“More Like This” in full effect

On iStockphoto.com, when you look at the detail page for any image, on the middle, left side, there is a link that says “More Like This”.

In the past, this link tended not to be very useful.  At one time, it took words from the title and ran a basic search on those words.  Most recently, it picked the first three keywords a contributor had entered and ran a search on those.  Neither of these is/was particularly useful, because they didn’t necessarily represent what I’ll call the “representative keywords” for the image.  ie., what several terms could you use that immediately describe this image.

For the image above, you could say the representative keywords/terms, would be “pot of gold, st. patrick’s day, rainbow”.   However, when entering terms, I might have entered “green, nobody, horizontal” first.  That wouldn’t give you a useful “More like this” search.

Yesterday, that changed.  Using the new “relevancy” keyword factor iStockphoto has been gathering, “More like this” now returns a search based on what could be guessed to be the most relevant (or representative) keywords for that image.   Once the above image starts gathering data, it is likely that “More like this” will return a search based on the three terms above, and a fourth – maybe “green’ or something.

Anyways, the point is that when you do click “More like this”, because you loved mine so much, but need a slightly different angle, or pot, you will get a targeted search based on the keywords that have brought other buyers to this image.  So, you’d be happy to find a search full of rainbows and pots of gold, without having to go back and re-type your search all over again.

Let me know how it works for you.

Facebook Fun

In my efforts to promote my stock content product around the internet, I’ve created a facebook “company” page, here .  It sure is fun to play with new “toys” .

Application Photos Were Rejected

When someone applies to be a contributor on iStockphoto.com, part of the process involves submitting three photographs (rasters) or three vectors.  A special inspection team will looks at these to see if the applicant has the “chops” or the vision to join the iStock contributor team.

Now, these submissions are not checked for things like model releases, or oversharpening, or any technical issues.  It’s more of a “is this person creative enough that they get the hang of what stock is” review.

When the contributor is approved, these submissions are essentially tossed aside.  The new contributor is now part of the real inspection queue, with an empty portfolio.  If they submit their initial try out images to the regular inspection queue, they risk getting them rejected as not being up to technical standards, or any other rejection reason.  This is spelled out clearly, in two places.  Number one, the initial welcome email received from iStock:

Please note: you must reupload samples through the normal upload process to have them included into your portfolio. Please keep in mind these files will be reviewed by our inspection team and are not guaranteed to be accepted since they go through a different inspection process.

This is also laid out quite clearly in the FAQ:

If I’m approved as a contributing photographer, are the samples I provided automatically accepted?
No, you will need to resubmit those images to our inspectors for approval.

This bears repeating, as this comes up about once a day in the forums.  Initial application submissions are not automatically accepted into the contributor’s portfolio, nor are they guaranteed acceptance through the regular queue.

So, perhaps a good start for a new contributor is to try posting these submissions in the critique forum to see if they are up to snuff.  Posters should read the first post in the forum on how to best construct a critique post.

Occupation Series

About two years ago, I did a series with 5 persons dressed in various occupations.  With my 1dsMk3 high resolution camera, and a set of different models (and some different occupations), I revisited this theme.  Hopefully, these will be useful for things like Human Resources media, or job fairs.

I also have a variety of Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day and Easter Images online, or in the queue.

PAYG smallest package updated

With the recent rise in credit prices per image, a large image now costs 12 credits at iStockphoto.com .  This presented a small inconvienence, as the smallest amount of Pay-As-You-Go credits you can buy was 10 credits.

As you can see above, the smallest package has now been updated to allow a single purchase of 12 credits (at 12 x $1.50, instead of 10 x $1.50), the assumption being that large is a fairly popular purchase size, and this accomodates the occasional buyer.

This does not affect subscription plan buyers who purchased before the increase.  The subscription is a contract, and the previous credit per image prices (as long as you use your subscription credits) are locked for the duration of your subscription.

User Generated Conference Expo

Just to get out and network a bit, I’m heading off to the UGCX conference next month.  The courses on the Photography track sound interesting, and hosted by a few peeps I know.  Hopefully, the track will stimulate a few brain cells that aren’t currently active, and get me thinking in new directions.  And it should be fun!  Let me know if you’re going as well.

For Mac iStockphoto Buyers

At the MacWorld Expo yesterday, iStockphoto.com revealed a new standalone application for buyers.  The app is in early Beta currently, but it apparently has a lot of cool features that the company thinks that buyers want.  If these and other features are popular, they will integrate them into the web interface in some way.  This is supposed to be a kind of development platform for the main site interface.

Some of the things you’re seeing:
1. Scalable preview sizes
2. 3 different search result viewing options, including cover-flow
3. Batch downloading
4. Batch downloading of thumbnails (!)
5. Lightbox management
6. Purchase history

Number four above sounds like the recent application I put on my website (read more here) for buyers.  That’s great.  I even used it myself the other day.

By the way, Best Match 2.0, the new sorting method that should include keyword relevancy, should be showing up Mid-January, according to this thread (I think).