PJ. Morley

You may already know that images can purchased at rock bottom prices from the various microstock sites but did you know that many of them offer completely free images to download and use under their royalty free licence?

Try the offerings from the following sites. You may have to sign up to the site to get access to the images but that’s free as well and they change them for new ones on a regular basis.

iStockPhoto - Offers one free image per week

© aabejon iStockPhoto

Shutterstock - Double freebies are available here. Shutterstock give a free photo AND a free vector image every week.

© Sergei Didyk Shutterstock

Dreamstime - Not just one free image but well…. lots of them. Just click on the ‘Free Images’ tab at the top of the page. The quality is variable however so you may have to look through a few.

Fotolia - 10 free images at any given time are available and these seem to change on at least a daily basis.

So there are a few to be getting on with.

iStockphoto have revealed more details it’s new subscription packages to be launched on 26th May 2008. Why is this news? Well, this new package appears to be a competitive move aimed directly at Shutterstock’s long standing and until now, unique subscription model. See Previous Post.

If this is the case then iStockphoto will have an edge that could severely impact on sales over at Shutterstock. New details of the iStockphoto package reveal that is very close to the existing Shutterstock subscription package with only a few minor differences in the way that contributors are paid. Ultimately, for buyers that requires a lot of images, iStockphoto will offer a realistic and attractive alternative to Shutterstock which is a situation that hasn’t existed before.

Early indications suggest that iStock will offer 3 month subscriptions with packages allowing subscribers to download images with a value of between 30 and 480 credits a day. With each iStockphoto image selling for somewhere between 1 and 10 credits, that offers a potentially amazing 480 images per day for small blog sized images. And even large images that sell for 10 credits will see iStock subscribers having the potential to download as many as 48 images per day.

Assuming there isn’t a massive and previously untapped customer base for the new subscription model, it looks like iStockphoto may well be targeting the existing Shutterstock customer base. Although prices for the iStockphoto packages haven’t yet been confirmed, the model itself compares very favourably with Shutterstock packages that allow a maximum 25 images per day regardless of image size. Only time and price will determine the outcome.

This page is to highlight times that photographers are wrongfully suspected and accused doing nothing more than taking photographs when they have a legal right to. There are many examples of times when the police, park wardens, security officers or any other official for that matter use completely inappropriate reasons such as anti-terrorist laws or even non existent powers to stop and search. What do they do? Just make it up as they go along. In some cases it seems they do, especially if they lack experience or don’t know the law themselves.

Can you justify stupidity, bully tactics, intimidation of the public and lack of common sense in the name of national security?

Here are some examples. I’ll add more as I find them.

Terror Laws Used on Photographer

Innocent photographer or terrorist?

Father Angry at Photography Ban Ridiculous! A father told that taking photos of his own children ice skating was a breach of the Child Protection Act.

Have You Got a Licence for That Camera?

What sort of nonsense is this?

You see this sort of story from time to time. When will officials realise that just because you carry a camera it doesn’t automatically make you a terrorist or a paedophile? In fact. How many actual terrorists or paedophiles have actually been caught because they were randomly stopped from taking photos in a public place? None!

This example of thoughtless and inappropriate stop and search of a photographer taking pictures of a soap opera actress in a public place is completely unnecessary and just confirms that in many cases, officials themselves haven’t got a clue.

Why does this ridiculous and paranoid suspicion carry on? Come on people. Get a grip!

See the story here.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7351252.stm

The excuse is often that the officers or officials involved in wrongful accusations of this sort are inexperienced. Well that is NO excuse. If I broke the law then I wouldn’t be allowed to claim ignorance of the law to get away with it. And certainly a law enforcement officer shouldn’t be able to make that claim when trying to explain why he wrongfully stopped and search someone. Can you believe he actually asked the question;

‘Have you got a licence for that camera?’.

Wouldn’t be great if the sites selling our images told you what keywords were used to locate the images you sold? With that sort of information, you could streamline your keywords and ensure that only the most efficient keywords were used thus ensuring maximum exposure for your images. That sort of information would give you an insight into the way real buyers find images.

Well there is at least one site Dreamstime that reveals this information and it is proving to be very helpful when deciding on keywords for images. Well in most cases it is….

Look at this illustrated image of a solar eclipse.

Let’s say you wanted to buy this to use in a project. What keywords would you use to locate an image like this? Well, maybe you would start simple with ‘illustration’, ’solar’ and ‘eclipse’.

WRONG!

The actual keywords used to find the image of the solar eclipse were…….. ‘flight’ and ‘geese’. Hmmmm…..

OK, that could be just a one off. Let me think now. I need an image to suggest a good idea. How about a lightbulb or even better, two lightbulbs, yes that would work, it suggests sharing ideas. Start simple and I’ll use the keywords ‘two’ and ‘lightbulbs’ and see what happens.

Success! But apparently, the keywords actually used by someone to find and buy this image were ‘art’ and ‘easter’.

OK how about this image.

Keywords used: Blindfold

Or this one

Keywords used: Strawberry

Or this one

Keywords used: Handshake

Well it seems this keyword thing is a little bit trickier than one would first imagine. I’m just not thinking like a buyer would. It seems the buyers start out looking for one thing and then get sidetracked in to something completely different. I think I’ll just stick my usual approach of keywording for now.