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Messages - Mantis
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5401
« on: March 28, 2011, 18:24 »
The standard answer at Dreamstime is:
Questioning our policy will not be "tolerated." 
^ This is what I've found out to be true. I've been shut down more than once when posting in forums (in a very nice way I might add) with a threat of account suspension via site mail on the last time. The head guy (I think his name is Serban) just does not take criticism very well. That's just bad business not to listen to their customers. I call us customers because we do get paid from them and provide the foundation from which they make their profits as well. Just another issue to deal with in the world of microstock.
5402
« on: March 21, 2011, 19:05 »
I took time off to send my 5D to Canon for sensor cleaning but now back at it. Still a long way to go to make some impact but iStock is where the buyers are IMO. Just shut down my Dreamstime and Shutterstock accounts and submitted for IS exclusive. SO, yeah, I'm in it for the long haul
Wow, that's a ballsy move. Good luck to you.
5403
« on: March 21, 2011, 18:57 »
I submitted one as a test yesterday. If that works them I will upload more. It's a bit more time consuming to prepare editorial because of the specificity required.
5404
« on: March 21, 2011, 18:55 »
Some sort of black band over your avatar perhaps? Like the black arm bands worn sometimes?
^ I love that idea. Even I, as a non exclusive, get to enjoy a second comission hit. Arrggggg.
5405
« on: March 21, 2011, 18:54 »
Its too early to tell as IS has been so sporadic and random for the last few months for me.
^ what I am thinking. I want to give it a year before I make a "conclusion", although my sales are down considerably for Jan/Feb 11 vs same period in 10.
5406
« on: March 14, 2011, 19:16 »
This whole thing is a facade in my opinion. They all sign NDA's. So the inference you can get from Kelly's comments, "They can be the ears of the entire community and see if we're doing anything out of the ordinary" means that all the five will be are additional non-employee block & tacklers in the forums, helping take the brunt of the legitimate issues contributors bring up but don't get answers to. The five wont be able to give us answers either, but they will be able to speak to us in useless code like the admins do when the bother to post anything telling us we are wrong but I can't tell you why.
You are aware of the legal concept of sub judice, I presume?
Try this for starters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub_judice
Sure am.
5407
« on: March 14, 2011, 18:23 »
This whole thing is a facade in my opinion. They all sign NDA's. So the inference you can get from Kelly's comments, "They can be the ears of the entire community and see if we're doing anything out of the ordinary" means that all the five will be are additional non-employee block & tacklers in the forums, helping take the brunt of the legitimate issues contributors bring up but don't get answers to. The five wont be able to give us answers either, but they will be able to speak to us in useless code like the admins do when the bother to post anything telling us we are wrong but I can't tell you why.
5408
« on: March 12, 2011, 10:07 »
I've been uploading and getting sales on newly uploaded images, so in short, yes. I have 24 in the queue now and expect acceptance/rejection to start today.
5409
« on: March 12, 2011, 10:05 »
Rejection reason:
"Noticeable retouching"
This comment was made on a painting (causing rejection on all submitted images).
Still sure you know everything going on in every Alamy inspector's mind? (brick wall against stone head it seems....) 
But whatever, I have now said 20 times I now understand their procedure, think it sucks and that is it. You like it, good for you. If this thread made more people aware of the "ridiculous procedure" - good, because I went through the historic threads and I know I am in good company in either not quite getting it in the beginning or finding it silly. So you are now welcome to insult everybody with the same problem as much as you like. This thread has became a waste of everybody's time about 8 entries back, so please take your last shot now and let us close this one down (yawn.......).
Cheers.
Now that you've learned the process, my advise is to keep uploading there. It takes a lot of images before you start to get repetitive sales. I think I went 3-4 months before I started to get sales on Alamy. Now I make somewhere around 4k a year there. It's a pain in the ass to prepare images for submission but the return can be decent if you are persistent. Good luck.
5410
« on: March 12, 2011, 09:54 »
Hi Lisa,
thank you for the flowers!
I resigned because I have ongoing issues in my life that have kept me away from istock. I have uploaded only 200 images in 2010, mostly the leftovers from old shootings. Need to sort out some other stuff, before I focus back on stock.
I really enjoyed being a part of the team, some very dedicated people there. And together with my collegue MichaelJay I loved moderating the German forum. Its a lot of work though, what you see in the forum is just a part of it. There is a whole world of sitemails, emails, phonecalls, meet ups to organize and all that balancing of different characters to keep communication flowing.
The advantage of not having a badge is that people again accept that what I am saying is what I want to say, without suspecting that I am somehow towing the "party line". I think you will see that I am saying the same things now as before.
I am very sad with what has been happening in the last six months and I know there are many people working very, very hard to get istock back on track. Like many contributors, I wish there was better communication, although I am seeing that they are trying to improve this.
But the site has to get back on track and there is a lot of work to do, to regain the confidence and trust of the contributors. The members have the right to expect their agent to do the best possible to represent their interests.
Oh, and I think the new moderators are very passionate about their work, they really just want to serve the community. But it takes time to learn when to open and close threads. What you dont see is the amazing amount of sitemails they get from members and when emotions run to high it is often best to close a thread, even if it is just for a day. Again, it all depends on the context. And sometimes what you write as a moderator doesnt really communicate what you were trying to say. Also for so many members English is not a first language.
So as a former istock moderator: please have a little patience with the moderators. They really work hard.
Very nice to hear this kind of post. Thank you.
5411
« on: March 12, 2011, 09:30 »
I would really welcome a new owner of IS and preferably a "creative owner" someone who isnt a pawnbroker.
+1,000,000^
5412
« on: March 09, 2011, 19:15 »
You have to understand Shutterstock and how it works.
I'm selling extremely well on Shutterstock. I know exactly how it works. And I know that people who submit stuff that can't stand on its own will obsess over timing their submissions so they appear in New Uploads search results at peak buying times, and if the photos are lost after that, they blame it on the site. Wrong. If the photos get buried it's because there are too many like them and they are not needed.
Is it Amazon's fault if you write a book on something extremely generic like "Making Money" and it is buried under 10,000 other books just like it and you never sell a single copy? Maybe you should have created something more original, or at least put a unique spin on it to grab attention. Don't blame the site, blame the author.
You wrote: "I had about 30 uploaded in a single batch and non ever sold. In fact, I could not find them with a keyword search. Then a day or two later they were there but no DL's. shame we work so hard on creating images and get nothing in return." To me, that sounds like you rely on getting into the "most recent uploads" search results to make sales. If you do, I stand by my comments above.
Not the case with me...but that being said, you obviously don't read the forums. There is a known bug causing images to disappear. Anthony has stated that they are aware of it and are working on resolving it. So your assessment was wrong all along.
5413
« on: March 09, 2011, 07:58 »
I've got about 2300 images on Alamy and have never never had a rejection. That being said I always upload in small batches, around 20-30 a pop. I know another photographer who got pissed at his exclusive micro and branched out. He did a massive upload and got all of them rejected because of just one image. It was around 500 of his nearly 10k port uploaded. I told him to try 20 and he did. It worked. It's like doing rework....I assemble (upload) 10,000 widgets and find out one is bad, all widgets have to be disassembled and I have to start over (upload 10k more all over). If I make (upload) 20 widgets at a time and one fails I only have to rework (re-upload) 20. Too risky with Alamy to do large batches simply because of time vs. risk.
5414
« on: March 09, 2011, 07:45 »
@dirkr Yes, we will work towards providing more transparency. Hence, the survey 
Best regards,
Alex.
How long should we wait until we as contributors must fight with Pixmax to get our images removed?
I've never uploaded any of my photos to Pixmac, never the less I find a large amount of my portfolio there...Now a silly question to Alex @ 123rf, should it be the responsibility of the contributors to contact Pixmac and fight to have their photos removed from their site, or should it be the responsibility of 123rf, Dreamstime etc. to make sure all photos are removed from the site?
Agree with your assessment. It should be 123rf's responsibility. I did email Pixmax and their response was that they are still in an active agreement with 123 and when the contract termination date hits they will remove my images. Now, when is that? 30 days?
5415
« on: March 08, 2011, 19:45 »
Jan: $1.09
Feb $1.00
Mar so far: .93 (without EL)
Mar so far: $1.05 (with EL)
5416
« on: March 08, 2011, 19:28 »
There is a knows system bug at Shutterstock. According to Anthony they are aware of it and working to resolve.
5417
« on: March 08, 2011, 19:11 »
@dirkr Yes, we will work towards providing more transparency. Hence, the survey
Best regards,
Alex.
How long should we wait until we as contributors must fight with Pixmax to get our images removed?
5418
« on: March 07, 2011, 19:23 »
According to a post made in their forums by a contributor, SS admins responded to an email he sent about rejections and they told him that indeed they have developed and implemented higher standards, but are less than transparent on what those standards are. I will see if I can find that post and link it.
5419
« on: March 03, 2011, 17:21 »
But in court I'd think that the ruling would be that someone intentionally created a derivative, which is illegal.
Couple of minor points, firstly both parties would have to be from the same country otherwise no court would have juristiction and secondly and most importantly one party would have to prove that the other party had seen the original image in question before they created their "copy" (virtually impossible to prove unless the "copier" downloaded the image) for any possibility of a court case. Add to the fact that the images in question here are similar but not identical and as frustrating as it may make you feel but this wouldn't ever make it into a court.
To put this into perspective I have a shot of an apple on a white background, should I consider suing everyone else that uploaded a similar one after mine?
It's a similar shot, it's not a copy and nobody has broken any laws. That's not to say that a site may consider removing one of the images but that's nothing to do with the law.
In the early days of microstock there were a fair few traditional stock shooters who were accusing Yuri of the exact same thing 
Well, these are pretty valid points and like I said I am not an attorney. Just my interpretation of the PACA copyright Commandments. Thanks for your point of view.
5420
« on: March 03, 2011, 15:07 »
Same here, Slovenian. I had about 30 uploaded in a single batch and non ever sold. In fact, I could not find them with a keyword search. Then a day or two later they were there but no DL's. shame we work so hard on creating images and get nothing in return.
Microstock is not "falling apart." What needs to be fixed is how contributors are going about it. The sentiment above is a symbol of the biggest problem. Relying on "Most Recently Uploaded" status to get your new images noticed is a recipe for failure. It's admitting that your images are nothing special, and that the only way buyers will find them is if they appear at just the right moment in a Recent Uploads search. Quit uploading more of the same old stuff that is just like thousands of other pics already online. What are you contributing? Noise. It doesn't help buyers and it bogs down the agencies (no doubt contributing to the very problems that prompted this thread.)
Recipe for success: Find under-represented subject matter. If you can't, at least offer a bold and unique approach or style to well-covered subjects. Think like a buyer and ask yourself "Why would I buy this image over the countless others just like it?"
If you can't come up with an answer, then microstock will forever seem "broken" or "falling apart" to you.
You have to understand Shutterstock and how it works. It is very uncommon that my images do not sell right after they are accepted. And I never said they are falling apart, you only assumed that. What I was saying is that there are many connected pieces within a micro system and one change to that "could" have a bullwhip effect somewhere else. So you have taken my feedback and spun it the way you mistakenly think you wanted it to read. You are clearly one of "those" microstockgroup contributors. At least I know what you are made of.
5421
« on: March 03, 2011, 07:54 »
My photos reappeared in my gallery today, but are now on the zillionth side in search, so I had ZERO DLs. That have never happened before and I usually upload just 5-10 photos at a time.
Same here, Slovenian. I had about 30 uploaded in a single batch and non ever sold. In fact, I could not find them with a keyword search. Then a day or two later they were there but no DL's. * shame we work so hard on creating images and get nothing in return.
5422
« on: March 03, 2011, 07:49 »
In all seriousness though. You can't copyright a concept and this sort of thing is exactly what the agencies encourage in micro.
If you want to make a living you have to go with the proven subjects and set ups, there's no way to make returns by throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks anymore.
That's what the diminishing percentages have done.
While there is definitely not a problem copying a "concept", replicating a specific image is a problem and, to me, that is the case here but I could be wrong. Like I said earlier I am not a lawyer. And I would give the benefit of doubt to both. But in court I'd think that the ruling would be that someone intentionally created a derivative, which is illegal. Anyhow, just my opinion.
5423
« on: March 03, 2011, 07:40 »
The law states, "Re-creating a copyrighted photograph is a derivative use and therefore requires the permission of the copyright holder of the original image." I doubt Yuri gave this person permission to replicate his image.
But this isn't a recreation, I can see in a second that these are two different photographs.
I disagree and so would the courts. The "components of the image" were copied regardless of the clothing, lighting etc. The scale, the apple, the look, the composition, etc are exactly the same. It is a violation of U.S. copyright law. If you don't believe me, send Shutterstock an email about these. I bet the non-Yuri one will be deleted from their collection. Just to be fair: I am not an attorney. This is based on my little book in front of me about copyright law.
5424
« on: March 02, 2011, 20:56 »
how is that pagerisim?
2 diff models
2 diff scales
2 diff apples
The person did not buy/steal his photo and then passes it as his own!?
Does Youri own a patent on the pose concept? banning anyone else from posing with a scale and apple on a white background!!!!
I have been watching people overreact with stuff like this for a while and i never say anything. But i know for a fact we have copied poses and concepts in our own ports, no?
The law states, "Re-creating a copyrighted photograph is a derivative use and therefore requires the permission of the copyright holder of the original image." I doubt Yuri gave this person permission to replicate his image.
5425
« on: March 02, 2011, 20:40 »
C'mon - why would they want to change the "my uploads" page so contributors can't use a script showing what each image sold for... Surely they would want that information to continue to be readily and easily available to us
The whole page looks just terrible! So confusing! And they changed the way the date is showing, which is a major PITA for Americans, but probably an improvement to the rest of the world.
Frankly I am disappointed that they didn't use his idea to actually make an improvement to that page. I am sure Sean will fix it since he is Superman.
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