Picturenation forum offline

The members forum at http://picturenation.co.uk has gone offline (for now at least). I was a bit concerned when it vanished and emailed founder Jane-Louise Green. As ever, Jane-Louise got right back to me. It seems that running and moderating the forum is quite time consuming and at the moment they are just too busy reviewing and marketing photographs to keep it going. I think that in the present economic climate we all understand that getting sales is the only priority! The forum will hopefully be back in the future. Meanwhile they do have a page on Facebook where you can leave comments. On the plus side a batch of around 30 new photos which I uploaded at the weekend were reviewed and (thankfully) mostly approved within a couple of days. And that, let's be honest, is what matters most. That doesn't mean that I don't miss adding my views on the forum! Regards, David

Recommended Blog Site

For a witty and entertaining take on the microstock market check out Komar's blog at http://microstockposts.com/. I came across this site from a posting on the excellent http://microstockgroup.com/ and was glad I did. You can subscribe for free email updates, which I did right away! Regards, David

Full price sale at Snapvillage

On an ironic note given that Snapvillage is being merged into Veer (see earlier posting ) I have just had my first full price ($5) sale there, netting me $1.50 in commission. Up to now all I have had are 30c subscription sales! Looking forward to a big sales increase when my portfolio is transferred over to the Veer site. Regards, David

Clickfree photo backup

As I said in my last post I have just moved and got a new computer. In order to transfer my photos I used the Clickfree photo back up dvd's mentioned in my earlier posting. They are readily available by mail order from sites such as Amazon. However I found them going at half price in my local Boots chemists. They really are amazingly simple to use. Just insert the first disk from the pack and watch the screen. It will ask you to click and agree the software user agreement but that is all you have to do. It then searches your computer for all your photographs (you can get ones for different types of file such as music). Once it has finished searching it will tell you how many discs you will need. I needed three disks for about 4000 photos. It then just automatically backs them up to the dvd and you get a progress report on screen. Once the disk is full it then verifies the data has transferred properly before telling you to insert the next disk and off it goes again. It took less than an hour to complete this. My concern had been that if I needed more than one disc how would it know what had already been transferred but the inbuilt software (on the dvd) takes care of all this. To transfer the photos to a new computer just insert the dvd and it does the rest. I can highly reccomend these clever (and cheap) discs. Regards, David

As I was saying....

Apologies to any readers of this blog for the long gap since my last posting. I have moved home from Ashford (Kent) to Hastings (East Sussex) and now have a sea view (well if you stand on a chair anyway!). I have also been sorting out a new broadband/computer set up so have been unable to post (or do anything much photographic really). The big news on the stock front is that Snapvillage is being phased out. Parent company Corbis (owned by Microsoft founder Bill Gates) is moving the SV content over to well established image agency Veer which they purchased a couple of years ago. Snapvillage has been a learning experience for Corbis (and indeed contributors like me) but has not really established a big enough market place. Personally I think the name did not help, conjuring up images of snapshots when in fact there is a mass of top quality photography on it. Veer is well established and has a good market base so I see this as a very positive move. Portfolios will be transferred over the next few months so I look forward to increased sales from my SV portfolio in the future. Regards, David