Dreamstime just launched a new platform for selling and buying stock photography. It's called Timeline Images and its targeted customers are the 1 billion Facebook users looking for images to put on their timeline. That's a whole lot of customers...

The images cost 1$ each and are cropped correctly to fit on Facebook's timeline. The site presents a selection of "featured" images, already cropped and presented as the best of the best. Below these one can choose any image available on Dreamstime and there's a handy tool for cropping the image to your liking. You can login with your Facebook account.

This sounds like a good idea... and ooh... did I mention the first 3 downloads are free?

http://www.timelineimages.com/

This is the second article about things I like in the various Microstock Agencies. This time we'll have a look about the Darkroom area of Shutterstock, one of the main microstock agencies around.

We all know what a Dark Room is... I think...

For the youngsters among us who have only lived in the digital era, the dark room is that place where film was developed and photographs were printed on paper. It was dark and it was a room... and that sort of explains the name for you. The most important thing about the dark room was that images were created, experiments were made, different exposures and papers were used but in the end the best possible image was kept.

Shutterstock's Darkroom is very like the old dark rooms... new functionalities and apps are experimented, opinions are given, improvements are made and only the best are kept. Like the Keyword Trends app that's currently available in the dark room... I tried it and liked it, I suggested some improvements to the Shutterstock team, maybe someone will consider them and just maybe the app is liked by enough people to become an official part of Shutterstock's site.

Go and have a look...

I will be posting some articles about things I like of some of the microstock agencies, indicating one feature at the time. Today we start with Dreamstime.

One of the nice things of Dreamstime is their Photo map. It allows the contributor to position their image on a map (powered by Google). It's easy to do, especially
when you use the satellite view, you can really find the exact spot you shot the image from.

It allows the buyer to look for an image by navigating on the map as well as by a normal search engine. It also allows the user to check where exactly a given image has been shot from. I have no numbers on how many customers actually use this function or which percentage of images is found this way but I can imagine a lot of users go for this option.
Want to get some images of a specific street in Chicago and you don't know how to find them? Just go for DT's photo map and you might just find them.

Of course studio shots and similars are not supposed to be put on the map, not anyone in his right mind would be looking for those on a map. Unfortunately some contributors are not in their right minds and you do find some silly images on the map.

So far this feature has not been available on any microstock site I know of and I think it's a plus.

A new chapter has been added to the Tips & Tricks area of this site. It discusses editorial images, a great option for low budget photographers who enjoy being out on the street.

A tip about what to buy for your microstock activities has been added to the Tips & Tricks section.

In our Tips & Tricks section you can now find a new tip about the microstock budget (or the absence of it).

Dreamstime just announced (on 1st April) that their headquarters will be moving to a ship sailing in international waters. The reason for this is mainly to avoid paying taxes in the U.S..

As this was announced on the 1st April, we will have to wait and see before being sure that this will actually happen. If it does, it's good news for the contributors... and for Dreamstime's employees as they will be getting a nice tan sailing around the globe. Hope nobody suffers from sea-sickness, including Dreamstime's servers.

I just added to the site the gallery My Best Stock Photos containing some of my best stock photos.

A new gallery was added to the site. The "Best Stock Photos" gallery tries to give you an idea of what sells really well.

It will be updated in the future with new images to give you continuous inspiration.

In the Tips & Tricks section of this site you can now find a new tip about specializing and identifying a niche in order to be a successful microstock photographer.