So at first I didn’t stop to take a closer look when I saw a familiar face. But there was something about those blue eyes that made me click back to take a closer look. I thought to myself “This must be that Grey’s Anatomy guy, Avery, but is he a stock photo model”? I got Jan to check the model release, and it’s true.

Jesse Williams, who plays Jackson Avery in Grey’s Anatomy, is a stock photo model represented at Yaymicro.com!

Let’s enjoy his pictures while we wait for season 7, where he’ll play a leading role. First episode, “With You I’m Born Again” airs on September 24, at ABC.

Cheers, Linda

The last few quarters has been quite steady in regards to payment from 3rd party partner, but it has not grown enough. This has been a concern for us, and we’ve taken several steps to make sure that the income from the program is increasing. The most significant change has been to add new sales channels in new markets. We have also started talks with other partners in order to add even more earnings to your account from this program.

If you have recently applied to the program, your images have not been shipped yet. We expect a new shipment will be ready in September, that will include new images from earlier contributors as well as all new contributors.

Please contact me directly if you have any questions!

Jan.

All images at YAY goes through a quality control. Normally this is done within 24 hours, but not during weekends.

Sometimes your image(s) will fail the approval process and get rejected. When images are rejected you’ll get one or more reasons for why we couldn’t accept your image into our database.

It is important not to take the rejections personally. It might feel harsh to find several images rejected, and rejected sometimes for reasons you don’t understand. Our reviewers looks at thousands of images each day, so mistakes will happen. If you feel wrongly rejected, please e-mail us and we’ll look into it.

You can view the list of most common rejections and explanations here.

You should try to look at rejections as possibilities for learning and improving. Creating great stock photos is a challenging process. By taking time to understand your rejection, and then working on improving your technique you’ll be one step closer to create better stock photo! Often you’ll find tips and inspiration in different stock forum, discussion groups, and on photo/photoshop tutorial sites. If you have tips for great sites, share it with the rest of us in the comment-field!

At YAY we have full-time, permanent reviewers solely working us. This might cost a bit more than freelance reviewers, but we find it easier and more reliable in terms of consistency, quality and possibilities for improvement.

So, if you have any questions or feedback about the review process, please e-mail us and help us improve our process!

Linda

And a Thank You to the users who notified us of the spam attacks!

Cheers, Linda

Awwh!

Photographing gigapixel images has become quite popular recently, with new world records set at high intervals. Large companies like Google, Microsoft and Sony have all sponsored teams who are doing gigapixel photography. Google has even worked with NASA in developing a motorized head which can easily be set up to photograph extremely large images.

The technique used for this kind of photography is basically to take a whole lot of images (often several thousand) and use a large computer to stitch the images together. The 71-gigapixel image was stitched together on a Dell Workstation over several days. The team took a total of over 20 000 images over several days to compile the image in the quality they wanted.

The amount of progress in the field of gigapixel photography, has also been noticed by scientists – which are now looking for ways to use the technology in different fields. Among other uses they are looking into the possibility of doing macro gigapixel photography.

Check out the following impressive images:
Budapest 71 Gigapixel
Corcovado 67 Gigapixels
Paris 26 Gigapixels
Prague 18 Gigapixels

“Manage globally, sell locally” is a well-known and popular business  philosophy adapted by the us at YAY. A crucial localization goal for a stock photo agency as YayMicro has been to reach people in their native tongue. Research and experience suggest that people prefer to use a stock photo site in their own language.

We are proud to have the top three languages: Chinese, Spanish and English at our stock photo agency. In addition we have smaller languages as Dutch and Norwegian. YayMicro.com will release several more languages the next year, continuing our global expansion, but keeping the stock photo buying experience localized for the end-user.

Cheers from us at YayMicro!

New Options for Buying Stock Photos - Now You Can Buy Stock Photos from Image Agency YayMicro.com in Spanish and Dutch

Read the press release

]]> http://blog.yaymicro.com/2010/08/19/now-you-can-buy-stock-photos-in-spanish-and-dutch/feed/ 0 http://blog.yaymicro.com/2010/08/06/yay-we-got-1-million-images/ http://blog.yaymicro.com/2010/08/06/yay-we-got-1-million-images/#comments Fri, 06 Aug 2010 11:00:32 +0000 Linda | YAY Team http://blog.yaymicro.com/?p=955 Thanks to our wonderful photographers, only two years after startup we’ve reached 1 million images in our image base!  As we say in our press release: We are proud and excited that so many talented photographers have decided to let us sell their images for them! Thank you everybody!

The wide range of images combined with usability and low prices are attracting new customers in great numbers – we expect to multiply sales in 2010.

Image No. 1 million by Stephanie Frey:

Read more about the image and take a look at some of the other images from Stephanie Frey.

Read the press release here. You can also download a PDF of the press release.

Congrats and cheers from all of us at YAY!

Cheers,

Linda

We are also working on a site upgrade that will be specifically aimed at the checkout process. Our data shows that we loose too many customers in the last few steps of the checkout. The new layout will be a lot easier to navigate. We will live up to our promise to be the easiest online stock agency once again!

Jan

If I should give you just one tip instead it would be this; buy Garr Reynolds excellent «Presentation Zen» and read it. It’s an easy read, and will really make you understand what presentations are all about. Most of what I’ve learned is from this book and Garrs blog www.PresentationZen.com. Obviously this isn’t the only book about this subject, but it’s the best I ‘ve come across so far.

After reading what to do, see how others do it. Learn from the best. Here are some links that will show you great presentations:

TED Apple Keynotes SlideShare www.PresentationZen.com

Download a PDF version of the presentation tips!

Cheers, Bjorn

The good news is that you don’t actually need a tilt-shift lens to get the effect. The same principle can be added in Photoshop/GIMP. In Photoshop do the following:

• Use the quick mask mode and select gradient tool
• Select “reflected gradient”
• Draw a vertical line from where you want the focus to the top of the image
• Go back to “standard mask mode”
• Use the filter gaussian blur (or lens blur if you don’t have PS 7)
• Experiment with the radius and the amount of blur
• Saturate the image to get more colours

Or, if you want a quick and easy way to create tilt-shift, go to http://tiltshiftmaker.com/. The results you get there are actually quite good, though it is easier to get a more precise focus using Photoshop/GIMP.

Example:

Original image by iofoto

Tilt-shifted image

We also have some tilt-shift images from our photographers. Both leaf and shalamov have a couple of tilt-shifted images.

The same technique can also be used for videos. Check out Keith Loutits website, he’s a man that pushes tilt-shift videos to the limit.

Happy tilt-shifting!

Jan

One of the best presenters in the world is Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Inc. Check out some Apple Keynotes and look at a couple of them if you have no idea who this is.A lot of people think Jobs is a «natural» and just really good at this stuff. The secret is that Mr. Jobs is a perfectionist who practices every presentation he holds over and over again.

Have you ever had a boss telling you «I know this stuff by know, I don’t need to practice»? Or maybe you have been that person yourself. Well, if the best people in the world practice over and over again, why shouldn’t you or your boss need to?

No matter what field we are in, practice always makes us better. So spend a couple of hours going through your presentation in front of the mirror, a camera, or a friend. Put yourself in the view of the audience.

Is this captivating? Is this interesting? Can I do more here?

Most people print their powerpoints, and hand them out, either before or after the presentation is given. This is a very common mistake.

Your presentation should be visual and support your story. A handout should be read in comfort by somebody that have already seen the presentation. Your handout is where you can put in the details, and all those facts and graphs that you had to delete from your presentation.