The Digital Photography Show #13: Chris Marquardt from Tips from the Top Floor and the Sony Alpha 100
The Digital Photography Show #13: Chris Marquardt from Tips from the Top Floor and the Sony Alpha 100 (MP3 – 21MB – 59mins.)
July 12, 2006: Welcome to the thrilling thirteenth episode of The Digital Photography Show!
Today we have a fun interview with Chris, the creator and host of Tips from the Top Floor, one of the most popular and most useful photography podcasts out there. Chris talks about his recent experience with a burglary (we’ve blogged about below), tells us what he shoots with, and gives his favorite advice for improving your photography.
Chris and I also answer the burning question: If we were to team-up old school style, which one of us would be Batman, and who would be Superman. The answer will shock you! (Well, not really, but I like to create some excitement in these posts.)
And be sure to check Chris’s homepage in the next couple of days to see the word or phrase he’s going to have for listeners of this show. Email it to us at the address below, and we’ll pick a winner at random to win a Tips from Top Floor beanbag (you’ll have to listen to the show to hear why you’d want a beanbag).
Before Chris comes on, Michael and I talk about how he totally screwed up the photos he took at my son’s sixth birthday party (just kidding, Michael!), and about the super-delicious looking Sony Alpha 100.
Although my confidence is Sony is a bit shaky now that they’ve settled a class-action lawsuit to fix the sensors on many of their digital cameras that took greenish and smeared photos. Sony denies that the imagers were bad, but they’ve agreed to repair a long list of DV and digital cams. If you own a Sony camera, you better check to see if yours is one of the screwed-up ones at www.sonystyle.com/settlement.
Michael and I also talk about an article in Popular Photography about microstock websites where you can sell your photos for pennies apiece! Apparently, people are making a living on these sites – it’s all about volume, baby.
Thanks for joining us. Please leave you comments in the forum or email us at thedigitalphotographyshow@gmail.com. We also appreciate your kind reviews on iTunes, Yahoo Podcasts, and other aggregators. We’re a slave for you.
July 18th, 2006 at 8:24 am
[...] If you haven’t, listen to Chris’s interview on The Digital Photography Show [...]
July 18th, 2006 at 9:59 am
Guys,
I’m guessing you guys haven’t ever really looked into selling your photos seriously. If you had you would see the negative implications for photographers with royalty free microstock sites. I hope you ask the guy from istockphoto why he thinks that he should make more money from a photo than the photographer who took it. Why is it appropriate for a company like Walmart, one of the biggest companies in the world, to pay a dollar for an image that is used in their marketing? Ask him what he thinks the role of professional photographers will be in ten years from now.
istockphoto.com is cashing in on the egos of all those people who are willing to basically give away the rights to their own work just so their picture will be in some magazine or web site, without even a credit. Guys, serious photographers like us who care about photography and are willing to put in the time can sell photos, to real clients who will pay real money. And you keep your copyright, to sell the photo again to someone else.
Why is the woman in the article not selling through a real stock agency? I have no idea. I can only assume it’s because she’s being suckered, or the whole story is a sham perpetrated by the company marketing department. Maybe you can ask the guy if you interview him.
I am not a professional, I’m a dedicated enthusiast like yourselves. I looked at istockphoto in the past, and after reading about it decided against submitting anything to them. With my first photo sale I made more than I could have made from thousands of downloads on istockphoto.
If you do some searching on some of the enthusiast message boards, you’ll find some very well thought out arguments against joining a royalty free site.
July 18th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Response to Rob.
Rob, I just read your comment above and you’ve got me thinking. First off, I too am a serious photo enthusiast and part time pro but I am practicing my craft and positioning myself to go pro full-time someday.
I admit that I’m an “iStock’er”, I’m relitively new to iStockPhoto with less than 20 images on thier site so far. I have to admit that I’m a little less than impressed with the results I’ve gotten on iStock… on average I’ve made less than $1 per image. Many of my images cost more than that to get even if you only count my gas money to get to the location (not to mention my time and effort).
I’ve also found that iStock’s quality standards and rejection ratios are amazingly high. While I agree with many of their comments when they do reject an image, but it raises the question of “is it worth all this hastle for $0.20 per download?”
So, I’m already thinking about alternatives to iStock.
Rob, I would love to hear more about your experiences with other agencies and if you don’t mind would you share with me (us) what agency you are using.
Thanks Rob, I look forward to you follow-up comments.
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Scott and Michael,
I too read that article about the lady making about $150.00 per week selling 600 images … I’m starting to wonder if it would be better to sell one image per week and make the same amount of money (or more).
Something to consider.
I think this issue, “microstock” is really important issue to those of us that would like to make a living or at least supliment our income taking pictures. Hopefully more of the listeners will join in this discussion.
Allen Rockwell
http://www.allenrockwellphoto.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/allenrockwell
July 18th, 2006 at 8:07 pm
Rob and Allen - Great disucssion. I don’t want to weigh in with my opinions just yet, but I’m really interested to hear what y’all have to say.
Rob, I can’t ask your question to our interviewee because I’ve already taped the interview.
Allen- I am surprised to hear that iStock’s standards are that tough that a good photographer like you would be getting so many rejections. Is there a common reason they give you for their rejections? And how detailed is their critique? Is it helpful?
July 19th, 2006 at 6:36 am
I too have thought about submitting to a microstock library but like Allen says, I am thinking down the lines of $150 per image rather than 600 images @$0.25. As a result of this I am in the process of putting together my first submission to Alamy. Along a similar line to Robs original comments, Martin Bailey produced a podcast with a similar sentiment. You can find this at:
http://www.martinbaileyphotography.com/podcasts.php?dt=sa&ep=007#Ep007
Julian
July 19th, 2006 at 11:48 am
Scott,
Here is a sample rejection notice I just recieved today:
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We regret to inform you that we cannot accept your submission, entitled Ripples in the sand for addition to the iStockphoto library for the following reasons: This file contains artifacting when viewed at full size. This technical issue is commonly created by the quality settings in-camera or in post-processing.
For more information about iStock Standards, please see:
http://www.istockphoto.com/tutorial_2.3_noise.php
Resubmit *ONLY* if you have a clean, artifact-free copy.
—————————————————–
This is thier most common complaint “contains artifacting” and the most annoying to me.
The photo in question is of a sand dune out here in the desert with cool “ripples” in the sand.
It was taken with a Canon 30D, a 24-70mm L Series f/2.8 lens, at a distance of about 10-15 feet (to center of focus), at ISO 100, and almost zero post processing.
What really bug me is that this picture is a pretty damn nice photo that looks good at any size. It seems that what the photo inspectors do right away is zoom in to 100% (large poster size) and look for “artifacting”. …and yes they do find it sometimes. My problem with that is that I would guess that 90% or more of the photos purchased at iStockPhoto are used in magazine ads, websites, brochures, etc and not printed at 100% size … therefore the minor artifacting they see would never be seen by anyone unless they purchased the largest size AND printed it full sized AND stood an inch away and looked the print.
I’m not questioning the inspector’s determination (they have actually found some mistakes in my images that I’ve learned from), I’m just questioning if such a high degree of pickiness is waranted for photos that earn $0.20 - $1.00 per download to the creator. If these images were selling for $100 or more each I would say, yes, they need to be absolutely perfect.
I can’t wait to hear your interview with the main iStock dude.
August 13th, 2006 at 7:00 am
I recently joined a few microstock sites. Some of those people are hardcore fanatics about their photography, even though they make .20 a pop. I believe uploading great photos of people is a waste of time and money, unless you’re using them as advertisement for your portfolio. I think that almost anyone can submit to microstock (istock withstanding) and shouldn’t spend too much time during the set-up. I plan to have a portfolio in the 100’s of common items and objects, as that seems justified by the payment. I have no idea why anyone would put up with istock.
September 13th, 2006 at 9:54 am
Took a read of the above comments on istock. Istock like any microstock house is about numbers. The more images you have up the more image you will sell. While the price of some downloads can be as low as .20$, what is really happening once you take in all of your downloads for the month is something like .59 - 1.00$ per image, with a small group of image (between 200-500 images). If you take the number of .59$ X 200 download that come to $118.00 per month, or $1,416.00 per year.
Which may be more than you would make at a RM stock house if you could even get in.
Thomas_EyeDesign
istock Photographer