Quote from: Firn on June 03, 2020, 03:19

Quote from: Desintegrator on June 02, 2020, 19:07

Quote from: Anja_Kaiser on June 02, 2020, 19:05

Just a little remark - on the positive side, this time:
In our German speaking forums, someone's started jotting down the total amount of images available on Shutterstock at a given time. (You get the data in real time, if you use the search box without entering a keyword.)
Between yesterday in the morning (MET) and now (1:52 am) - so, a little more than 12 hours - almost 140,000 images have been deleted or disabled. Not (yet) enough to hurt them, but sure for a clear signal in their direction.

And you can add that on a normal day it should be rising by about 200.000. Let's say, by 100.000 in half a day.

It has been a around 170.000 images that have been deactivated or deleted between yesterday and today, if my math is correctly, but despite people deleting/deactivating images, there are still more images added daily than deleted.
I seriously doubt that Shutterstock cares. The number has been growing way too fast anyways and you could tell from the yearly sales reports that it has no real influence on SS's income and contributors' earnings. More images in the database simply does not mean more customers/sales. Customers still buy the images they need and whether they have a selection of 1000 images of sunflowers or 10.000 images to pick from makes no difference to them. They'll find one suitable among 1000 already, they don't need a selection of 10.000.
That's why I feel like, as long as the overall number of images is still going up, SS will not really care. They might even welcome the slower growth. The recent changes in the similar image rules and, at least what I hear from other contributors, overall more stricter reviews, make it seem like gaining as many new images as possible is not their prefered strategy anymore.

From what I see, Sutterstock's image database schrunk with roughly 300.000 images since end of May, which is peanuts by the way.

I think you are right with your assumption on Shutterstock betting that their existing database, which is highly competitive in nearly every segment, is fine as it is to cover existing demand. The rejection issues that many contributors experienced over the last past months, and the passive attitude from Shutterstock on that matter really says a lot. They don't want that massive growth anymore. We all gave them a big fat cow and they decided it's time to milk it very aggressively.

For newer content and coverage of new trends, I think they will rely on selected top contributors by offering them different and more rewarding deals.

You have to take into account a couple of things. There is a pipeline of images in the review queue that were probably there before thus announcement. So you are seeing those approvals replace the deletions. Also, many contributors are still unaware of the changes SS made and will keep uploading until such a time a flag is raised. When they start to notice significantly lower payouts they will try to find out why and learn of Shutterstock�s money grab. I think we will see a consistent reduction of quality assets over the coming months. Many contributors will stay. But I doubt these will be the ones who produce high value assets and know how to shoot on current trends and create marketable work. A good chunk of those kind of contributors will kill their ports. And the pipeline that will replace the quality work being deactivated will, for the most part, be garbage. Like the thousands of pot images, etc. For SS to retain good commercially viable content they will be forced to make special deals, like Getty did with Yuri. So while we may not see massive reduction in collection count we will see a massive reduction in collection quality, minus the special deal ports.

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on June 02, 2020, 23:29

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on June 02, 2020, 21:05

Quote from: zstoimenov on June 02, 2020, 19:25

Edit: I expect them to hide the portfolio disable buttons next.

I'm surprised they didn't do it already. Even more surprised they didn't disable it right before they announced the change. ...

I was fully prepared for them to take away the on/off switch, but as I see how many people are disabling portfolios - I watched the number of photos drop by 70,000 in a half an hour this afternoon while I was tweeting some #BoycottShutterstock stuff - it dawns on me that the more we disable, the less likely they are to remove the control.

At some point, it becomes in their interest to leave them enabled if they believe they can talk contributors into restoring images. Come the end of June they'll have more financials to report and an image count. They may not want to fess up that they inspired a boycott and only have a small growth or a decline in the collection. Also, it would force contributors to choose to close their accounts or delete images if the button were gone - all much more work to manage than the on/off switch.

As they couldn't manage the code to get royalties into the correct columns after the change, they may not want to make things more complicated for engineering than it needs to be

I doubt they've budged from their dictator approach. They're removing forum and Facebook posts, banning people, not responding in the forum, etc. I still think they're working on whatever they can do to squash contributors including disabling the buttons. Gotta show us peons who's boss even if it hurts them.

They have removed multiple Facebook posts of mine and I didn�t even cuss.

Their trustpilot *from customers* is atrocious.

But realistically the only way is to talk to the buyers.  Commenting on their own FB etc will do nothing.  They expect it, theyre ready for it and they're already deleting posts as fast as they can.  You need to g direct to the buyers.

And yes, use TOR and other anonymous tools - they ARE actively culling accounts of people who speak out (and it seems keeping the earnings).

And how do we reach a large percentage of the roughly 200k contributors? Maybe 5000-6000 are aware today. If 100k were aware (or more) and willing to deactivate ports THAT would impact both the 330m images and also buyers. To me the way we control SS is thru content because WE own that part of their business. Some contributors who don�t follow MSG or SS forums or SS FB will recognize a drop in income and perhaps become curious as to why and do some homework. But a lot really never understand what happened unless we can reach them.

Quote from: Noedelhap on May 31, 2020, 12:05

Quote from: Clair Voyant on May 31, 2020, 10:36

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on May 31, 2020, 03:10

Quote from: Clair Voyant on May 30, 2020, 17:01

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on May 30, 2020, 16:39

This garbage is just like Getty closing Sean Locke's & Rob Sylvan's (and others) accounts and Fotolia closing a whole bunch of accounts. You try to keep a lid on things by making a public example of trouble-makers.

Not saying I agree with what Istock did to Sean, but in all  fairness he (and others) were actively working behind the scenes against Istock, and against the terms of the contract. They got busted.

Uh, no, I wasn't doing any such thing.  Sorry.

So you are suggesting Istock just cancelled your contract for absolutely no reason? Why would any agency do that to one of their top producers without reason?

Incompetency? After all of iStock's bad decisions back then, it didn't surprise me that iStock would continue to make bad business decisions.

It was actually Getty Images that did the bidding for Istock. I don't agree with the way it was handled at all, or the outcome for that matter, but they shut the dissent down. Respectfully, he took one for the team.

Point being, none of these stock agencies give a flying F+++ about any of us and if there is dissent we are totally expendable, and Getty Images proved that.

Well stated. And it will not be any different with SS. The only way to impact SS in the longer term is through choking them with no content. All of the social media stuff might help in the short term but the dagger, if one exists, is to drain significant, high impact content. That is permanent and it directly affects the customer base. Don�t get me wrong, bringing bad press is powerful, but it fades with time. Content is controllable by us which connects directly to the customer. In a utopian case we could technically put SS out of business tomorrow if we had unity with all contributors, and those contributors being willing to remove their assets. THAT would send a message to all of the other agencies when they want to take more from an already financially strained contributor base.  I know it is far fetched to think we can remove 330 million images, but that is the root of course correcting this mess. SS knows that only a fraction of that 330m images will be removed.  And the bad press will be short lived. That�s what they are banking this whole decision on.

gnirtS. ^^^

Well done, you really made an investigation for this!

Agree. Thanks for the work you have done here.

What are the advantages at o5 for exclusivity? Aside from pricing your vids is there search placement advantages, or some other value that goes with putting eggs in one basket?

What made you post that link? There is nothing in those posts that suggest SS is listening to anything voiced by their contributor community.

Aside from the obvious money grab we contributors will only see our current tier of a short period of time, perhaps a month or two.  They are making a calculated move that there are plenty of images in the face of contributor defection. They have just made a move that will force everyone else to respond in kind....

I believe that if you made less than $600 and are in the USA you won't get one.

Quote from: thirdbornentertainment on May 03, 2020, 13:29

This is my lowest sale to date. I've seen the $1.50 threads but thought I'd just share this anyway. I guess the 90 minutes it took to shoot this clip and the hour to process it is only worth $3.36. Keep up the great work shutterstock.

Here's what SS considers to be worthless. https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-1030079846

I just "liked" your comment� not because I actually, ya'know, "liked" it but because it reinforced my own personal decision, made 2 weeks ago, to pull my clips out of SS (and, with regrets, Adobe too) and go exclusive with P5.

In the long run, that may have been a mistake on my part, but right now it feels very good.

Thanks for sharing your experience, which left me with a sad, sour taste in my mouth. Why bother?

ETA: Your hyperlapse is wonderful, BTW. Congratulations on doing such beautiful work.

How many clips is your port? I have been contemplating removing from SS as well and the few I have on IS. 

Online only. Never received one in the mail.

Anyone actually receive the payment yet?

Quote from: steheap on January 30, 2020, 10:15

Yes, I agree - the aperture makes a big difference. However, it seems the sweet spot for sharpness is around F4 and down at F11 it gets pretty soft. So I was trying to balance getting moving items still in my photos with the smooth video and keeping the aperture around F4! I did take some dusk shots and good pretty sharp results with a shutter speed of 1 second. Any slower than that and I did see motion blur in my photos. So you are probably right about the still shots at 1/50th being OK. I was in Hawaii with the drone and so it was very bright. I used the ND16 with polarizer and usually ended up with 1/50th second at F2.8 or F4 - somewhere around there. Perhaps the ND8 would have been a better choice. Still learning every day!

Steve

I was going to reply to your first question, but Increasing difficulty said exactly was I was going to say and I perfectly agree with all he said.
The only small difference is that I use two ND+polirizer filters: a ND 16 for most situations in video, and a ND64 for time lapses and video in extremely bright situations

I could not live without my ND filters on my Mavic 2 Pro.  My ND 8 is on most of the time, but not all.  I think including a segment on ND filters would be helpful since those who don't know better might shoot video at f11 @ 400th shutter speed in bright conditions to get exposure right for video.  My sweet spot for sharpness is F4 @1/60th.  Even 1/50th is very good. Stills shot at that are crisp and sharp as ID stated (wide and far should be easy to get sharp).  I just purchased some higher ND filters to shoot long exposures with the MAP2.  That will be a real test of the drone's stability using the gimbal.