Another member of the 57p club!

Joe T

Joe T

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We havent had one of these on here for a while, but I've finally sold my first photo!

I sold this on fotolia.co.uk:

DSC_6113-01a.jpg


Yay! :D
 
And another one turns pro - well done (y)
 
well done young fellow!
 
Well done :clap: :clap:
 
Congrats. One day I'll get around to putting more than one image on Fotolia :)
 
Well done, Joe. We ought to set up a league - I'm a member of the £2.28 club now cos I sold 4!
 
Interesting thread that one. He makes a very good point. I wonder how much of it is born out of his recent loss of income to micro-stock sites?

btw, I use alamy and am about to apply to join aclaim, but their selection is extremely stringent, more so than alamy, who don't select on content, only technical criteria, so I doubt I'll be accepted.

Haven't made any sales through alamy yet, but I only have my initial qc submission for sale at the moment as they're dragging their feet with my submissions, taking approximately a month to turn them around!


I think that all of you who use these micro stock sites would be accepted by alamy, the images you all post on here would definately pass their technical criteria and you never know, you might make some real cash ;)


http://www.alamy.com/contributors/default.asp
 
dod said:
Disclaimer: this is not taking a pop at fotolia, nor anyone who has sold images on there. In fact I've been meaning to upload some myself and have just never found time to go and do it.

But, there are some interesting points made in this thread, all to do with the value of your work.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=61210&highlight=stock+photography
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ah yes the usual "the actions of up and coming photographers are wrecking our business and im going to slat all my toys out of my pram at you as its all your fault and im so annoyed that you think its acceptable to damage our business by charging less for your pictures"


i love those threads, where proffesionals ad freelancers spit their dummys at all of us amateurs who lets face it are happy to make £2 from a picture.
 
Indeed.

Despite the fact that most of my income comes from photography, albeit not stock work, yet, I have to agree with him and you've missed the point of his thread. It's not about feeling threatend by individual photographers or up and coming new talent, that's always going to happen, it's the same in any profession.

If you were making quite a good living doing weddings and then a company with massive fianancial power came along and started doing weddings at a price you couldn't hope to compete with how would you feel? Microstocks WILL destroy the chances of many decent, honest and hardworking people making a living from doing what they love.

It's the same story with supermarkets putting the squeeze on suppliers of milk etc, and closing out smaller shops.

"****ing capitalists. Market Forces, forced diversification and globalisation. I hate every single last one of them! Thatcher should've been burnt on a cross rah rah rah etc etc etc."
 
no trust me i have FULLY understood that thread, whilst they do raise some valid points and i agree that these £2 a pop stock places are making it increasingly difficult for freelancers and the like, theres a huge amount of underlying "im so much better than you, now stop selling your images until your good enough" within the posts of indyjeff and kennyG etc. and that reply of "i look at the site and then reply with "id have binned them" mearly makes him look like a c***

the fact is that there will always be publications and customers who value price over quality, and on oposite sides there will always be photogs prepared to undercut others to get some money. but there will always be customers wh understand the worth of quality (i really cant see f1racing mag ditching there highly paid photog for a free one to save some money) and know that quality costs money.


however these threads always come across as pros whinging about how hard done to they are by companys because its now easier for companys to get images from elsewhere at reduced prices, and it comes across as whinging, always does. that we have absolutely no right to any of their business. photography is a hard business, freelancing especially live with it, lifes hard for many businesses in this climate, now make yourself profitable, whinging aint gonna help, as people will continue to submit to these cheap stock companys and people will continue to buy from, it aint going to make any difference
 
whitewash said:
theres a huge amount of underlying "im so much better than you, now stop selling your images until your good enough"
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I didn't quite pick it up like that. I understood it as go ahead and sell your pictures but sell them for what they're truly worth.
 
sorry i should have pointed that i get that from alot of these threads, that one isnt so bad for it, but one (on a music photography site) thread on a similar vein was definetly a case of "why the hell are you here, get off, now stop getting in our way of making money and come back when you've got a £15k a year wage from the NME" as if we had no right to get photopasses, or even have a camera until we were true proffesionals and by being there and having our photos available at costs undercutting them, we were in some way stabbing them in the back as they are "so much better" and we're taking the profit away from them. which lets face it is bull****, if your starting out at something you can imediately start expecting to charge pro prices, you need to make yourself marketable and attractive, and that means generally reduced profit margins.
 
dod said:
I didn't quite pick it up like that. I understood it as go ahead and sell your pictures but sell them for what they're truly worth.
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exactly.

:edit: sorry about the thread hijack joe! Congrats on your sale, must be very gratifying ;) Here's to many more!
 
whitewash said:
no trust me i have FULLY understood that thread, whilst they do raise some valid points and i agree that these £2 a pop stock places are making it increasingly difficult for freelancers and the like, theres a huge amount of underlying "im so much better than you, now stop selling your images until your good enough" within the posts of indyjeff and kennyG etc. and that reply of "i look at the site and then reply with "id have binned them" mearly makes him look like a c***
Click to expand...


Not actually the point you made in your first post! :shrug:

I agree, There are a vast amount of so called pro's who whinge about stuff on the web. But there are an equal amount of non-pro's who whinge about the pro's whingeing, and then expect them to offer advice and succour when they want to start making some money from their imagery!


I sit quite happily on the fence in all these issues. I only seek clarification of peoples viewpoints...... opinions are, after all, like (_*_), evreybody has one!
 
Gandhi said:
I sit quite happily on the fence in all these issues. I only seek clarification of peoples viewpoints...... opinions are, after all, like (_*_), evreybody has one!
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i agree with you there (on both the ******** issue and the sitting on the fence :LOL: ) but we all have to evolve and make the most of the situations and these istock agencies aint gonna disappear so you have to evolve your business strategy to compete around these or you'll end up dodo'd:bonk:
 
:LOL: :LOL: Ahahahaha, fantastic thread! My take on this is is simple. If you are good enough to be asked to take photos then you are good enough to be paid, and this includes friends and family:eek:

With regards to the agency thing, my take is this, I will not give my work away for a few pence. end of story. If people out there want too, fine fill your boots. I do not believe that the people who buy my photographs would even consider looking at a cheap stock library and if they did I would not want to do business with them.:shrug:

I have seen photographs on this forum that are fantastic and blow a fair bit of my own work into the weeds, If people want to sell these images for a few pence and it makes them feel good then fine, lets face it, to a lot of people photography is a hobby and to see your name or image appear in a publication is a wonderfull feeling. I am a business man, I prefer the money and the more the better.
 
excuse for off topic Joe.

dod said:
Disclaimer: this is not taking a pop at fotolia, nor anyone who has sold images on there. In fact I've been meaning to upload some myself and have just never found time to go and do it.

But, there are some interesting points made in this thread, all to do with the value of your work.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=61210&highlight=stock+photography
Click to expand...

I agree.
I've thought about submitting myself in the future, but I just realised why i shouldn't, I was wondering how much that photo of Joes actually cost you to take? £1....£2.....£5... Possibly more like £20-30 I recon.

So you'd have to sell 20-30 images to match that....then you’re into profit. makes me ponder on how realistic that is, given that they receive more and more images every day, taken with digi cameras and possibly photos as good as Joes.
:thinking:

Doesn't sound good to me. :)
 
Joe T said:
When I saw my thread had 26 replies I kinda knew it had gone off topic! ;)
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:LOL: :LOL: :LOL: Classic. Congrats on the sale here too.

People can whinge about low cost stock sites until the end of time but they aren't going anywhere. I get told time and time again by designers and agencies that they commisoin less and less photography now as stock is such good value.

Photographers will go out of business because of this as the work of a hundred pros can now be spread across many thousands of amatures. And why not, when you have people with the level of talent we have on here offering shots for pitance, people would be mad not to use them when possible.
 
I mean, the only people benefiting out of this arrangement are the buyers and the site owners....Do you know any photographers who make a reasonable income from this, I don't. :shrug: anyone?

Don't get me wrong, I know how great a feeling it is to sell a bit of your art. (It's art to me anyway) Accomplishment and success are perhaps the only truly rewarding experience in our short lives and initially you may be happy about selling a photo for pennies, but, if you think about it, you've just been shafted big time. And the more photos you give them...the harder there gonna shaft you...

...is that what you want, cos that’s what’s gonna happen. :LOL:

Not directed at you Joe....just pondering generally.
 
And I've just sold the same image again!

Trust my luck, last night I changed the settings on the picture so that Fotolia didnt have exclusivity on the miage - therefore I now only get 33% instead of 50%.....


50% + 33% of 57p doesnt add up to much.....yet.....

Still waiting to hear from Alamy to see if they like my pictures. :)
 
well done Joe, must sort mine out!
 
Joe T said:
Alamy have accepted my initial submission. There should be images availabel for view from around 24 hours of now. Here we go......


:)
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thats excellent joe, very good :)
 
Congrats dude, it's nice to be accepted.

I'm a bit annoyed with them at the moment (but myself mostly)

In the past 3 months, I've sent them 3 dvd's with approx 200 odd images spread across them. All rejected. arse. It seems when I created my action to interpolate etc. my images for alamy I cocked it up somewhere and they all came out very soft, or at least some of them did, the ones they checked off of each dvd!!!

Moral of the story? Send smaller submissions and check them all at 100%, cos they do!

Hope you have more luck than I sem to at at the moment!
 
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