Posts Tagged image

Ain’t ya famous yet?

Posted by admin in Art and Design, Popular Culture on Mayıs 13th, 2009

In 1968 the famous American popart artist Andy Warhol said his famous words: “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”
It was considered to be an exaggerated prophecy then, now it is a fact.

15 minutes of fame (or famous for 15 minutes) is an expression coined by the American artist Andy Warhol. It refers to the fleeting condition of celebrity that grabs into an object of media attention, then passes to some new object as soon as people’s attention spans are exhausted. It is often used in reference to figures in the entertainment industry and other areas of popular culture.

The expression is a paraphrase of Andy Warhol’s 1968 statement: “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” In 1979 Warhol reiterated his claim: “…my prediction from the sixties finally came true: In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.”

In 1986, Warhol had a short-lived MTV television series, Andy Warhol’s 15 Minutes.
Wikipedia: 15 minutes of fame

Well what made Warhol say these words that were later going to paraphrase the change of popular culture? He definitely saw the effect of mass production of art on society and media. I hear you say “What does that mean?” It means that since the invention of the camera, we have been able to save, store, multiply, duplicate, reproduce works of art, such that the difference between the original and the replica fades away. The original work of art has no orginality left for us to observe.

Andy Warhol also questions industrial production and the outcomes. Can Industrial products be considered as art? Warhol creates his major works from objects of mass consumption such as the Campbell cans to the left. He states that what we consume is what we admire as art.

What has all this to do with being famous?

Let’s make an assumption: If celebrities are products of mass media and the images we receive via transmittors such as tv, radio, cinema, press and of course internet are reproductions, then we consume the images that pass on to us.

The more the images reach us and we respond the more the fame. The more we see images of the celebrity the more we get detached from the original person. Look at the images of Marylin, we know who the images belong to very well. The image of Marylin Monroe is maybe the most reproduced personal image of all time. The thing is it is not a reproction of Marylin, it is the copy of her image. The fame of her image has outgrown her being as a celebrity. In this case we would say “look at the famous image of MM”.

We want images of ourselves to be reproduced and distributed all over. We want ourselves or our products to be reproduced and to be consumed by popular culture. We all want to be Marylin Monroe!

100 Campbell’s Soup Cans by Andy Warhol

Nowadays with the internet we have so many things to pick through, so many people have so much to say. We produce and want to distribute our products, whether it be words, imagery, video clips, or objects. We want to reach a wide audience, maybe even everyone in the world. Well think about it, so many people want to be seen, read, thought about, admired, and so on. We have a limited capacity to absorb all these. Our attention span of accepting each images is shortening with the increase of the number of broadcasts.

Before the internet there was a specific amount of media out there waiting for us to receive, now its numbered by zillions. Competition is strong, however being famous has become much easier, if you accept the fact that you can be famous for a limited amount of time. How is that?

Google the line “how to start a blog”. Read and learn the topic, it’s easy don’t get discouraged! Start your blog, publish your stunnung content, reach out to your audience and you’re famous. Ain’t ya famous yet?

Ten Marilyns, c.1967 by Andy Warhol

For further reading:

About Andy Warhol’s “15 minutes of fame” quote
Andy Warhol
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
The Warhol Foundation
The Andy Warhol Museum

Methods of Making Money for Freelancers 3

Posted by admin in Freelancing, Tutorials on Mart 25th, 2009

In sections 1 and 2 of Methods of Making Money for Freelancers I mentioned about the problems of income flow for freelancers and of methods to ease the problem. In section 1 I wrote about promoting your public profile. And in section 2 I wrote about getting new income sources and of microstock firms. Now I would like to give some detail about these firms based on my personal experience.

The first site I applied to as a producer was Istockphoto. I had heard of this site from a friend, and in a period when I had nothing to do (there were no new jobs to be seen to in the near future) I decided to give it a go. I had some 3d works which wouldn’t create any copyright issues when published. I had stored away these files somewhere on my computer. So I opened those files and produced some animations, rendered 20 second clips from these animations and I was ready to begin.

A Review of Microstock sites

As I said I first applied to Istockphoto. Here you have to be accepted first as a producer to be able to upload any files for sale. The application is a wee bit difficult than most sites, since you primarily need to pass the initial application. In my case it took more than a month for my application as a photographer to be reviewed. Then you you have to get every file uploaded accepted. And this takes time, generally 1-2 weeks. This is because there are so many files in queue. So you can guess that this site is a popular one. Yes, that is true, and it is a growing community. However, the rates paid to the producers are low on this site, but you can compensate the difference with other sites because the sales are rather high comparatively. Another thing about Istockphoto is that it is very eager to make its members exclusive. It pays much more if you agree to the exclusivity terms (not to sell anywhere but on this site). Other sites also want exclusive members but this one puts more emphasis on exclusivity. Another thing to mention is the user interface; it is very simple and user friendly. The difficulty I experience with most sites is the uploading process for videos. Here you only have to upload the main version of your clip and the interface will do the rest. I’m talking about conversion of the video file to to other formats. I mainly upload a HD1080 video and it automatically converts it to HD720, PAL, NTSC and web formats. However, because I’m not an exclusive member I don’t have permission to use the ftp for uploads. Uploading 150MB files through html interface can be a drag. See what I mean about the emphasis on exclusivity?

Revostock is is the second site I uploaded my video clips. Its was a new site when I first started uploading and the community is growing very fast. This site pays higher rates per purchase than Istockphoto and the sales are not so bad. However the thing about this site that it isn’t for photographers. You can sell your video clips, After Effects projects and audio files here. The application process is similar to Istockphoto, but it doesn’t take so long. Revostock is a good fit for videographers, but, yes there is a but, the upload process is a bit slow. Although you have access to ftp, you firstly upload the main file, once it is accepted (in a few days) you upload the other formats which you convert yourself. If your internet connection is slow this process can stress you out. Still it’s a rewarding place to sell your stuff.

Another site focused on footage is Pond5. For now you can only upload footage files to this site. I don’t know if we will be able to sell other media on this site, we will have to wait and see. The interface is fairly simple and the rates per sale for producers are rather high compared to other sites. A nice thing about this site is the widget you can download from Pond5. With this widget, you can display the files that you have uploaded to Pond5, on your own site . The approval of uploaded media is quite fast (1-2 days), however there is again the problem of uploading all formats of your video clips yourself. You get them approved separately and they are also displayed as separate files.

Shutterstock, is another popular site for selling your image and footage files. The community is large and this firm is one of the biggest in this industry. The sales are good, however I must say I’m not very fond of this site. The web interface is terrible, I always get lost whenever I visit this site, and I never seem to get what I’m looking for. Initial application to be a photographer for this site is a bit tough also. The approval process of files is also a bit difficult. Their perfection level is a bit high. If you don’t believe your file is perfect do not upload to this site, it will be rejected, even if you think it has sales potential and is on sale on other sites. It is still rewarding so you should give it a try.

When I first joined I could only upload images at Fotolia, newly they have added footage. I’ve experienced no problems with selling my images here, and I’m new to selling footage on this site. So we will have to wait and see how it goes on.

At Dreamstime prices are low for Royalty-Free stock photography, so you can see that the sales are high. Therefore it is a good site for getting good results for image purchases.

123rf, Bigstockphoto, Canstockphoto, and Cutcaster are also good sites worth trying, if you want to expand your audience.

All in all you should try each site individually even if you don’t go exclusive to a specific site, and then you can see which files have a better audience at each site, and then you can decide to sell a particular exclusively to that site. It can take your time but if you are up to this job as a good means of income you should try.

I have one note to add: if you want to upload your files to more than one site (if you don’t want to go exclusive to a specific microstock firm) you should keep a table of your file descriptions and keywords. Everytime you upload a file filling out the keywords and file description can be very boring believe me. Copying from the table will shorten the process and you can keep your files consistent on different sites. If you have a load of files keeping track of them can also be a big problem. You can hold track of your files acceptance and popularity at different sites by creating a database for your media files.

I hope you have a good time selling microstock.

Read my other articles about Methods of Making Money for Freelancers:

Methods of Making Money for Freelancers 1 About promoting your public profile.

Methods of Making Money for Freelancers 2 About selling microstock.

Methods of Making Money for Freelancers 2

Posted by admin in Freelancing, Tutorials on Mart 19th, 2009

Relying totally on freelance jobs can create some stress if you don’t have jobs flowing in on a steady basis, or if you don’t have some money set aside as a buffer for those dry periods. I can assure you that while working freelance by itself creates enough stress by living off routine you don’t want to think about ‘what if I can’t provide for the next month’. Freelance working should be supported by other means of income, income that could let of the steam in those periods when money runs short and there seem to be no new jobs in the near future. Don’t rely on one source of income, especially if you are a freelancer. So my advice for you would be to create alternative sources of income.

Multiply your income sources

There are various ways of creating other income sources such as blogging for adsense income, or setting up an e-commerce site. The type of income I am going to explain in this section is passive income earned from selling stock material. The beauty in this type of income is that you do it once and the income flows steadily once your system is up and running. Also, since you have all the resources, creating the material can be a piece of cake. What to do with the designs customers don’t like? Or your personal designs that you haven’t found an outlet for? Polish them up a bit and submit those work for others to appreciate and buy. This kind of work creates income which can be slow at first, but when on track can become your primary source. You have to be patient at first though. It’s just the job to do when there is nothing to do but to wait for a new job.

Assuming that you mainly do creative work such as in photography, videography, flash designs, illustrations, audio my advice will be about the sites relevant to these fields. Of course there are other sites for other media but because of my experience I’ll be talking about the creative fields I mentioned above.

About 2 years ago to this date (March, 2006) after learning about Royalty free images and videos I decided to give my talents a go and I made an initial effort to compile a few video and image files. I applied to Istockphoto at first and that was the start of my earning of passive income. Later on I searched for other sites and came up with quite a list. After reading about which are the best on various articles I decided to upload my media to the sites listed in this article.

Go Microstock

Now before I give detailed info about these websites I’d like to shortly explain what Stock Photography means. Stock photography is a term for a collection of photographs, not necessarily about a specific subject but of a certain quality that publishers, advertising agencies, artists and etc. use in their creative assignments.

You can also check it out on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_photography

The contract by which they use these images or videos or etc. can be either Royalty Free or Rights Managed. Well as in our case I’ll be explaining the methods of selling your media via Microstcok photography companies. Microstock photography is a derivation of Royalty Free photography, where as a photographer or creative entity of other kind you sell your media through internet based companies to a wider audience for much lower prices down to 1$ a piece, since there is also a wide range of competitors to your production. But still, the good thing is you don’t have to be a pro to go microstock. You can read more about this on my article about stock photography coming up soon.***

Talking about microstock companies, there are a lot of alternatives but the best are still the best. Here is a list of the most popular ones on the net.

Istockphoto: Stock photography; search royalty free images, photos, illustrations, flash, video and audio. A lot more than just photos all in one site.

Revostock: Affordable stock video footage, music and sound effects. This site firstly started with only footage and then in turn added music, sound effects and after effects projects.

Pond5: The world’s stock footage marketplace. This site is focused only on footage for now.

Shutterstock: Royalty- free subscription stock photography & vector art; Royalty – free stock video and footage clips.

Fotolia: Royalty- free stock photos, vector art and footage.

Dreamstime: Lowest prices for Royalty-Free stock photography.

123rf: Stock image and photo subscription

Bigstockphoto: Royalty free photos, download stock photos and images stock photos royalty free downloads.

Canstockphoto: Stock photography images.

Cutcaster: Buy and sell royalty free images, stock photos and vector illustrations.

All of these companies have their pros and cons but before I go into site specifics I’d like to explain another term you’ll come up with once you try to register any one of these sites. This new term is exclusivity. Each one of these sites will ask you when you sign up whether you would like to be an exclusive producer to the microstock website, or if you wish to sell any of your material exclusively when you upload. saying yes to becoming an exclusive producer means that you agree to selling your media only on that site. Whether you would like to go exclusive on a specific site is totally up to you. You may be a fan of one site only and hate the rest, or you may try selling stock at all the sites you find. The most important thing you should bare in mind is that going exclusive is limiting your audience. Selling microstock to more than one site multiplies your audience. On the other hand sticking to one site only can let you get more money per purchase and frees you from all the uploading work to all the sites. Believe me uploading files, managing their keywording and keeping track of their acceptance can be time consuming. Well its up to you to decide.

Going exclusive? Which site to choose? Or if you want to work with more than one firm, what should you expect?

For more in depth info on these microstock sites you can read my next post in Short Guides for Freelancers.

Methods of Making Money for Freelancers 1 About promoting your public profile.

Methods of Making Money for Freelancers 3 A Review of Microstock sites.

Hi Everyone !

Posted by admin in Welcome on Şubat 20th, 2009

Welcome to the personal blog of Serda Yılmaz. On this website you will find my personal works and my writings on various topics from freelancing to the question of what is design. This site is taking things at baby steps for now since it is very new, but I can tell there will be some very practical stuff all written out of my very own experience in getting around as a freelancer and as an architect interested in photography and videography. I hope you find the stuff here useful in your practice. If you have any suggestions please leave a comment.

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