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Messages - Uncle Pete
3851
« on: February 06, 2019, 15:24 »
Waiting for mine so I can file my income taxes. Anyone get theirs, or did I miss some online way to download and print?
3852
« on: February 03, 2019, 12:31 »
MAT, I must say your upload system at AS is the best ever in 14 Years.
I moved over months ago and I'm enjoying the new artist friendly submission interface as well.
3853
« on: February 03, 2019, 12:29 »
I'm personally very interested in this question and while I have an opinion, what I'd really like to know is if anyone has invested the time and energy into vertical video and seen success.
As a long time veteran of stereoscopic 3d (Avatar), I know that some things sound like the future but don't end up realizing their potential.
is vertical video the next thing or merely a hot idea that people are talking about at the moment?
Thanks,
Dennis
Dennis, Are you referring to 3D video for Anaglyph viewing, say Red/Blue or something much more complicated like the full color movie Avatar? Is there any market in stock for 3D video, either type, or stills, that requires colored glasses to view? Back on topic I hope some people experiment with vertical video and see what happens.
3854
« on: February 03, 2019, 12:21 »
By the way. As it's Winter where I live, cold and all that. I've been going through some old saved photos and Microstock rejects. Some personally put aside before uploading and some that SS declined years ago. I found three that I thought had some potential, just because of the subject or composition. No I'm not retiring to live off Microstock, but I basically self reviewed, I don't remember if I perked them up a bit in editing, then uploaded a few weeks ago. Two have sold. Oh yes, passed review of course. Like most of mine, they are one of a kind shots, and I'm not suggesting that anyone just spam their own portfolio and upload a bunch of marginal Crapstock. I'm saying that past rejections, before a few years ago, with some interesting subjects or that had a rejection for a minor reason, might be good enough to reconsider. Annual reminder that we need to remember to look back at  "old photos, on hard drives on our computers"Yeah seriously and a little humor as well.
3855
« on: February 03, 2019, 12:02 »
Good image. Low color and constrast.
Same thing I thought on first view. Yes eggs are eggs, easy to find, common subject, but I think the OP has a nice composition and a shot that could potentially be more marketable. In the general sense of Microstock, true, eggs are like sliced tomatoes, or house pets... name some other common things you can find around the house to take photos of. This shot is outside of the common or ordinary.
3856
« on: February 03, 2019, 11:54 »
As the Arctic gets warmer and warmer, the severe weather picks up, Dr. Cohen said.
and a different climatologist says
The frequency of cold waves have decreased during the past fifty years, not increased. That alone shows that such claims are baseless, Mass said.
Surely not all 'severe weather' constitutes cold waves, so it's possible for there to be an increase in severe weather while still having a decrease in cold spells?
The point was pretty simple, one climatologist says that Winters are more sever and colder, over the last 50 years, because of global warming. While the other climatologist says, look at the data, the Winters are less cold and less sever over the last 50 years. Assuming they are both using the same data, and neither is just making up facts for the press, one of them is wrong. Anyone can take their pick which side they like better, because we don't have the data to review and make an informed decision. My other point was, and somewhat tongue in cheek, but some people have no sense of humor, Global Warming is making it colder...  No ones words were twisted, misquoted or distorted, these two scientists disagree. Not like that hasn't happened before in any other fields. We are dealing with theories and models, and climatology is a fairly modern science. There are bound to be adjustments and contradictions. Actually the predictions, some short term and some long, keep changing because the conclusions are not supported by the evidence. Nothing unusual about that either. Science is not all laws created from immutable facts. Science and the conclusions are flexible, able to adjust and be reformulated based on best evidence. As new discoveries and data is collected science adapts. One would expect as time goes by (Hupfeld) the climate models and theories will also adjust and change. Short term observations, weather events, followed by the general public claiming it's climate, is terribly unscientific. With that, a cold snap doesn't disprove global warming any more than a heat wave in the Summer in Australia is proof of global warming. Long term matters, not daily, monthly or event current annual events.
3857
« on: February 02, 2019, 19:24 »
Can you change the name to "Wack-a-dolt"?  Yes we assume, but it seems there's no member program working on other sites. Probably because SS is biggest, they attract the most of the easy money crooks. I have reported totally off photos on iStock, they are still there. I mean keywords that are irrelevant and none match the image at all, not nit picking. Oh I almost forgot the entertaining part of this, the descriptions. That would make a good collection before they go away. I should have started last month before we lost a couple of the best and funniest.
3858
« on: February 02, 2019, 19:12 »
Oh good ideas, I'm going to look at my profile. I cut the feed to my Twitter because I don't want to spam my friends who already know what I do. Not sure if that still works anymore. Yes attitude can work, good confidence and impression management. Good positive point.
I do have one email just for family and photo business. That keeps the spam and notifications for forums, events or software, on another.
3859
« on: February 02, 2019, 09:55 »
Good point @NotToday
I will do! @UnclePete Not as a niche but as a supplement to landscape oriented ones whenever applicable
Yeah Baby,  even better, compare formats with like content.
3860
« on: February 02, 2019, 09:52 »
Small update:
-----
All-time summary:
Total moles identified to date: 468
Total moles wacked: 236
Summary for week ending Feb 3:
Moles wacked (by SS) from Jan 27 - Feb 2: 116
Moles pending: 105
https://forums.submit.shutterstock.com/topic/96349-thieves-thread-update-week-ending-feb-3-468-so-far-flagged/
Highest praise for you, and finally somehow getting their attention. I only got two shut down last year on my own, you've done an outstanding job. And I realize that some people on the SS forum have been contributing to your collection as well. If the crooks found that they can't profit, hopefully the word will get out and they will do this less. If the claim of locations are true, those people are probably using fake IDs or borrowed IDs and could be the same group behind it. I mean, once they can't profit, we could get rid of a repeating person or orginization and get the profits to the correct artists.
3861
« on: February 02, 2019, 09:34 »
Is anyone familiar with the infamous Getty image infringement extortion letters?
Sales wise, Getty has gone from decent four figure advertising sales just a few years ago, down to pennies in the present day. They'll need to reinvent fast or they'll continue on their steep decline.
I keep getting the feeling that they just don't care about iStock or artists at all. Their collections and news services probably make the most for them, so why would they care? Not saying they shouldn't, from our side, just why they might be ignoring us. I keep thinking, they were the big agency the top and the best, and then after IS got sold, it was a hard fall, until SS passed them, and now AS has passed them.
3862
« on: February 02, 2019, 09:28 »
I find LinkedIn a real great source of spam accounts. 
Which kind? You mean people who pretend to be something they aren't? If Linkedin worked, by now I'd have gotten at least one request for the kind of photography I do? Seems like friends and word of mouth does best. Good old fashion, insider referrals.  Freelance is not a good description to have for anything to do with news or Editorial.
3863
« on: February 02, 2019, 09:24 »
I think there is some component of artist location in the search algorithm. If they boost that it would tend to increase local sales and decrease sales from farther away. This might be good if you live near a lot of buyers, not so great if you don't.
I am in the US and just looking at my map maybe a few more from the Americas, but there are a few from Europe and one from Japan in the last 10. I haven't seen anything obvious other than frozen pipe sales in the Midwest and east coast of the US.
Oh frozen pipe, that's a good one. Yes I think you are correct, we might be getting a position boost by location of artist and buyer, when they are close. I've never been able to confirm that, but the logic seems reasonable. We know that computers have cookies of what's viewed and there's some tracking by agencies, it would make simple sense to match some of that. Just like years ago when people felt they were being blacked out during times and for places, due to sales drops, that could be location matching, giving preference to locals. We've seen since then that the times for drops are pretty much matching with global demands in different locations. Things like Saturday is the low day for many because all the world is slow, but Sunday picks up, because Japan and Australia, for starters, are waking up for work, it's their Monday morning. The other part of trying to make sense of the searches was made more interesting and difficult, when I found that the search changes about every 20 minutes. Then as I was cross checking, it changed again. That was one session, the same day, just reloading the same search on the same page, on Shutterstock. Very strange.
3864
« on: February 02, 2019, 09:12 »
Cold and snowy? Tractor broke down twice. Oh Microstock?
Pretty much as usual, although I did have a burst of downloads on SS, almost all subs, at the end of the month.
Best January since 2016 and that year has a $21 Single to put it higher. Last year was half of this year. I'd say Best January ever for me, but just by dollars over the rounded average of the last six years.
3865
« on: February 01, 2019, 11:36 »
I don't know, but computers which is what most of the video is used on, is landscape. If there was a site that ran columns like magazines or newspapers, Portrait might have a use.
I would imagine that vertical or Portrait composition for video demand is severely limited, but I wouldn't say a dead product.
Personally I try to hit at the target and center of any market for the most stock/stock. But I also really like specific specialty subjects, aiming at holes and lower competition. So if that's your idea to fill a niche with vertical video, why not try and see?
3866
« on: February 01, 2019, 11:26 »
Iv been getting a very similar pattern to sales, though I do get the odd American sale, I believe that this is a deliberate policy to keep the rest of the World out of the US market, while they have access to everywhere else.
Id really like to believe that this was not the case.
Perhaps we could have some Americans on this site let us know if they have a similar sales pattern?
All micro stock Companies should have their Algorithms verified by an independent body that verifies that they are acting fairly, with a bench mark criteria that states exactly how they achieve this, this in my opinion is the only way forward.
Half of my sales are from the East coast in the US, and I'm based in the UK. I don't think there's a policy to keep the rest of the World out of the US market..
Also I think the map tends to plot the US sales in regions or on the coasts. I get some, kind of like the no-dot in the Atlantic, centered in the middle of the USA without a location city. I don't trust the map to be terribly accurate. I'm always surprised at the number of DLs I get from Mexico City and South America. I must be Americacentric somehow?  Four DLs from Melbourne to end the day yesterday. Someone using their subs?
3867
« on: February 01, 2019, 11:20 »
That's probably it. I'll retally. Thanks!
The type for the numbers was so small when I printed the PDF that I thought it was blank. Someone needs a new drum on the laser printer, I'll be shopping on Monday.
3868
« on: February 01, 2019, 11:18 »
Hi, Im new in stockphotography and Im a contributor of alamy for three months now. I had my first sale there ($11 so $5.5 net) Im wondering which photos sell best in this agency.
Thanks in advance
You'll have to do your own research as we will have no idea what kinds of photos you make.
However you can go look on the Alamy measures on the contributor site to see what sells
Which in most cases is like closing the barn door after the horses have run off. Be careful of recent sales on Alamy as an indication of future sales, except in broad terms and types of images. Specific keywords and specific subjects, by recent activity and downloads, are very much, yesterday's news.
3869
« on: February 01, 2019, 11:15 »
With the Adobe interface, how does one change the order of the keywords after acceptance?
I know how to do it with the Fotolia interface, but can't see how to do it with the Adobe interface.
While in the dashboard section of the portal, select the image you want to update. Scroll down the page and you will see an image preview with the keywords adjacent. Hover your mouse over the keywords and the edit (pencil) icon will appear. Click it and the keyword update interface will appear.
-Mat Hayward
Hey Mat,
As another upgrade, it would be great if there was an option to switch to a text box when editing keywords of already accepted images.
Most websites have this option - we can just copy paste the whole list of keywords and the system splits the keywords automatically at each coma, while retaining the order since it's important for Adobe Stock.
I've tried editing an existing image but when I copied the whole list, it just pasted it all in one keyword field. So I had to manually enter them one by one in each field - which is quite time consuming if you're working on a series.
Really? I never added more than updates and a few better words, maybe removed some. Good Idea! Some way to paste strings of added keywords. I never would have noticed.
3870
« on: February 01, 2019, 11:05 »
It may not be $100 billion for the U.S., but were were going to pay a good part of it over 10 years. With China and India claiming "third world country" status, they didn't have to pay anything. They were getting money. I think you underestimate the amount of effort the U.S. put into clean renewable energy compared to other countries.
I've visited China a couple years ago and they're not even close to being ready for ban of diesel/gas cars. Neither is India, where they can't even keep the Ganges clean. It's all talk and there has been no progress. That's not leadership. We haven't used coal in our daily lives in decades. The world knows that we have about 75 years of oil left and the reduction of reliance on gasoline is on the map for most of the world powers. It needs to figure out solutions and if there isn't any, we're going to be facing a Mad Max scenario.
There will be an energy crisis in the future. Coal and other fossil fuels are used to maintain the power grid. Solar is not nearly as efficient and it takes up land. Wind is also not as efficient and the turbines kill hundreds of thousands of birds per year. Nuclear is dangerous as we've seen in Japan. The world doesn't have any solutions to remove its reliance on fossil fuels, and until it does, neither coal or gasoline are going away.
Right! With some minor disagreements like the birds or fear of nuclear. And there's part of the problem where theory and reality diverge. No matter what technology someone comes up with, an opposition will appear. Nuclear is the least pollution but people fear China Syndrome and other sci fi events. The Japan plant was hit by a tsunami following an earthquake. We aren't likely to have that happen in the US. The latest big news was a metric ton of waste, being stored. A ton and everyone is up in arms? Most cars weigh a ton, start thinking. It's being stored in a huge hole, under a mountain, in the Nevada desert, that was made by nuclear testing blasts. In other words, there's already a big hole that's a sealed glass walled chamber, that's already full of radiation. Wind works, but not as well as it should. Most of those big turbines were built with government money, to make them possible, not because there is a real investment and profit to be made. Some other designs have been tested, birds aside, and when they collect ice, in Iowa, they fling it off and do all kinds of local damage. Solar for individuals is pretty interesting. Sure big investment up front. but the long therm, can produce a payback. Large scale might take land, but honestly aside from losing farm land, there's still a great amount of open space in the US, much of that in places where farming is nearly impossible. There are also claims of birds being "zapped" or fried in flight, by the collectors. Geothermal takes time to pay back, sounds interesting in the long term for new homes and the future. There are places using Earth energy already, Iceland is a prime example. Everything above costs more money than it returns, (except nuclear which has no home application anyway) small wonder people who don't have that money, aren't running to install Sun, Wind or Geo energy for their homes. The US is converting coal power plants and closing others, moving forward. You want to run your electric car, computer, lighting, and everything else? Better consider where that energy comes from, because the demand is always going up. So called third world countries, China for one at 15% of the world economy, India at 6th, are trying to evade making changes and stopping their contributions to pollution. The US doesn't control the world or the climate, but they seem to be making the best effort to change. CNG cars are available, I wanted to get one. Problem is no filling stations in most places and making a home compressor has regulations, permits, where you can have your own and how many thousands it costs to create one. Plus the driving distances, just like electric limits, are too short if there aren't filling locations easily available. However if someone came out with a hybrid CNG/electric I think that would put a huge dent in air pollution and carbon. I'm positive most people don't even know about CNG, except for home heating, or power plants, and how it's potentially a co2 neutral energy source for transportation. https://www.discover-cng.com/en/key-messages/cng_the_sustainable_alternative/Fuel locations won't add anything, until there's a demand. Pretty simple economics. Remember when most gas stations didn't have diesel? Demand and profit. See where this is going? Without some economic payback, or financial incentive, I don't mean government handouts, I mean business, we aren't going to see change, no matter how much anyone wants change. There isn't an unlimited amount of money to pay for ending reliance on fossil fuels. When the alternate fuel and power sources become efficient enough, they will be adopted. Until then, we are forced to be reliant on fossil fuels. I personally think we don't do enough with Natural Gas which is much cleaner than oil, coal, wood or anything else we can burn for energy.
3871
« on: February 01, 2019, 10:07 »
Posting this just in case the people at Flickr monitor. I have a free account and I am a bit over the new 1000 limit. I received notifications that confirm that I can not upload unless I upgrade and that some of my photos will be deleted starting from the oldest. Turns out many of these photos got lots of views and appear in different groups. Not certain at all that its a good business strategy to delete them. Flickr should definately consider giving away pro accounts to selected contributors who produce quality work and generate traffic as an incentive to post....
Give away pro accounts? That's where they make the money for storage and bandwidth. If your earlier photos are getting the most views and are most attractive, consider thinning out the 1000 by removing less attractive images. Not only will you have the free account, but as you curate, your collection will improve in quality, which will make you look better for the quality of work, not just quantity.
3872
« on: February 01, 2019, 10:02 »
Metadata is usually wiped by agencies so buyers don't have access to our information.
Never found one that didn't wipe everything, both on their site and when the buyer downloads and image. If you're looking for gigs, you can always track down the photos you've sold with Google reverse image search, to find where they've been used. Then use that as leverage on social media saying X company used your photo for X article or Ads. Who knows, with the proper tags and hashtags, you might be approached there. 
In a specific market that might work, if the idea is from stock in general, there are about 30,000 other people with the same goals. What I mean is, if someone is going to try to get contracts or outside work, it's better to have a specialty, a style, subject or interest group. Then direct the marketing to that area of expertise.
3873
« on: January 31, 2019, 12:19 »
Yes, that's a hidden blue pencil, to get into the editor. Tricky until you know it.  Then...  ^ moves image to the top, (Caret has a bar over it)  is drag and drop X is remove
3874
« on: January 31, 2019, 12:09 »
Fotolia! I have been trying to delete some photos uploaded but not submitted. Deleted keywords etc like they said--- nothing. Only thing I do like about AS presentation is bigger images. The rest is not user friendly.
Go to Adobe to delete. Do you want a screen shot with instructions? I can do that. Delete image in Uploaded Files https://contributor.stock.adobe.com/en/uploads
3875
« on: January 31, 2019, 11:59 »
I have not read the details, but crypto-payments aside, are they planning to use the block-chain technology to keep track of the way images sold through them are being used, thus enforcing their copyright?
If yes, this can be a break-through worth paying attention to.
Yes that's part of the plan that they are selling us. All sales are tracked and have an ID. Remember Kodak Coin and that place, hasn't ever gone live. Also after watching video, it appears that the guy who started Wemark, may have started Picasa at Lifescape in 2002, Picasa which was sold to Google. The big problem I see there is the volatility of every cryptocurrency, there's a huge risk $1 commission to become 1 cent just in one night.
While true, that's a bit over stated. At the same time, crypto seems to have stabilized after all the whooha and investing. Companies that went into mining for profit have found their projected earnings are falling. It's not the boom it was, and it was a bubble and Tulips. But for our interest, the values have become more stable. And yes, you could have $1 today and 90 cents tomorrow, or $1.10 tomorrow. I don't like playing the market with my earnings.
The other big problem is that there has been no word that I've seen about any sort of marketing of the agency to potential buyers. If this is just a place to host your images with no marketing other than what the contributor does themselves, then I can't see what the attraction is. Marketing and sales generation is the hard part.
I don't see how they have anything to appeal to buyers. Their premium content isn't exclusive and is overpriced. For example, I found a large collection of images from an outfit called Mint Images that is also on Alamy and Dissolve (with the same content). Wemark's prices are much higher than Alamy prices for the same images.
What type of stock imagery buyer would prefer to obtain images where you have to deal with the volatility and hassle of buying tokens? What large corporate buyer is going to put up with this extra hassle?
Home Run - Marketing? Content is same as all the rest. Higher prices on some. Extra hassle for a changeable currency. Fine point and I made the same mistake. These are Tokens, not Coins. On the surface the sell to us looks good, but what about the buyers? I'd say the most positive part would be, it costs us nothing to upload and watch? I'm just going to watch... or if I do upload some content, I'm going to price it for what I think the fair price is, if someone found it on SS, AS or Alamy. I will not compete with myself on price! Here's Etherium for the last year. (and I'm calling this stable?)  After the three peaks, I think we've seen the last of the boom and fad investors. We can all watch for six months and see how that prediction works out. But back to what Jo Ann wrote. Imagine you are a buyer and want photos, you buy some WMK and your $100 is $90 the next week, before you spend it. For us, we get paid and can watch for a peak and cash out to our wallet, or just sit on the money and hope.  Here's an interesting article about Coins and Tokens and how crypto curreny works. https://masterthecrypto.com/differences-between-cryptocurrency-coins-and-tokens/Every time I read something new, I learn more and I still haven't bought into the whole cryptocurrency will be disrupting how the world does business. So far it's just an interesting technology and has some future potential. The theoretical is grand and imaginary, reality is different.
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