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Shutterstock.com / Re: ShutterTalk?
« on: May 01, 2014, 21:15 »
Ah found it - thanks! Opted out now.
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Shutterstock.com / Re: ShutterTalk?« on: May 01, 2014, 21:15 »
Ah found it - thanks! Opted out now.
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Shutterstock.com / Re: ShutterTalk?« on: May 01, 2014, 21:02 »I'll be running this event in Toronto as a Canadian Community Leader. It is for Canadian contributors and primarily focused on Canadian content. But, as Scott said, there will be events like this happening around the world, in the US, and other parts of Canada too. Building the Shutterstock community, making information about creative briefs available, and helping new and existing contributors connect with meetups, workshops and events is the goal. Hmm is there an opt-out for that? How do you do that? 153
Shutterstock.com / Re: ShutterTalk?« on: April 30, 2014, 16:55 »I'll be running this event in Toronto as a Canadian Community Leader. It is for Canadian contributors and primarily focused on Canadian content. But, as Scott said, there will be events like this happening around the world, in the US, and other parts of Canada too. Building the Shutterstock community, making information about creative briefs available, and helping new and existing contributors connect with meetups, workshops and events is the goal. Stacey, could you be more specific about the agenda and who the guest speakers will be? 154
Adobe Stock / Re: How and why are earning decreasing at Fotolia (chart)?« on: April 25, 2014, 19:03 »
I don't have a graph but I am pretty sure my earnings on FT look very similar to OP's.
My earnings are now less than 1/3 of what they used to be with less images in my portfolio. I was emerald long time ago (now sapphire with over 14K images) but I don't think it has anything to do with such dramatic drop in earnings. I think they just lost some market share at some point, that's it. Which they are trying to recapture it seems with their "dollar club" idea. 155
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Another rule change - deleting residential photos without PR« on: April 23, 2014, 15:51 »
Still requiring property releases for residential houses makes no sense to me. I photographed several properties with legit releases signed by the owner (one of them being me) that have been sold to someone else in recent years. Now someone else owns these buildings. Do my releases still stand or not? And if they do, how is this not absurd?
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iStockPhoto.com / Re: Another rule change - deleting residential photos without PR« on: April 23, 2014, 14:51 »
21 deactivated - most of them are non-recognizable cookie-cutter suburban homes. And, by the way, I never received any emails from Istock notifying me that this is going to happen - this is complete news to me.
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Off Topic / Re: Unsustainable!« on: April 13, 2014, 10:35 »I can agree with that. The only caveat is that there are a lot of shooters like me that don't do it for a full time income or because we need the money, so it may take longer than it would otherwise. Plus there is no real incentive to remove images unless the agencies do something that require it, so there should always be high quality images around. I could be wrong though. For someone who doesn't do it for income there is little incentive to produce a lot of saleable content. Getting image to the point of being saleable is a lot of work. If you don't do this for money, then it's for enjoyment of it, and there is only so much work one can enjoy:) There are not that many people out there that are good photographers capable of producing high quality content both technically and visually and not needing the money. And images do age. You can't keep going just on the content that 5-7 years old - styles, subjects, technology change all the time, you need it fresh to stay competitive. 158
Off Topic / Re: Dumbiest thing that you have ever did during a photo session« on: April 13, 2014, 10:17 »
Driving for an hour to a friend's house to photograph their dog on white background and realizing my white background is back at home. Solution: stop at nearest Wallmart and get the cheapest white shower curtain. It worked:) The dog was pretty wild though and nipped my daughter...
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Off Topic / Re: Unsustainable!« on: April 13, 2014, 10:07 »
I am still making a decent living from microstock, and I live in Toronto where cost of living is pretty high. We can speculate all we want about what future holds, but the truth is, no one knows. If you apply common sense to the situation, however, there always will be people needing to legally license images, and if "the pie gets cut too many times" there won't be many people supplying them - and that would force the agencies to increase payouts to photographers to attract new content. It's a self-correcting system.
And yes cost of living in developing countries is rising, and will continue to do so, and even though there are still photographers there that are happy with getting a few hundred dollars a month it will not last long. 160
Dreamstime.com / Re: Dreamstime, what's the secret?« on: April 09, 2014, 12:07 »
Some time ago I contacted Serban about "similars" rejections on Dreamstime - and found out that to have a better acceptance ratio you have to be very strict about selecting images from the shoot, more so than with other agencies. Even if you think images are not that similar but they portray the same subject, you should only select just a few best ones. Images are selling mostly by subject after all. It's ok to have 2-3 variations on the subject, but not more. It's actually a good thing for your discipline - you'll have better portfolio, plus your images will perform better in DT's searches. I used to try to give customers more options with different angles, etc., but the truth is it's the subject that matters most, so these days I am trying to be more selective about what I submit - to them and in general.
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Print on Demand Forum / Re: FAA Launches Art Licensing« on: April 08, 2014, 11:11 »I am confused about the fact that you can offer the same image for both RF and RM usage. In stock industry they are mutually exclusive. Maybe FAA means something else by "RM" licensing? Then they shouldn't use the same term in my opinion. Thanks for correction Sean - still, regular FAA contributor wouldn't know anything about managing rights. This may create a lot of confusion with both buyers and sellers. 162
Print on Demand Forum / Re: FAA Launches Art Licensing« on: April 08, 2014, 11:02 »I find it messy by accident... If you have there RF and RM images just be carefull when setting bulk pricing as you can set all images as RF, ooops. You can actually offer the same image as both "RF" and "RM" - FAA doesn't stop you from doing that. Edit the image, enter prices in both categories, and voila! In fact, in their description of "RF" and "RM" licensing they never mention they these things should be mutually exclusive. So I bet a lot of people will be doing just that - have the images as both RM and RF. Of course, FAA might say they are not responsible for any problems like that, but somehow I doubt it will save them from trouble... with all the recent lawsuits about copyright infringement and misuse... as one friend told me once, lawyers go for the person who has more money. And there is soo much copyrighted content there! 163
Print on Demand Forum / Re: FAA Launches Art Licensing« on: April 08, 2014, 10:54 »
My print sales on FAA this month are not going to be even a third of my normal month there. I wonder what's going on. It could be that the site is getting overwhelmed by new images every day, and offering a way to license images will increase the number of images even more. Some people will be uploading images just for licensing, and FAA library will be full of "non-fine-art" regular stock photography stuff. Let's say I came to the site to buy a nice print for my living room and instead I see business handshakes and people pretending to be doctors. This just doesn't make sense to me.
I loved FAA as a way to indulge my creative side and as a refuge from stock. Now it's all going to be mixed up. ![]() 164
Print on Demand Forum / Re: FAA Launches Art Licensing« on: April 08, 2014, 10:37 »
I am confused about the fact that you can offer the same image for both RF and RM usage. In stock industry they are mutually exclusive. Maybe FAA means something else by "RM" licensing? Then they shouldn't use the same term in my opinion.
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General Stock Discussion / Re: Getty Images makes 35 million images free in fight against copyright infringemen« on: March 07, 2014, 16:57 »Photographer's blog post about the Getty deal (warning, foul language Nice article, loved the foul language! ![]() I am not a SEO specialist, but if a gazillion sites embed links back to Getty wouldn't that propel them right to the top of search results? That would be a very tangible benefit for them. And I don't know if anyone mentioned this yet, but for photographers having their images plastered all over web - wouldn't that reduce the sellability of the image instead of increasing it? Just one more point on "how Getty screws photographers" list... 166
General Stock Discussion / Re: Getty Images makes 35 million images free in fight against copyright infringemen« on: March 07, 2014, 12:38 »I asked Getty public relations a couple questions. They supplied me with the following answer that can be attributed to Getty Images. The moment they allow embedding on my non-exclusive iStock portfolio (over 9000 images) I'll be gone from there. I will not be giving away for free images that I sell on other sites, this would be complete insanity. Whoever is in charge of decisions like that please take note. 167
General Stock Discussion / Re: Getty Images makes 35 million images free in fight against copyright infringemen« on: March 06, 2014, 18:40 »Well Sue I do think they outdid themselves this time... plus there is such a thing as a cumulative effect. This might be just the log that will break the camel's back :-)You have a point there - maybe there will be less and less photographers wanting to sign up with the "prestigious Getty agency" when they realize that Getty will take their imagery and devalue it to the point of it being worthless.Getty has had a dreadful reputation for the way it treats is photographers for a long time, since at least 2005, yet most of us took the risk of thinking, "They can't be as bad as all that," at least for a while. 168
General Stock Discussion / Re: Getty Images makes 35 million images free in fight against copyright infringemen« on: March 06, 2014, 18:20 »
I don't know about thousands waiting in the wings... I closed my direct account with Getty last year after Google "deal" (they were asking me why ![]() 169
General Stock Discussion / Re: Getty Images makes 35 million images free in fight against copyright infringemen« on: March 06, 2014, 18:03 »SS shares now down 7% today, that's a significant hit. Time to buy ![]() 170
General Stock Discussion / Re: Getty Images makes 35 million images free in fight against copyright infringemen« on: March 06, 2014, 11:38 »
My thoughts exactly:) However, when something like Getty makes one stupid decision after another instead of concentrating on what a stock agency is supposed to do - just selling images, plain and simple! - it is extremely annoying.... 171
General Stock Discussion / Re: Getty Images makes 35 million images free in fight against copyright infringemen« on: March 06, 2014, 11:28 »Not sure they can even pull this off technically. Even at low res the computer power needed to access the photo each time it is seen. Ever notice when a news program does a story about a company you can not access web site for a day. What if they have a technical glitch and it would effect every blogger. I agree. Given that Getty doesn't quite "shine" in technical aspects they probably did a pretty sad job implementing this. For a blogger who doesn't want to pay it's much easier to get an image somewhere else - through a screen dump or just some other site where the image is not protected. A blogger who wants to pay (= be legit with their image use)... will get it through Getty for free now! (how does this even make sense??). All Getty did by this move is gave the customers who'd be paying otherwise a free product, and led millions of internet uses to believe that stock images are now free to use... people will continue "stealing" images but now with a belief that they are not doing anything wrong. 172
General Stock Discussion / Re: Getty Images makes 35 million images free in fight against copyright infringemen« on: March 05, 2014, 22:56 »
To me this sounds like a definition of anti-competitive practice... I wonder how other stock agencies going to react to that, especially SS. Unless Getty makes only their exclusive content free?
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iStockPhoto.com / Re: iStock New Sub. Model Just Announced!« on: March 04, 2014, 13:59 »Well, including the istock exlusive imagery into a sub model seems to be a bad move fom me. The world is already overfed with stock images, if you want something you will get it doesn't matter which agency you work with. But the iStock exlusive imagery had a huge advantage: it was more expensive. Still everyone could afford to buy a licence but meawhile you always knew that you are not buying the cheapest stuff so it is likely that you will not see it again and again everywhere on the internet. Now this last advantage is gone. An image buyer who doesn't want to buy something that's all over the internet buys RM. Current RM prices are very affordable. He would not pay more for RF image which is not in any way unique or special (and majority of Istock's exclusive collection isn't). So, including exclusive content in their sub program is a logical move for iStock. In the business where everyone sells subscriptions you can improve your chances by offering more content for the subscription price (and um, having your site up helps too ;-)). 174
iStockPhoto.com / Re: iStock New Sub. Model Just Announced!« on: March 04, 2014, 11:49 »Being unable to understand that having what competitors doesn't have --don't even matter if better or worse-- it's a big plus for any business in any part of the world, is extremely nearsighted. Ummm.... how is it a plus for any business to have something worse than your competitors? ![]() 175
iStockPhoto.com / Re: iStock New Sub. Model Just Announced!« on: March 04, 2014, 11:30 »
Well, in my opinion exclusivity is an outdated concept and was for a while. Clients need the right image at the right time, and they don't care at all if that image is sold on one agency only, not if the quality is the same. Istock had some delusions for a while that their exclusive content was better than non-exclusive, and it really isn't the case, and it looks like they're starting to realize that. Which will eventually result in diminishing benefits for exclusives... they'll probably retain some form of exclusivity perks but not significant ones. My prediction is that all contributors will be on about the same level pretty soon, they'll keep reducing payouts until it doesn't make sense to contribute anymore. Not for the people living in countries with high cost of living, anyway.
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