Сообщения

121

Photography / Re: Which web sites with great resources do you know and use?

« : Декабря 30, 2007, 11:46:17 pm »

It just has to be the Strobist blog and it's accompanying Flickr group. They're DOPE.

Strobist: http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/
Strobist Flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/strobist

The first is the bible of off-camera flash, the second the best forum there is about flash photography in general. Just do some searches.

p.s.: And occasionaly I check out photo.net's forums and fredmiranda.com for lens reviews.

122

General discussion / Re: iStock continued rejections getting ridiculous

« : Декабря 30, 2007, 05:28:55 pm »

Ahh... just had a superfast batch reviewed with a 80% approval rate. The rejections were all very nicely argumented and I can agree with them (minor banding issues, a borderline copyright...). I stumbled on a reviewer that actually stopped by my images and critically looked for flaws. I enormously respect that.

p.s.: A counterbalance post this is. I have to speak honestly when there's reasons to do so.

123

General discussion / Re: Did anything changed at Crestock the past 6 months?

« : Декабря 30, 2007, 04:52:49 pm »

Exactly. The time spent "smoothing" a workflow is like any other time investment, either perfecting the photography skills or fastening the "routines" they follow. I would never go any other "alien" route unless it was highly necessary.

p.s.: But since we're in the Crestock thread: I never knew their "old" uploading system, but this one seems fairly intuitive and optimized. There's no such thing as "perfect", but they're probably at the top. Gotta love the choice of no categories (and many other things - strictly uploading-process related, of course).

124

General discussion / Re: Did anything changed at Crestock the past 6 months?

« : Декабря 30, 2007, 04:34:27 pm »

) I would rather not answer (but you know my answer already)

p.s.: Anyways: I think I got the slowdown issue solved. Using the Opera browser messes up with the connection. At least so it seems. With IE the thing keeps spitting out "secure/unsecure content" warning, but with Firefox everything works smoothly. Every image loads fast enough.

125

General discussion / Re: Did anything changed at Crestock the past 6 months?

« : Декабря 30, 2007, 04:18:40 pm »

DNF, you're right. Actually I noticed this "problem" because I have some older files thate have iStock keywords copy/pasted in the IPTC repository. This means that many of them are "disambiguated" and faulty by my own standards, but iStock likes to keep it that way so I don't complain. I realized one should never copy iStock keywords to other stock sites, cause elsewhere they're just crap.

And I did that on around 30 images when I started "microstocking", submitted them to iStock, recopied the keywords to my files and, yeah, they got messy. That's why I have to recheck each one of them and an option to change them altogether would be nice. But I don't complain, just writing it down somewhere (diary-style, I guess)

p.s.: Nevertheless the editing is slow anyways. Sometimes it takes more than a minute to open a damn keywording panel (for individual photos). That IS a problem. But I'm sure it's just temporary server issues.

126

General discussion / Re: Did anything changed at Crestock the past 6 months?

« : Декабря 30, 2007, 03:42:52 pm »

Oh, yeah: and it takes ages to load individual images to edit them. Might be the server today, thought. Uploading 350 images isn't really poppycock;)

127

General discussion / Re: Did anything changed at Crestock the past 6 months?

« : Декабря 30, 2007, 03:41:51 pm »

Love the "by-step" submission process, but I find it rather slow when I want to change individual keywords for uploaded images when they're automatically read via the IPTC info. I have to click on each and every one of the images and check them (to remove keywords, adjurn them and such). It is a pain in the ass that if the image has IPTC data, it gets transferred to stage 3 directly.

So I miss an option to kick some images back to stage 2 or an option to edit them all-in-one on stage 3. Other than that the site looks awesome, nice design, intuitive solutions and I hope it will get at least the sales I'm not getting at the "last of the class" BSP and Fotolia.

128

General discussion / Fotolia forum censoring content?

« : Декабря 30, 2007, 02:43:16 am »

I don't know who's the forum moderators up there, but I just had a thread deleted. It was obviously censored.

The reason? I wrote about my sales being disastrous (comparing them to "other sites" (never mentioning any in particular) and saying they were 50 times worse than on the best one (and this was an approximation, 'cause they're even lower)), BUT I paralelly asked for help. Konstantin Sutyagin mentioned to me that it (my bad sales) might be because their search engine works with the seven "most important" keywords and since I never reorder them, this could well be the reason why my numbers are so, oh so low.

Anyways: my post wasn't attacking anyone and I sincerely asked for suggestions and advices. But some jerk thought this was obviously "bad publicity" and they removed my thread.

It might not sound such a big deal, but I highly value the freedom of speech and thought and this act is a big letdown for me. Big minus to Fotolia on this one!

129

General discussion / Re: content filter bug

« : Декабря 29, 2007, 10:44:30 pm »

Don't know exactly why the sales are so low on LO. Well, to me they compare to BSP somehow, at least regarding the sales stats. But their community is awesome, the site admins (and the bouncers) are friendlier than anybody, love the design and their uniqueness as well. The uploading system is great too (much, much better than on iStock, for example).

The major reason is probably their age, but there has to be something wrong on the buyer side as well. Marketing primarily and maybe an unlucky search engine. The free images section or something like that would certainly build up it's popularity. They have to come up with an idea to bring in more buyers.

p.s.: I was wondering a couple of days ago how much does offering different content formats (bitmaps and vector, for example) contribute to the popularity of these microstock agencies. And it is certainly one of the top reasons why buyers choose them. The market has diversified and designers are well versed in rasterized AND vector content. And they choose those that offer both (look at SS and iS).

Anyways. I wish all the best to LO, they sure are working hard.

130

General discussion / Re: ImageVortex anybody?

« : Декабря 28, 2007, 04:57:17 pm »

If it's years old and I missed the info that it even existed, well, that's a good enough reason to skip it;)

131

General discussion / Re: "Microstock ABC. Sell your pictures online." article i wrote in english.

« : Декабря 28, 2007, 02:30:25 pm »

I'm gonna take my 10 minutes now and read it from top to bottom. Thanks, Lev!

p.s.: You're not Mr. S anymore to me;)
p.p.s.: Read it: awesome stuff. Love the contribution!

132

General discussion / Re: Poll-What is your least favourite stock site?

« : Декабря 28, 2007, 02:25:32 pm »

Same here. I highly dislike iStock. Their uploading options are way beyond the competition, yet they seem to be on par (if not better) than the market leader SS.

p.s.: I can't afford to lose time sorting my images into different upload groups, expect the expected (ergo: rejections), throw away time and money to get the same outcome (zip, nada, zero) over and over again. I already said enough in another thread, but I'm gonna reiterate for the sake of this one: their dress just doesn't fit me. The rejection rate comparison between them and the other microstock services is ugly. 40% vs 90% elsewhere just doesn't make sense.

133

General discussion / Re: ImageVortex anybody?

« : Декабря 28, 2007, 02:20:24 pm »

I'll probably be dumping Albumo and Imagevortex for the same reason. Don't know them, true, but my prognosis about the potential sales tells me enough: it would be trashed time.

134

General discussion / Re: How is Crestock doing for everybody?

« : Декабря 28, 2007, 02:18:45 pm »

So is it a good time to join them?

p.s.: Judging by the income I get from the other "small players", I'm not really spending a day of uploading and get 5 dollars in half a year. Or am I full of prejudices?

135

General discussion / Re: Generic model release

« : Декабря 27, 2007, 05:25:34 pm »

Thanks, Sybille. I thought about that, but in a more unacceptable way. I was going to add my phone;) But your idea is perfect, I'll try that. Adding a small comment shouldn't be a problem.