEW normal. typical ISGI. I took 40 shots of woman in a gym and five are on the first page of my NEW and the rest are grouped on page five. lots of older shots are showing before the new ones. go figure.
but at least they all seem to be there.
30
« on: October 03, 2015, 11:11 »
i get $400 per house for inside and out. $100 for drone and $100 for twilight. This is on the California coast with no strobe lights and natural looking HDR.
In the midwest with strobes and lots of layer processing they get about $150 per house. You need to be able to shoot when they call and have about 35 shots the next day since the house is staged and they want an open house. I do it for fun but guys making a living doing this do a few houses a day and work their butts off. It can be a grind. But I enjoy it since my main income is from Getty.
There are some Flickr groups for RE photography that are good to learn from. It is a special skill of working fast and knowing what agents want.
It can lead to working for builders and interior designers who often pay more.
31
« on: September 19, 2015, 22:45 »
can you keep stuff in focus with those cameras? I have a hard time shooting video with my Canon 5dM2 because I cannot see the focusing on my LCD with my 65 year old eyes. So I got a SONY HXR NX3. It does not do 4K but at least stuff is in focus.
I am not really into 4K now. Just to sterile. Good for landscape aerial i guess. Might change... dunno. Plus my UL bandwidth sucks. Hard to get even small files ULed to SS.
32
« on: September 17, 2015, 19:40 »
The logos... is sure that are little logos or not very relevant, i have accepted images in fotolia with logos that i forget erase (istock rejected this images and them i can see the logo on the aprovved image)
Nope, logos are VERY apparent.
33
« on: September 17, 2015, 19:39 »
Thanks for sharing.
What I'd really like to know is if this image is now in your CC library and if you you are part of a team CC subscription can the other team members use this image?
Dunno, I did not select to have my images etc go to the cloud (* hate that term) and It is just me at home doing post. But i imagine it could be as you have described with the click of a few check boxes.
34
« on: September 17, 2015, 12:26 »
My experience with buying photos from Adobe Stock
I had to upgrade to Lightroom/Photoshop 6 CC to get my new Canon 5Dsr 50mp files to open. (amazing camera btw).
When you launch the PS app, a splash screen appears pitching ADOBE STOCK. OK, so I thought I would give it a shot. The link navigates to the Search page where I put in surfing. I found a nice photo with a guy surfing and his board had many visible logos on it. BUT there was NO mention of editorial use only. There was NO mention of ANY restrictions for usage.
So I buy the photo for sale for $4.99 (40% off sale for a few days - Sub plans are offered). They only sell the largest file size. When I try to DL it, I find out that it will take 24 hours to process it. Since I just singed up I guess they need to verify me.
This morning, I found my file (not easily) and was able to download it. STILL no mention of ANY usage restrictions even though there are company logos all over the shot. AND it was out of focus (you cant zoom in on previews).
Alright, This morning I give it another go with the KW tennis and found a nice shot of a woman playing with the word HEAD clearly on the racket. No mention of ANY restrictions. Only one size. Buy button. I click. Immediate Download to my desktop. DONE. Nice shot and in focus for $4.99. No waiting.
Clearly, Adobe has decided to make buying photos effortless with ONE CLICK Downloads, NO USAGE RESTRICTIONS, NO EXTENDED LICENSE issues, ONE SIZE buying, right into Photoshop!
Could be a game changer.
35
« on: September 17, 2015, 11:48 »
Yep they nailed five of mine shot tastefully with a Playboy model (paid).
Once again, iStock/Getty is just SO desperate. I guess they have to find something to tell the board members when asked how they are fixing things.
admin edit: image removed to keep the site SFW ... although I agree it was a tasteful nude that wasn't very nude.
36
« on: August 30, 2015, 12:07 »
my iPhone shots don't have that mobile filtered look... maybe they should. 
37
« on: August 30, 2015, 03:20 »
Do your photos taken with mobile phones sell well? For the most part, mine do not. They are shot well with my iPhone but are offered in Small, Medium and Large sizes, and I believe buyers may know they are iPhone shots or are expecting the XL, 2XL and 3XL from my Canon Full frame.
I wonder if there is a trend for buyers at iStock to mostly buy photos that come in the larger sizes.
38
« on: August 28, 2015, 13:57 »
they most likely want to change the icons.
tell them $250 for the PSD
39
« on: August 27, 2015, 02:40 »
I just don't trust any of the executive people who run Dissolve anymore. That's the point.
SoIs this really worthy of a new thread. Didn't we already beat this horse to death?
40
« on: August 26, 2015, 10:41 »
i recently took all of my photos off
FAA
Crated
Viewbug
Image brief
500px
the ROI was not worth having my work stolen for web sites.
41
« on: August 20, 2015, 11:25 »
I bought the Phantom 3 DJI and used it last weak on a real estate photo shoot. Worked out great and plan to use on lots of stock still and video.
42
« on: August 01, 2015, 14:43 »
There is some serious revisionist history going on here - iStock's troubles did not come about because of price competition from Shutterstock, IMO
Shutterstock has been around since 2004 and has done nothing but increase its prices over time.
iStock was doing fine raising prices and introducing the Vetta collection (which I was initially very skeptical about) at first. Whether you agreed with every decision the editors made or not, you could see that the more expensive images were not the same as the cheaper ones.
Getty and their two private equity owners started down the road to the current mess when they jacked the prices up significantly, introduced the Agency collection and poured a bunch of old Getty stuff onto iStock - suposedly as "exclusive" even though it wasn't - charging even more (most went in as Agency). Anyone remember the flash picture of the bathroom door? The underexposed fruit slices with black bars down the side and so on?
You can't charge premium prices for content without the buyers understanding the difference between the price tiers. Looking at any search results, any buyer would be hard pressed to figure out why things are priced the way they are.
The reason? The private equity owners wanted out but couldn't given the state of the company and financial markets and so larded Getty with debt to pay themselves a "dividend" of over half a billion dollars.
The business was not able to soak both buyers and contributors to pay these leeches without suffering loss of designers, contributors and bucketloads of goodwill.
Getty/iStock have done this to themselves and Shutterstock has eagerly courted Getty's corporate customers, happily taking advantage of every eff up.
Getty then convinced themselves that the problem was price, and lurched into badly priced subscriptions and even worse one price for all on credit sales - driving away any small design firms they hadn't already lost.
If the problem was price competition, iStock would never have been the leader up until 2010/11 as the other sites were always cheaper. The big slide in iStock has only come since then when its primary competitor, Shutterstock, has only increased prices, not cut them.
* Snover! you know your stuff. thanks for filling in the blanks on my post:) question: what do you think of the current state of IS/getty and future prospects. it appears the futzing has stabilized for the moment. (did i really say that?)
43
« on: August 01, 2015, 12:47 »
I am very angry with istock for what has happened in recent years, istock doesnt care anymore exclusive artist, lots of exclusives turn to non-exclusive recent years, me too, because of exclusivity has no meaning anymore...
My revenus decrase 4-5 times in recent 2 years while I am in exclusive and now almost 10 times down since I left exclusivity....
I am very angry with istock because I feel like to be fired my job....
I am very angry with istock because istock doesnt care and listen contributors anymore...
I am very angry with istock because our works and efforts serving agencies at very tragic-comic prices and we all lost money...
getty bought IS and tried to raise pricing slowly for micro stock images. they had good intentions and benefited contributors for a while until Shutterstock gained more market share and awareness. getty miscalculated and was too aggressive in pricing and the product presentation got more confusing causing more buyer exodus. the whole idea, was to make more money for them and us... but subscriptions and cheaper pricing pretty much killed that initiative. it happens. getty went into panic mode and has been trying to establish its brand as a middle-stock content provider while competing with SS's price points. i see signs that the ship is slowing turning around. yep... we are all frustrated about IS/gettys downward slide from 2012 but that is how markets work sometimes. Now that shutterstock is a public company, i expect some blunders and aggressive behavior in their future as well....
44
« on: July 31, 2015, 10:52 »
and you would think by now, with all of their funding and planning,,, they would have some sort of dashboard for contributors by now. currently, you find out if you sold anything when they send you an email at the end of the month.
oh and let's not forget that they will let you use full size, un-watermarked clips for free and if you like them, THEN you can decide if you want to pay for them. i had a friend with a large design studio try to sign-up for that deal but Dissolve never replied the request.
45
« on: July 30, 2015, 14:09 »
Recently applied and was enthusiastically approved as a video contributor to Dissolve. Haven't signed the non-exclusive contract quite yet, and now I won't be unless this is sorted out. Selling at $50 is a fine choice for certain clips when the contributor portion is 50% or greater. Unless they can guarantee our clips will sell for no less that $80 or Dissolve increases contributor portions to 50%, they won't be getting clip one from us.
So while you guys continue scheming new ways to rip off your contributors, we'll be busy uploading to your competitors.
Exclusive clips are priced at $300 which i feel is too high for ALL the clips. Dissolve's marketing stragegy is a constant work in progress with a nice dose of desperation and confusion.
46
« on: July 30, 2015, 11:54 »
I asked them where they have purchased EL and I got a standard answer:
"Sorry, I removed the image I found on Google.
It is removed from the site."
*, I hate those sites, they take images without any clue to pay nothing. And after that only sorry sorry!
I think we would all be shocked if we actually knew the percent of stock images are snagged from Google Images. Depressing
47
« on: July 28, 2015, 20:37 »
I keep having the same problem. Need to reupload many times before it actually gets there.
What UL speed are you getting from your home. I am about 1.5 mbps which I think is the norm... I wonder if is us or them that is the problem... meaning, do those with better bandwidth have more success uploading. I will have 50 mbps up and down next year to my home... that will rock
48
« on: July 28, 2015, 20:08 »
bringing this up again...
I tried to UL video to SS but every time gets errors and fails....
anyone having success uploading video to SS??
i am using the FTP
49
« on: July 27, 2015, 14:14 »
Few years later than the much more affordable and usable Microstock Analytics but better late than never I guess?
They are Windows only, not Mac?
50
« on: July 19, 2015, 20:40 »
great footage john!!!
i just sent my new P3 pro back. After updating to firmware 1.2.6 it would not calibrate and would not fly.
looking at 3DR now.
hope to someday get some great footage like yours
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