love this collection of photos of underwater sea creatures photography

What is one thing that a stock photography company could be providing to buyers or sellers which they are not?

RT @Alltop_Photo 23 Photography Business Cards You Should Check Out http://bit.ly/340XBr Photography.alltop @cutcaster

Guest Blog Post- From hobbyist to professional artist

Whenever the microstock business receives a mention in the media, it is usually accompanied by the common description of microstock artists as amateurs, hobbyists, and stay-at-home moms or dads who have a consumer-level digital camera and some vacation photos they hope to make a quick buck off of. While those descriptions may accurately represent many artists working in the microstock field today, there are many others who consider microstock their profession. A number of things can factor into why the amateur title may be a fitting description for many microstock artists, but this does not mean that amateur status is permanent and are a few things that you can change today that will elevate your position in the stock imaging world. Changing your outlook on your microstock work and how you approach your craft can help to turn a hobby into a job.

There is a frequently used phrase in self-help and confidence-building circles: “Act as if.” You may have heard some slightly different versions of this saying, but in all of them the underlying principle is the same; How you conduct yourself has a direct effect on what you become and where you end up, in all aspects of life. In microstock, acting as if you are already a professional may spur you on to truly becoming one. Take a look at your typical microstock day and think about how an outside observer would regard your activities. Do you conduct yourself in your daily life like a hobbyist or a professional?

One of the quickest and easiest ways to transform your microstock hobby into a job (part-time or full-time) is to re-assess your work-flow and make changes that shift that work-flow into a more efficient, business-oriented process. If you are working in a cluttered area, with many distractions and very little organization, clean up your workspace and create an environment that is more like an office. Create a schedule for yourself, and stick to it. If you only have an hour a day to devote to microstock work, make sure that you put in that hour every day, and around the same time each day. Finally, make decisions based on good business choices, not personal preferences. Don’t limit your choice of agencies to work with based on your personal feelings about them. If you are only working with one or two agencies because they are your favorites, you are restricting your earnings potential and making an amateur decision. If you start to think and act like a pro microstocker, you will quickly transform your hobby into a job and your income will reflect this change.

Contributing writer Mike McDonald. Thank you so much, Mike. See Mike's Cutcaster studio here and his website here. Come on Mike. We want some more of your awesome work here at Cutcaster.

How can I buy stock photos and stock footage at Cutcaster?

Here are 4 Easy steps to help you buy stock photography and stock footage on Cutcaster.

Anyone can buy and all are welcome. Buying stock photography and footage on the Cutcaster website is very simple however some new users have been asking about the best way to buy stock images and videos on Cutcaster. I'll explain a little more.


* Step 1. Create a Free account. That is step number one. The first thing to buy images and stock video from Cutcaster is to create a free account. Simply click here or visit www.cutcaster.com and click on the Join Now button on the Cutcaster homepage. It takes only a few seconds to put in your user name, password, and contact information.

* Step 2. Browse our premium and newly uploaded collection at Cutcaster. We are growing by leaps and bounds and have many exclusives that you cannot find on other stock photo agency sites or stock footage sites.

* Step 3. Now that you have your account, you can add an image or clip of footage to your shopping cart or ClipFolder, which is our version of a lightbox. (I recommend adding the images to the ClipFolder if you are not ready to purchase the photograph or video. You can send these to colleagues or clients.)

* Step 4. Select the images and video that you need and click the checkout button at the top of the screen. The next page will display different image and video files you have chosen. Checking out is a breeze and we accept all major credit cards.


That is it, just 4 easy steps!

If you still have questions please contact John or Victoria at 215-688-2751, call us on skype at johnnywgriffin or email us at john @ Cutcaster.com.

Digital Railroad Cuts Staff in Half

Charles Mauzy, who was just appointed CEO of Digital Railroad in November after Evan Nisselson stepped down, announced today that the online photography service is restructuring and will be cutting back on its staff. The number of cuts has not been reported but blogger John Harrington has speculated that Digital Railroad would cut as many as 22 jobs, or roughly half its staff. Mark Ippolito, who I met at this years Picturehouse, and Tom Tinervin, who I saw speak at the Apple store in Soho, will remain in their respective roles.

This is a definite shift in their business strategy most likely to focus more on the marketplace model, which we also believe at Cutcaster was the way to go, or they are running out of money and hanging on. What was the amount of their last round of investment?

Mauzy says, "The friends and colleagues we say farewell to today have laid the foundation for our mutual success," and notes, "Our investors have tremendous confidence in our leadership team, our strategy and have renewed their financial support with additional investments in capital this month."

Submitted Images- To sell or to reject.

Rejected images. They are a part of the Microstock business and every contributor has had one or two images rejected for reasons they just couldn't understand. It's something that seasoned submitters get used to and track the results of their submissions so they learn from their rejections. What can one do who is just starting out to get better at contributing to microstock sites to increase his acceptance rates?

There are a number of excuses and reasons for why an image could be rejected. Some of the examples below will highlight some of the few things you can do to fix the issues and get it accepted on the next try.

"Noise" can take place in every media file type.

Here are some types of image noise from Wikipedia,

" * In salt and pepper noise (also known as random noise or independent noise), pixels in the image are vastly different in color from their surrounding pixels. The defining characteristic is that the color of a noisy pixel bears no relation to the color of surrounding pixels. Generally this type of noise will only affect a small number of image pixels. When viewed, the image contains dark and white dots, hence the term salt and pepper noise. Typical sources include flecks of dust on the lens or inside the camera, or with digital cameras, faulty CCD elements.
* In Gaussian noise (dependent noise), an amount of noise is added to every part of the picture. Each pixel in the image will be changed from its original value by a (usually) small amount. Taking a plot of the amount of distortion of a pixel against the frequency with which it occurs produces a Gaussian distribution of noise."

If you have noise reduction software programs like Grain Surgery, Neat Image, GREYCstoration, Noise Ninja and pnmnlfilt (nonlinear filter) found in the open source Netpbm tools, you can remove some of the noise on a digital image. These tools are simple to use and can make the difference between a photo being accepted or rejected by many microstock sites out there.

At lower quality settings, "Compression artifacting" or hazing can be introduced by the camera and/or by your image editing software. Also, re-sizing, re-saving and re-sampling can all lower the quality of a JPEG image. A compression artifact (or artefact) is the result of an aggressive data compression scheme applied to an image, audio, or video so you have to always be careful when re-saving JPEGs as the image quality will become worsen with each re-save. One would obviously want to start with the cleanest and highest quality image to start. Always double check your camera settings to make sure it is on the highest quality settings.

“Composition or snapshot” Simply put, this is the setup of your image and the visual composition. Unfortunately this can be attributed to personal preference, but if you’re getting rejections for these reasons there are some basic rules that may help. Wikipedia covers them in the Rule of thirds here.

"The rule of thirds is a compositional rule of thumb in photography and other visual arts such as painting. The rule states that an image can be divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines. The four points formed by the intersections of these lines can be used to align features in the photograph. Proponents of this technique claim that aligning a photograph with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the photo than simply centering the feature would."

To utilize this, "When photographing or filming people, it is common to line the body up with a vertical line, and having the person's eyes in line with a horizontal one. If filming a moving subject, the same pattern is often times followed, with the majority of the extra room being in front of the person (the way they are moving)."

By making sure your images are free of as much noise, haze and artefact, you will significantly improve your acceptance rates when submitting images and footage to microstock sites. These are just a few reasons for rejection but there are more. My advice is to keep trying and mastering your craft. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard so keep it up.

For a great list on what it takes to be a microstock contributor read Lee Torrens writeup on the topic. As Lee puts it, "Rejection is part of microstock" and you need a thick skin.

Tools for Photographers, Videobloggers and Musicians

If you haven't seen this comprehensive list of tools for the above mentioned people over on Mashables you should check it out. With the explosion taking place in online media, a list that covers the sites catering to people interested in online media is so valuable.

The entries were compiled from previous Mashable articles - see the links at the bottom of their article for further reading.

Next time, with everyones help, Mashable will include, Cutcaster.

One of them that I think they missed is MOO, which I believe will be a big hit with the photo and image community in the near future. Cutcaster would like to reach out to innovative and upstart companies like this in the future.

Interesting Reports

The NYT reports that Corbis receives more "than 85 percent of its revenue from licensing images at an average price of $250 each". I'm not sure how they will sustain that over time. I'd like to see how that is trending and how fast it is moving.



The WSJ said recently after the acquisition of Pump Audio that images "costing more than $500 each accounted for about 40%" of Getty Images´s total revenues from the previous year. It goes on to point out that demand is dropping as I type this. Well, it doesn't include me in the article.

Snapvillage- Corbis's new project

StockPhotoTalk reported today that SnapVillage launched its beta site today, empowered by Corbis but catering to user-generated photography. I'm not sure how sweeping the changes are for those participants in the microstock world but they are proclaiming big things in the press release. Some of the advantages are pricing that empowers photographers, access to premium markets and streamlined image submissions. How important are these issues to you? How would you rank what are most important to you?

The NYT ran an article on SnapVillage today quoting Gary Shenk, who said that "the company is not just acknowledging the growing importance of microstock sites, but also recognizing the threat to its higher-price images. "Cannibalization is going to happen in our industry", Mr. Shenk said. "We can either let it consume us or be part of it".

They still have to work out some bugs as they are in beta so I won't comment that much on the platform just the offering.

The best thing I see about the new offering is that photographers can now set their own price. That is a step in the right direction but how will they assure or at least avoid photographers who price their content too high or too low. Understanding the market and how the market is pricing content out there is a lot for people who spend a lot of their time doing their passion. Photography. Do people really want to keep changing their prices if they are not getting sales or moving up their prices if they are getting a slew of sales. How will SnapVillage capture those extra sales or extract that extra dollar out of every download for their customers?

I think it is a good start but don't think they have gone far enough. Cutcaster will build off the power it gives back to the creators to set the terms and pricing in addition to empowering the buyers to choose a lower price they can only afford or want to pay. Providing information that is easy to understand and visually see for people is the best way for them to capture value and educate themselves on the market trends. Allowing them to set the price is only one step in a much larger picture.

For those of you outside the US, this site will not be available to you for a while.

The Coming Earthquake!

The Digital Journalist posted a very interesting article on video becoming the main means of acquisition in photography. It's very interesting how news organizations can grab frames from the video they capture in the field to post in their print editions and then stream the video footage from their websites. It's another example of videos importance in the coming years and the opportunity for photojournalist.