Happy Halloween

Hope everyone has a great today and dressed up. Happy Halloween.

I thought I would throw up some of my past costumes. I'll add some more as I can find them.


That is me with the white shirt in the back and the sword.


Thats me in the backrow as the Nerd. And again below.


Wellllllll.....

That's not me but thought it sort of looked like me. hahahaha.

I'll try to dig up some other funny ones.

Extended Licenses

We want to introduce extended licensing to the site but want your feedback on what is fair for both a buyer and seller. I know a lot of you have had questions so we want to clarify any concerns or hear any suggestions you might have before we launch it.

What are fair terms for both sides?

Are there other site's EL contract that you like and think are fair?

What is a fair price?

What are some of the terms of an EL that you want in there?

I am here to make this better for everyone and to get this feature up and running as soon as possible, so let me know.

Requests for late winter/early spring content

Just want to throw out some ideas for potential shoots for people. Magazines are starting to work on their late winter/early spring issues. Time to think about:

* Valentine's Day
* St. Patrick's Day
* Relationships/Sex/Romance
* Seasonal Depression
* Tax time
* Mardi Gras
* Jazz Festival
* Easter

Hope this helps. If people want to add comments below on ideas of images they have shot in the past related to these topics, please do so.

Getty buys Jupiter

Talk about a whopper but not totally unexpected. While I was sitting in a presentation of "Microstock Superstars" (panel included Yuri Arcurs, Andres Rodriguez, Lee Torrens, Kelly Cline and Daryl Lang of PDN) today at the PDN PhotoPlus exhibit, I was hit by the news that Getty had struck again and bought another one of its competitors, Jupiter Media (just the image business) for $96 million. That is the 3rd largest player in the industry being eaten up by the largest. It was just last year, Getty was in talks to buy Jupitermedia for a reported $400 million, at least according to Jupiters CEO Alan Meckler. I think Meckler was holding out for the $96 million dollar offer instead.

This is not the largest acquisition by Getty either. If you remember or like me didn't know until a few years ago, they acquired MediaVast (including WireImage)for $202 million and then in 2005 acquired Digital Vision for what was worth $165 million. Chump change to you and me.

In the statement, Getty CEO Jonathan Klein said, "Jupiterimages' customers already appreciate its value-based offerings, and through this acquisition we will be able to offer more content, better technology, more customer service and additional local content. Combining Jupiterimages' product with Getty Images' extensive media assets and global distribution will further enhance Getty Images' offerings and provide more relevant content to both companies' customers while extending the presence of the Jupiterimages brand to customers around the world."

Or said another way, another one bites to the dust and here's to creating monopolies ;-)

Soon there are going to be no other places to license your digital images, videos and vectors but through Getty Images and Cutcaster.

For a brief overview see PDN's coverage.

How do people go about keywording their content?

I'd love to hear some of the techniques and tools that contributors use to go about keywording their content. I think it will help not only Cutcaster see what mindset you are in and how you view your images but also help the buyers as they can understand better how to search.

Also do people use any keywording software out there? I was just playing around with DeepMeta that is for IS but can be used on other sites. I think its a great tool.

The 12 Commandments of Keywording success according to Cutcaster

The 12 Commandments of Keywording success according to Cutcaster ;-)

1. You only need between five to fifteen (5-15) keywords. Twenty (20) is the highest. Better tagging means better search results, bringing in more users, which means more sales for your images at higher prices then other sites. We would rather have fewer files that have better keywords than more files with plenty of irrelevant keywords

2. Keywords need to be separated by a comma. Compound phrases need to be separated by a space and then surround by commas. You can remove any quotation marks.

3. You can add ONE SET of location tags. Avoid using locations as tags unless there is something in the photo that makes its location recognizable. Not a seagull in the blue sky.

4. Remove all the keywords that are obviously not in the images

5. Remove tags that could be tangentially related, but aren’t really illustrated well by the photo. i.e. picture of cat, adding in “mouse”

6. Remove tags that are related to the photo, but so vague that no one would ever use them to search.

7. Take a few of the choice words and make them far better by turning them into a phrase

8. Don’t “stretch” your tags into irrelevancy, in order to generate more hits for an image. This can be very frustrating for our users, who tend to search literally.

9. Figures of speech, nicknames, slang, metaphors and metonyms can create a ton of problems in a search engine. Please don’t use them. The reviewers will add them in if necessary.

10. Proper Names and Catch Phrases — Don't Break Them Up. If you have a keyword that is either a very common set of two words, or is a proper name, enter it as is. The search engine has the ability to recognize many phrases that operate as a common term but contain more than one word, such as "hard drive," "hot dog," or "White House." It also recognizes the names of many public and historical figures.

11. You do not need to type in ‘car, cars’ to cover the singular and plural versions of a noun. Type in only the one that is more accurate for your photo. If there is only one car, type in “car.” Your image will come up in a search for both car and cars, but it will be ranked higher if the plurality matches what the buyer searched for.

12. Be as literal as possible. Describe just what is in the images.

Read Dan Heller's blog article on the reasons why keywording your images correctly is so important.

Is Digital Railroad closing? Say it ain't so, Joe.

Another bit of bad news and sorry to report. Photobusinessforum is reporting that Digital Railroad is shutting their doors. There are a slew of postings on Facebook and changes to peoples jobs in their profiles. This one says "Charles left his job as CEO at Digital Railroad." That is Charles Mauzy, the "former" CEO of DRR.

Not sure the total details on this one but again we are sorry to see another one go. I can assure you Cutcaster is on solid financial ground which lets me sleep well at night. Also we are a lean, mean, fighting machine ;-)

If you are a Digital Railroad subscriber, I would be downloading all of my needed files immediately, if for no other reason than to have a backup of them (even if they do remain in operation), but also make sure that any monthly or annual fees are not billing to your credit card in the coming weeks as they are working to liquidate or sell the company. No point in throwing away your money.

UPDATE- I'm hearing Digital Railroad has been forced to suspend all operations. This archive may only be accessible for the next 24 hours. Sounds completely unacceptable to me.

Clients who have been tracking the company's downfall may have seen this
coming, but for those who might not have known about Digital Railroad's
financial straights find themselves now having less than 24 hours to recover
their photographic archives from Digital Raiload's servers.

"Everyone is downloading now and their FTP has slowed to a crawl," one
Digital Railroad member told News Photographer magazine this afternoon. It's
estimated that there may be as many as 1,900 client archives on Digital
Railroad's servers as of today.

Full story here:

Come visit us at Picturehouse

Cutcaster is going to be pitching to hundreds of image buyers in NYC and the surrounding areas at Picturehouse this year on October 29th from 10am to 8pm. Here is a list of image buyers who attended last year. If you are interested in visiting us we will be at booth 219 and will be giving away a free iPhone that day to people who come and meet us. If you want more details check out the Picturehouse webpage here.

Speaking about Technology at PACA

For anyone attending the PACA conference this year, I am going to be speaking with a few others in the Industry about the role that technology will play in the future. I guess they like what we are doing with technology that they asked a former stock broker on Wall st. to speak about it ;-)

If you can make it the technology session will take place on:
Sunday 26th October from 3.30pm – 5.30pm
at:
New York Downtown Marriott
85 West St (at Albany St)
New York, NY 10006
Tel: (212) 385-4900

The title of the discussion is: "What Role is Technology Playing in New Business Opportunities?"

The moderator will be Jeff Burke, Former PACA President.

The panelists are: Kevin Goldsmith (Adobe), Oleg Tscheltzoff (Fotolia), Ben London (National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences), Giles Copp (Version Industries) and myself.

Come one, come all and root on Cutcaster if you have time on Sunday in NYC. Here is a list of other PACA sessions that will be taking place that whole weekend.

Search free images, free photos and free vectors at Cutcaster

Cutcaster is introducing a "free" section to the site and I wanted to outline a few of the details surrounding it. It is still in the early stage and I am open to anyone who wants to offer images in this section and to hear any suggestions for making it better. You will notice that you can now submit images that were not accepted by Cutcaster and sent to your "reject" tab in the upload area to a free section or you can remove them from the site. This is your choice.

Free image and photos Section

All our photographers and designers have the choice to offer their images for free to members of Cutcaster if Cutcaster does not accept them. This is purely up to you. If a member offers their image to the free section, the photograph will be accessible via the search engine in the free photo section of the site, the watermarked thumbnail preview will be indexed by Google and will be linked to the contributor’s studio where they are selling their full price images.

Photographs voluntarily proposed for free by their author (selling price Web = 0 and print = 0) and accepted by Cutcaster will be considered as free photographs and their authors will thus enjoy the advantages of the free image and vector section.

If a photographer or designer wanted to offer their images in the free section, they could do so under a different name than their Cutcaster account name. In essence, a photographer/designer may have two aliases on the site to protect their identity if they desire.


Hells no! Why should I offer free photos at Cutcaster?

It is your choice but these are why it will benefit you and the community.

* To develop community: offering free photos will draw a large number of people some of whom will spend money thus benefiting the whole Cutcaster community. We need to increase the number of people who are downloading images and licensing images to Cutcaster and this will help.

* If you donate 100 free images to the Free section you will receive an extra 5% of sales from your purchased files. So 45% for non exclusive and 55% for exclusive images. If you donate 1000 or more free images to the Free section you will receive an extra 10% of sales from your purchased files. So 50% for non exclusive and 60% for exclusive images.

* When a photo in the free section exceeds 100 downloads (from different members) and upon approval from the photographer, the photo will be automatically re-integrated to the normal section of the Cutcaster database.

* It's a friendly way to help those whose off-line use is not commercial.

* Get feedback on how your images are used in the comments section of the free downloads page. means a lot to many of our contributors who simply would like to know how their work is used.

* As a contributor you get unparalleled exposure for your work.
Every day thousands of graphic designers, creative directors, web developers, web publishers and webmasters from all over the world come to Cutcaster as a destination for stock imagery.

I want to download free images and photos. How do I do it at Cutcaster?

The people downloading the free photographs must be a member of Cutcaster and must agree to observe the conditions of each license and contract. Moreover, a member cannot download more than 100 free photographs per month (a maximum of 10 per day).

To withdraw a photograph from the free section

The photos that you submit to the free image section are always yours and you retain the copyright. If you choose to take them off the free section, you can do so at anytime by going into your studio and clicking on the free tab above your preview thumbnails. This will take you to the free section in your studio where you can click on the “x” underneath any of the thumbnails that you wish to remove from the site.

To add a photograph to the free section

Photographers/designers must decide before hand to add pictures to the free section in the event their pictures are refused by our editing team as long as the image was not refused for legal or moral reasons.

Please let us know any suggestions you may have. This is for everyone's benefit and will help the entire community. We are asking for your help and hard work. We are not suggesting that you should give your content away or that it is somehow worthless (it is not at all otherwise we would just remove it completely from the site) but this is to help bring in new buyers who don't know about Cutcaster. You will always retain the rights to it but this will help.

Here is a link to the Free image licensing agreement.

Edit your media details- open again

You can now edit your media details again by clicking on the little "e" underneath the thumbnails in your studio. Sorry that was disabled for a while. I want to thank those of you for going back in and cleaning up your keywords. This is so important to our search algorithm. I am going to be releasing some new site keyword policies coming up this week and I am looking forward to cleaning up the keywords now on the site. It's a huge job and investment for us but one that is so important to the buyers that come to search our site. I do still NEED your help and thank you in advance.


John

Images not showing up on site

We know about this and are just moving them around on our backend. They should be back up shortly. Thank you for your patience.

Controlled Vocabulary at Cutcaster

Well, I am back for a moment from the Wild wild west of keyword-land and wanted to give you a quick update from the front lines.

First, I want to say thank you to the contributors who have gone back in and refined their keywords to describe just what is in the images and vectors and also add the commas back in. It is a big help and your continued help is very much needed.

While going through the keywords and getting them as descriptive as possible and in line with the searching tools we are about to unleash, you will notice that some of your files will now have the option to edit keywords locked on your media details page. You will not be able to re-edit these files' keywords. You will still be able to edit everything else about the file but the keywords are now locked and you must send us an email if you would like to add or take out keywords now going forward. This is so we can get some control over the keywords that are being used in the database and also make our search only return relevant results.

Here are some things to help you that relate to controlled vocabulary and can be found on David Riecks Controlled Vocabulary site.

"Think Like a Buyer:
Buyers are looking for images that clearly represent the subject matter of the images without your interpretation or guesswork. For example, an image of a child at the beach eating a dripping ice cream cone clearly conveys summer. A studio food shot of an ice cream cone does not necessarily imply the same concept or meaning. A buyer who specifically has ice cream in mind to represent summer will use search terms to find "ice cream cone", not summer.

-Apply keywords consistently. If windsurfing should alternatively be keyworded as; wind surfing, then ALL of your windsurfing / wind surfing images should contain both versions of the word.

-Do not apply human attributes and emotions to images of animals; For example; love, smiling and happy are ok if used with images of humans, but "smiling dog" is likely to confuse a researcher."

We are going to be introducing our new "controlled vocabulary" very soon which will help everyone and are excited to get our keywords under control. If you have any questions please post below and I will be more than happy to explain. For more information on metatagging and controlled vocabulary visit David Riecks site.