For several days, now, I haven't been able to view photos uploaded via FTP on DP.  The site tells me I have 22 unfinished files, but it won't show them.  Anyone else having the same problem?

This almost always comes from your email getting hacked, as a communication centre for most ppl thats the main target, keep a close on eye it - delete mails containing password, etc. Hackers won't kidnap your models, what they are looking for is e-money on paypal etc.

Quote from: Microstock Posts on September 06, 2011, 06:05

Quote from: lthn on September 06, 2011, 05:50

Quote from: Microstock Posts on September 06, 2011, 04:50

Quote from: lthn on September 06, 2011, 04:06

"If I don't like the way something is written or in this case the way a link is given, I would just move on to another thread."

Why did you respond to me than... by your own logic? : )

... You have expressed your opinion on a subject which is a tangent of the main subject, on which I have a different opinion. Your points are not invalid, ...

Why did suggest that I should have just skipped the thread than? : ) On bakclinks: make them nofollow, issue over.

If something irritates you enough skipping a thread is always an option, instead of continually trying to change a decision that someone doesn't want to change. The OP has read the thread and is sticking to her decision, so yeah the issue is over. 

This sounds like that accroding to you, some ppl should make a point, and others should just skip it, altho you admit they have a point : ) I see this, the same problem all the time: people fail at the most basic points of logic, even their own logic. Thats why I get bored with msg boards, most don't want arguments (the main function of boards like this) they just want to hear stuff they fancy : ) They don't even realize this while doing it: they hear something they dont like, they will start arguing that people shouldn't argue, what an oxymoron. Unless they grow up from this attitude, communicating with them is just useless, so I'm off, thx.

Quote from: Black Sheep on May 30, 2011, 22:12

There's too much oversupply at the moment, and it was predictable from the start since the bar to join IS has been low for a long time.

Since 2002, presumably?

The trad sector operated as a closed shop, setting barriers designed to keep all the cake for a small elite. By doing so, it locked out a lot of people who were more than capable of meeting the market's demand for quality. The artificial inflation in prices it was able to impose in this way created a barrier that prevented money flowing into the industry but ensured that the bit that did come in from stock was split between the select few allowed into the club.

OK, so presumably you were there and you liked it that way. But it's pretty clear that the system was inefficient, artificial and (how I hate to use the word in a normal context now!) unsustainable. Once digital shooters started hammering at the castle gate, undeterred by the only real barrier, of high running costs from having to buy and process film, there was no way the edifice could withstand the assault.

Now you want to rebuild the castle, disregarding the lessons of history?

If iStock sets high barriers to try to reduce the influx of new material and artificially boost prices, sellers will simply go elsewhere and the buyers will gradually migrate to cheaper options. That's how the free market works and it is the free market that has pumped such huge sums of money into photography as a result of breaking the old barriers.

And who is seeing the money? Well, the old-timers are seeing less because the cartel don't work no more. The micro agencies are seeing a lot and they didn't exist. A few thousand upstart photographers who would never have made anything in the 1990s are making a living and hundreds of thousands are getting some pocket money.

The biggest winner of all from this wall of cash is probably the electronics sector, with tens of thousands of newbies buying and upgrading high-end cameras, lenses, computers, programs and memory cards, with purchases being justified against future earnings from stock. The microstock industry has probably generated sales of billions of dollars worth of hardware and software (not to mention lens caps) and accelerated the introduction of high-end DSLRs.

It would be nice if the agencies weren't siphoning off so much of the cash and left more from us. But attempting to choke off the supply of images won't boost prices or earnings.

There are two "bars" that matter: quality and price. The quality bar can be set as high as you like, as long as the price bar is kept low enough not to encourage buyers to look elsewhere. If you raise the price to a level where where buyers will start looking for alternatives, you need to drop the quality bar so that you are not driving high-quality suppliers to other agents by rejecting perfectly good work (I wonder if that is why iStock now seems easier to get work into than Dreamstime or Shutterstock).

The only time the free market will let you succeed by setting very high prices and simultaneously insisting on very high quality is when what you are selling is sufficiently unique for low-priced alternatives not to be available. The cartel system allowed apples on white to sell for hundreds of dollars, the free market won't support that model.

Images larger than native camera size are not allowed.  Next time don't frame so sharp, or downsize a bit to add white around it.