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Messages - MicroVet
26
« on: March 30, 2020, 00:33 »
When Shutterstock submission page deletes the keyword "Easter" as an incorrect word and makes it impossible to add it, in Easter themed images, than something very wrong is happening there.
I cannot understand how they did not learn a thing with what happened to IS. A few years back almost everyone raved about how well SS worked pointing their good decisions in contrast with IS, the agency everyone developed a particular hate. And that made SS without doubt the strongest agency.
Now, SS seems to be following the same path of IS, instead of preserving their strong points.
At the moment SS is still my number one agency but the fall has been so big, not only in terms of revenue but also in terms of review quality, that I'm getting fed up with them.
27
« on: March 29, 2020, 05:18 »
Btw if it's true that capitalists are taking most of the pie,it's even true that our lifestyle has improved much...
Capitalists always took most of the pie. That is not the question. The question is that nowadays, with a more and more unregulated capitalism they are taking almost all of the pie. The gap between rich and poor was never this big. Plus, if you look at history there almost always have been progress and betterment of the conditions of life. That has nothing to do with capitalism but with human nature. We didn't evolve from the Paleolithic to Mesolithic then Neolithic because of Capitalism. We did it because has humans we always try to improve our quality of life. And that has been an ongoing march. Sometimes faster, other times less so. We can even argue that Russians and Chinese lived better in the 1960/70s than in 1910 despite the repression and oppression of those regimes that had nothing to do with capitalism. In a world without capitalism, no matter what would replace it, there would still be development and betterment of life. Plus, I would like to add a comment on the earlier idea that the consumers drive the capitalist companies to do better, compared to regulation. I do not agree with that at all. If we were to remove all regulations, lets say regarding environment protection, an immediate catastrophe would fall on the planet. Sure, some consumers would still make a market for Eco-friendly companies, but the vast majority of the consumers are ignorant and know nothing about ecology except a few buzzwords about it. In the end they would just buy the cheaper product and did not care if it was produced by destroying ecosystems. That would drag all the Eco-friendly companies down in a heartbeat except high-end products for a minority. We've seen it happen in Microstock with the price and content wars! If we consider that most of the Media is property of large economic groups, people would not even know how those products were being made because of controlled information. Couple that with marketing, and fake news discrediting the people speaking about the problem and nothing would stop Unregulated Capitalism. Look at what happened to oil companies and fuel with lead or tobacco companies. Are the State regulations and authorities slow to evolve? Yes, but even with all their problems they are what still protect the people. And do not forget that we can even argue that States and authorities are slower to act exactly because the power of Capitalists, who interfere heavily and create a lot of obstacles and sow corruption for their own gain. I see that daily and blatantly in my country daily! Connecting all this with the coronavirus crisis, and to prove my previous paragraph, I can say that once the quarantine scenario was put on the table, the capitalists of my country immediately started to say that they would bankrupt their companies and that they needed subsidies because they could not resist economically stop for 15 days! That immediately delayed the issue of the quarantine, and will kill countless people, just because they lie about the survival of their companies and found a way to suck money from the State they hate so much.
28
« on: March 29, 2020, 01:43 »
***
29
« on: March 29, 2020, 01:33 »
competition rarely lowers prices -- yes, FDA rules handicapped us,
Lol at your first statement (which is so easily dismissable, it's not even worth arguing about) -- and yes, I'm glad that you agree with me on the second one. We have here a very clear example of how the regulations (like the ones your asking for) not just handicapped us, but led to preventable deaths.
We are making progress! 
The next step is to understand how monopolies and the associated price gauging practices are flourishing under the protection of tough regulations (cronyism)
In my country we were sold the same BS about competition lowering prices. With that BS, the EU forced our government to privatize strategic sectors of the economy (fuel, energy, transportation, etc.). Sectors that in most part already had private companies operating and competing with the state company. When the state sold all those companies and all became private, what happened was that cartels were immediately formed to combine prices. Forget about competition driving prices down. Now you pay what the cartels want you to pay. With the privatizing of those profitable businesses, the profits instead of coming directly to the State and used in the betterment of the country, now go to the pocket of Capitalists. You may argue that the state still get revenue from taxes, but that's also not true. Those capitalists moved the fiscal headquarters of the companies to countries like Netherlands where they pay less taxes. Netherlands and other countries like it, in turn benefit from wealth sucked from my country without spending a dime on it. Much like parasites. In other cases, Capitalists hide the money on off-shores not paying taxes. You may also argue that it's the state and government job to investigate those illegalities. With so much power in the hands of capitalists, not only they buy the politicians in power, the State loss of revenue due to the mentioned above now has no means or funding to act. Plus, in my country capitalism and the competition/prices babble was used to crush the producers cutting the price paid to them (look at what also happened to us photographers). In the end, consumers are not paying less and workers are earning much less, but capitalists are richer than ever. Since the privatizing of all those companies our level of living regressed to the same we had in the 70's. And man, were we poor back then!
30
« on: March 25, 2020, 10:53 »
Well, here goes an important information about Coronavirus and a potential explanation on why people suffering from hypertension are being hit more seriously. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200323101354.htmIt appears that some medications are making easier for the virus to attach to the lungs, result in infection and pneumonia. the drugs in question are ramipril (brand name: Altace), captopril (Capoten), enalapril (Vasotec), fosinopril (Monopril), lisinopril (Prinivil, Zestril) and quinapril (Accupril). People taking these drugs must not stop taking them, but must be extra careful regarding coronavirus. At least until tests point that they don't have a relation with cooronavirus afterall.
31
« on: March 25, 2020, 03:40 »
Just what If....I know most of you hat Pres. Trump...But what if the Chinese created this virus in the lab to reduce their population of elders as the 70 year old plus people old do not produce for the Chinese government. They just use up sources/food. Something went wrong in the Chinese lab and they had a very bad accident and the virus was release/by accident.. Just what if...
If you go down that route I can make a much more convincing argument. What if the virus was spread by the Americans just like they have done several times? For example, one in the 1920s when the US government offered blankets to north-western Native-Americans purposely infected with tuberculosis so they would all die, or at least weaken them so the americans could steal their lands? Or the other time in the 1980s when they also tried to infect Cuba with hemorrhagic fever which killed hundreds of people among them over 100 children? In fact his wasn't the first attempt to do it as in the 1960/70s they've tried it too. I'm sure many more examples exist. And in the present situation the coronavirus was meant to create havoc in the Chinese and European economies since this is the declared plan from Trump. Even an idiot like him and his advisers must know that what made "Murica" "great" in the past were the profits from the two world wars. In fact it's one of the reasons why US sow so many wars. After the destruction the US companies gain a new market for rebuilding. But since the virus is mutating more than expected, any treatment US may had to protect their citizens and profit on the death of innocent (the most profitable business of USA) the US lost control of it. See, it's really easy to make up a much more convincing argument against USA. Simply because if there's one country in the world that is known to have no morals and have in fact made use of weapons of mass destruction over and over is the US (atom bomb, bio-warfare, chemical warfare). In America precedents count a lot. Your legal system is based on them. So what does the precedents tell in this case? Do I believe in any of I've written above? Not really. But if there were an evidence of foul play I would bet all my money on it. The track record of USA coupled with a lunatic president who even mimics Mussolini in the gestures, expressions and values leave little doubt.
32
« on: March 23, 2020, 02:08 »
Historically, March is the strongest month by far. This year, after a good start, it's becoming a catastrophe.
SS looks like is going to have the worst month since November 2007!
33
« on: March 22, 2020, 13:49 »
According to the site worldmeters the global percentage of deaths is 13% of all closed cases. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/Currently there are countries where the number of deaths surpasses by a a huge amount the recovered cases like US, UK or Netherlands. And then there's the differences in the way each country counts the deaths. In some countries people dying at home will not be subjected to autopsy, and will only be investigated if it has any relation to a known case of coronavirus. So, many deaths by this virus will not be counted because at the time of death it wasn't diagnosed with the virus or anyone close to it. This means that the death toll could be much higher than official number will record.
34
« on: March 21, 2020, 08:50 »
Uncle Pete, it's obvious that a lot of important things are happening regarding the spread of the disease, as well the need to educate people about safety behaviors and procedures, etc.
But much of the problems we're facing now are due to the decisions of the politicians in power right now, and in power over the last decades. Politicians who are resisting to act now because that will show how wrong they have been on countless issues, and ultimately will show them as irresponsible murderers.
So, talking about politic is what is forcing them to act. In my country the government and authorities are walking behind the demands of the people. It's the public opinion that's forcing them to act. That, forced our government to act with weeks in advance regarding other European countries but people feel they acted too late.
That happened because they felt political pressure. Our National Health Service has been under vicious attack for decades so the private medicine companies takes over. The current government and the party that supports it (among other powerful parties) have been one of the allies of the private medicine sabotaging and boycotting our NHS.
Now, reality has proven how invaluable our NHS is, and doctors and nurses are almost heroes and we're far from the worst yet. People are raving for our NHS and that is a political action because it weakens the plan to destroy it, and forces the government to backtrack breaking who knows how many sordid agreements they had with private medical companies.
As I said, we must discuss fight and prevention of the disease, but decisions are made by politicians which a lot of time decide based on politics and not public health and public interest.
35
« on: March 20, 2020, 14:44 »
Politics are in the middle of all this. It's impossible not to discuss it especially because of the impact it had in the national health services of several countries which are now requested to act against this catastrophe, underfunded, understaffed and underequiped.
I won't even elongate but it's impossible not to consider the implementation of the Euro currency that wrecked the weakest economies of the EU because it has been managed in benefit of the largest powers.
Or the opening of the EU borders and lift of import taxes of products made in China, India, Pakistan and other countries that competed with some EU industry, especially in the poorer countries used for their cheap labor. European countries and industries that were unable to compete with the low costs of the Asian slave labor and no safety or environment regulations and costs. That decimated a chunk of some European countries industry. A situation that threw thousands in unemployment, stopping them to produce wealth, paying taxes and becoming a burden on national welfare with the unemployment subsidies and other help.
If you consider tax evasion where the rich hide countless billions in off-shores so they won't pay taxes, leaving the financing of the countries dependent on the taxes over work, making that a lot of services get the funding cut and work less efficiently. All with the complacency of the EU and national politicians who benefit from favors a corruption.
Or the banks and bankers that behaved like criminals, but in the end it was the State bailing them out with the taxes of the workers, again demolishing the national budget, and even more cuts in public services.
Also, the public national health services being sabotaged so the private systems can destroy them and impose private medicine as the only alternative just to profit on human suffering like in the US, crippling the quality of the public services to the population. Public services that now are the exact ones called to help and not the privates.
Or the decisions politicians are making taking in consideration primarily their popularity and consequences in the next elections, instead of public interest.
Etc., etc., etc.
As I said, it's impossible to look at his just as an health issue and not diving right into politics because many of the deaths will be a direct consequence of past political decisions.
36
« on: March 19, 2020, 09:47 »
"Today the UK has 103 deaths vs Germany's 31 even with Germany's massive land borders making control of movement so much more difficult"
Compared to Italy's 2978, France's 264 and Spain's 767. Let's get a bit of perspective here and stop making cheap political points out of a crisis.
I can only say that you are delusional. Reality will fall on you like a ton of bricks. I'm hyper-critical of the people and politicians of my own country, but here we've been implementing measures with weeks in advance compared to other countries in Europe based on China and Italy examples. Compared to UK I think it measures in months... In fact the government has been playing catch-up with the people, who by their own initiative took self-protective measures and have been demanding stronger decisions from the government, which happened and will be stronger in the next few weeks. Proportionally, we even have more infections per million inhabitants than UK, although considering the attitude from the UK government how trustworthy are those current 2600 cases? Our number of deaths is almost nonexistent compared with the 108 fatalities in UK, which discredits the 2600 number of infected in UK. Considering the number of deaths, either the British authorities are completely oblivious regarding the real number of infected people which will soon demolish your NHS, or your NHS is absolute crap for having such percentage of deaths. Since I'm willing to believe that the problem is not in your NHS that leaves completely incompetent politicians. In either case it shows that UK is adrift and I cannot imagine what could happen there since you don't even have the warm weather and sun exposure to help slow down the virus.
37
« on: March 17, 2020, 08:52 »
Well, yesterday was really bad but today is appalling. Weekdays are becoming weekends apparently.
Very, very worried as this time of year my main income comes from travel images. If this does not pickup somehow I'll be in serious trouble.
38
« on: March 16, 2020, 06:45 »
I've just read the news that Donald Trump, the US president, tried to secure the exclusive for the coronavirus vaccine to the United States, making it unavailable to the rest of the world! 
The vaccine is being developed (soon to be tested in humans) by a German company, and after the refusal of the company to give the US the exclusive, Trump tried to buy the company.
How come is it that with each new bit of info which comes out about Trump, I still think, "this must be fake news".
I do apologise, it's only too real.
The German ministry of Health already commented on the issue declaring that when a vaccine is developed it will be for the whole world and that the company is safe.
This action by Trump, trying to prevent the world to access a cure securing it just for the US is beyond anything I thought possible and places Trump among the likes of Adolph Hitler.
I consider this an act of war and attempted genocide and I would completely support isolation and heavy sanctions against the US, while this monster, or another one like him elected by the Americans, is in office.
His followers will just say he's making good on his promise to keep America First (and to Hell with the rest of us).
Well the news appeared on a reference newspaper of my country (Western Europe), also in the Guardian, NYT, etc.
39
« on: March 16, 2020, 04:15 »
I've just read the news that Donald Trump, the US president, tried to secure the exclusive for the coronavirus vaccine to the United States, making it unavailable to the rest of the world! The vaccine is being developed (soon to be tested in humans) by a German company, and after the refusal of the company to give the US the exclusive, Trump tried to buy the company. The German ministry of Health already commented on the issue declaring that when a vaccine is developed it will be for the whole world and that the company is safe. This action by Trump, trying to prevent the world to access a cure securing it just for the US is beyond anything I thought possible and places Trump among the likes of Adolph Hitler. I consider this an act of war and attempted genocide and I would completely support isolation and heavy sanctions against the US, while this monster, or another one like him elected by the Americans, is in office.
40
« on: March 07, 2020, 11:31 »
I do not remember any agency back in 2006 that did not require a photographer to pass an acceptance test. Sure, some were more stringent than others but all asked a number of candidate images to pass to be approved as a contributor.
A really strange thing is happening with searches on SS on the "Fresh Content" order.
I searched for "palace interior" to take a look at what is being approve nowadays and what was being approved years back. Ordered by the "Fresh Content"option, jumped at page 1000 (out of 1091) and I see images from 2019, 2018 and other recent years in the mix. Even on page 1091 that happens. The same happens with other searches where I have mages from 2007 and on the last page I get recent images and none of mine.
Am I missing something? Isn't "Fresh Content" synonym of newest? Or does it mean unsold or something like that?
I guess it might mean unsold...I get quite a lot of old images that never sold getting a sale and some pretty poor ones at that. Which shows its never a good idea to remove your "crappy" content.
We have no hint what any of the words mean on SS. Easy example, Top Images, which just like Most Popular, is in no imaginable way, what any of us would call either of those phrases. One of my recent uploads just jumped to the first "top Image, after I uploaded about 100 other new images. Why? No downloads, the new images are a couple lines below, and almost all editorial, filling page 1 and 2, but why would a photo of bread, suddenly be my Top Image.
We can spend forever trying to figure this out, but there's no answer.
Every site in 2006 would be what? iStock, Shutterstock and Alamy? LOL 
In 2007 I already was in almost all the Microstock agencies I'm today except for a couple I joined later. I do not not remember back then joining an agency without having to be approved unless my memory is betraying me. And this means SS, IS, FL, DT, 123RF, BS and Alamy (was Macro). Of course, not all had the same level of requirements but none accepted you just by registering.
41
« on: March 07, 2020, 02:46 »
I do not remember any agency back in 2006 that did not require a photographer to pass an acceptance test. Sure, some were more stringent than others but all asked a number of candidate images to pass to be approved as a contributor.
A really strange thing is happening with searches on SS on the "Fresh Content" order.
I searched for "palace interior" to take a look at what is being approve nowadays and what was being approved years back. Ordered by the "Fresh Content"option, jumped at page 1000 (out of 1091) and I see images from 2019, 2018 and other recent years in the mix. Even on page 1091 that happens. The same happens with other searches where I have mages from 2007 and on the last page I get recent images and none of mine.
Am I missing something? Isn't "Fresh Content" synonym of newest? Or does it mean unsold or something like that?
42
« on: March 06, 2020, 08:27 »
The root cause for me is that they have made it possible to become a contributor with zero knowledge of photography or stock photography creating an unmanagable tsumani of images. There was a time when at least you needed to demonstrate a reasonable level of competence. The quicker in a process you filter out poor quality the cheaper it is. Can you imagine a supermarket using a supplier where 90% of their product has to be rejected as sub-standard? I'm pretty sure SS have such people.
Sorry, but that's not true. It was like this since the day one of Shutterstock and microstock itself. We can't pretend now that microstock was some kind of macrostock once upon a time. Microstock ruined macrostock and any appreciation of quality in photography years ago.
That is not true. The visual requirements to be accepted on the main microstock agencies in 2006 were very high. The main difference for the macrosctock agencies like Getty, Corbis, Jupiter, etc, is that micro would accept images with 3 megapixels, while macro demanded 18 megapixels. From my experience the advantage of the macrostock agencies back then, besides resolution, would be on the very creative images with high production costs. Back then very few people were in position to invest a lot on photo-shoots, and creative unique image weren't (as today) the best option for micro due to low demand and low paying sales. But apart from that, from isolated images, lifestyle, to travel photos, the quality presented by the Macros were appalling! Truly horrible in the vast majority of cases. The success of Micro isn't based only on price. A lot of it has to do with the high quality of the images supplied in the categories best suited to Micro. Today I get to see images on SS that would absolutely NEVER have been approved in the past. They would have failed in every requisite. Tilted images (not by choice), grainy and with a strong orange cast that kill every other colors and show an absolute lack of technical ability, and in no way are an artistic choice. These are images of the interior of a palace which I know well and demand a good quality camera, not a cellphone on auto-settings. The worst part is that they show up high in searches, above incomparably better images. That crap is the among the first images a buyer will see on SS before scrolling down to better ones. This problem is currently transversal to all images types on SS and IS.
43
« on: February 23, 2020, 13:47 »
Yeah, what an exciting new: another almost useless feature
Adobe, do you really thing that everybody knows the ID numbers of the own assets?
(How this people can live so far from reality?)
It's not that complicated for people who use their brain. Just search inside your own portfolio by keyword for the image(s) you want and the image number is right at the bottom of the image. Sure, it would be easier to be able to search by keyword, but claiming that Adobe is expecting us to know each image ID like there isn't a simple way to know it is simply childish. As a suggestion, when we search an image in the Dashboard (using the super-secret voodoo technique above) I would like to have the total amount earned, besides the number of downloads.
44
« on: February 22, 2020, 10:38 »
I was also unable to open the site for a few days. Even the websites which check if a site is on or offline gave me that it was down worldwide.
Searched info on Fakebook but nor the msg page or Tyler pages mentioned anything. It was very strange. Started to think if some agency took legal action to shut msg down...
45
« on: February 18, 2020, 10:12 »
Sales truly feeble recently, all tiny sums.
Just hope that decent sales aren't going to be replaced by contests, 'community' and other such 'fun' stuff like at 500px......
Not to mention refunds and the personal use scam buyers use (probably with the help of distributors) to get commercial uses but paying for micro sums.
46
« on: February 15, 2020, 06:25 »
Quote from: ShadySue on February 13, 2020, 14:22
MicroVet may be the only person who is * that trend. The only two other people who have said they do better on Alamy than they do on iS or micros in general have tiny or microscopic ports on the micro/s and large ones on Alamy. One of the loudest shouters about how few sales he got on iS compared to how many he got on Alamy, at the time I checked it out, fewer than 20, sic, twenty, files on iS and over 20K on Alamy.
There are several people who joined one or more micros with the recent commission cut, or in the past year, and they are generally astonished that they are doing pretty well, mostly better than they do nowadays on Alamy. Some of them were previously extremely anti-micro.
Despite having a larger portfolio on alamy than I have o IS, the amount I've earned in both agencies is almost a copy from each other year by year. Even in the HUGE downfall of earnings (85 to 90%) seems a copy.
The portfolio of IS is part of my alamy portfolio and the alamy exclusive images, although selling, were largely outperformed by the micro ones on alamy.
Alamy did very well in the past if you took the time to keyword well and maximize the chances to appear in the first pages. Today, even being in the first pages does not guarantee sales.
Last year, compared to my best years, I had about half the sales. On top of that, each sale (Net) averages around 18% of what each license used to earn me back then.
The rest of the stock agencies are not much better. The price war between agencies summed up with greed, plus the inability for photographers to organize themselves, and photographers submitting to every new piece of s**t of agencies that competed on low price killed the industry.
47
« on: February 13, 2020, 13:00 »
I was under the impression that only a fraction of the Alamy costumers have their searches recorded for the Alamy Measures feature. I thought it's was most frequent and steady buyers. Unless they changed it.
One of the best sellers of Alamy has a huge portfolio of nature.
48
« on: February 13, 2020, 01:30 »
Makes me very glad I never bothered with Alamy. Sometimes just keeping one's operation small and simple is the best approach.
Probably wouldn't have worked for you, Martha. Never was a great outlet for wildlife.
I alone sold more pics of African Wild Dogs on iStock in a year than Alamy had searches on 'African Wild Dog' in that same year. And there are loads of great pics of APHD on iStock that must surely have sold a lot more than mine did.
Glad to hear that, because there was a time when I thought I'd give Alamy a shot. (Or a bunch of my shots.) Never did it, however. Happy!
Just because it didn't work for you, it doesn't mean it didn't and still does for others. I'm no longer earning $10.000 (net) per year on alamy alone because now I'm earning a small fraction of that. But it's still better than most micros.
49
« on: December 09, 2019, 14:31 »
Honestly, that is a good commercial picture. In this day and age of Social Media that image with the right advertiser will relate to a lot of people because it has a homey feeling, it's cute with the cat in a relaxed position which conveys a message, has copy space. The crop is strange though and in micro that image is lost.
50
« on: November 13, 2019, 14:04 »
Well something is definitely different. I've been uploading photos and already had sales from those batches in all agencies, including the lowest earners, but nothing on SS.
That is a first in 14 years of stock for me.
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