Great Move At Dreamstime -Older Images Saved:

Boris Yeltsin, April 1990

As I briefly mentioned in my last sales update, there was excellent news from Dreamstime in May when they announced a change in policy regarding older (over four years) unsold images.
Previously contributors would have got an email offering two choices for the future of such images. Either donate to the free images section at Dreamstime or permanently disable (delete) the files. Donating to the free section could, in some cases, make sense for exclusive contributors as a way of driving traffic to their paid images. But for non exclusives such as myself, with the same images still for sale elsewhere, deletion was the only option.
This was especially relevant to me as I joined Dreamstime in 2009 and recently, four and a half years later, had started to receive a series of emails passing a death sentence on a substantial number of images.

Italian street party, July 1990

After the third email I really felt I had to try and do something to avert this and opened a new thread in the Dreamstime forum stating my case for keeping the images online (Link here: http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_37221 ). I'm not so arrogant as to think my post was wholly responsible for the subsequent change of policy but I hope it helped to move along something they were already looking at. The clearing out of older images was, anyway, looking at odds with the massive increase in upload limits of late (I can currently upload some 3000 or more images per week based on my circa 73% acceptance rate!). Storage space and bandwidth (for them) clearly isn't an issue.

Anyway, they subsequently announced the change (it's described as a test at this stage but I do not expect them to reverse this). Now your commercial images will still get the email -but offering the options of donate or keeping online for sale. Editorial images will not get the email and remain for sale on an ongoing basis. For anyone who might be concerned at the possibility of their images ending up in the free section -you can set your default choice in your account settings at any time. You can still change your mind on an image by image basis when the email arrives.

Poll Tax Riots, March 1990

You can read my full argument for keeping these older images online (especially the editorial ones) in the Dreamstime thread but in essence I suggested these form a part of history as buildings/fashion/signage etc change and, if anything, become more of interest the older they get. Some of my images are around fourty years old and it seemed a shame to give them just a four year life on the internet. I have images online over four years old that that subsequently sold proving that you just never know when a buyer might have need of that image. Once deleted, that sales possibility is gone forever. So from one relieved editorial photographer - Great Move Dreamstime! Regards, David.
(Note: I am using some older editorial images to illustrate this post -but these do all have sales, so wouldn't have been up for deletion).