A few years ago, back when microstock agencies were still relatively in their infancy boasting “only” 1-2 millions photos, i decided to join such a service as a contributor. At the time, i naively believed in the “get rich fast by selling your content” scheme. Armed with a bridge camera which spit out files you would get today with any average mobile phone i set out on a mission to conquer the world of online photography. Several dozen rejections later, with only two images accepted, i got annoyed and decided it wasn’t worth it.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago. I finally succumbed to one of my friends’ propaganda about another stock agency he had been using for quite a while. Unlike the first time, i joined more out of curiosity, since i knew that with very few exceptions the financial gains are quite laughable. Another reason which made me pick that particular service was an apparent respect for contributors, reflected by their rather generous commission percentages when compared to other services on the market. About a month later, i was already contacting support asking them to close my account. So what really happened in the meantime that made me go from hopeful curiosity to complete discontent?

Here are just a few of the issues which i encountered during that short period which, when reported to their support department, were met with standard phrases as fake and plasticky as a magazine cover:

• downright appalling feedback accompanying rejected images. Based on their own documentation, any file would be under scrutiny for anything from 1 to 24 hours. However, they would not spend a couple of minutes (at most) to clarify whether the issues were irremediable or otherwise suggest the changes that would help validate the photo. Instead, you would get the same tired responses taken from a short list of messages that seldom provided any valuable input. Take lack of composition for example which meant anything from improper framing and cluttered scenes to alleged incorrect contrast between two adjacent colors (as later clarified by one of their staff members).
• inconsistent acceptance behavior to the point of absurdity. While i appreciate a fine critique any day of the week, some of those rejections came right out of the blue. At some point i even stopped caring and just became curious just how far can they go. While i can understand subjective reasoning, i do have a problem when it comes to technical issues which are easily quantifiable and thus can be assessed consistently by multiple editors. Softness, noise and exposure are just a couple of the things which despite their mathematical nature were more down to luck. As for their take on white balance, i can only think of the sunrise and sunset sections. Then, there were always the “not what we’re looking for”, “not stock material” and “too many similar items” kindly accompanied by a patronizing advice guiding you back to the study room. As if my skill as a photographer would depend on the amount of flower photos in their database.
• overall useless customer service and improperly trained staff. The way i see it the purpose of human based client support is to provide a live conversation on any issues that might arise regarding the product, which should conclude with a practical outcome. Had i wanted to read lines from a manual, i could do just that without wasting precious time writing emails. I’m not stupid enough to get all warm and cuddly when reading that someone cares a lot about my feedback. Of course, there’s a whole other ball game when you get rejections based on “improper keywording”, only to have it accepted upon complaining. You would imagine that a leading web service would spend more time ensuring their staff meets the basic requirements for the job. Receiving stuck up, insulting responses a week after submitting a question doesn’t help either.
• conflicts of interests and censorship. This might really be nothing but i tend to be a little suspicious when the person accepting my submissions is also competing head to head for sales. Then again, there’s the “recommendation” not to discuss specific issues about the service on any public online outlets. I for one have a very low tolerance for marching with a fist deep in my mouth and even a lower one for accepting an idiotic state of affairs with or without an explanation. As a contributor based system, you have a responsibility both to your clients and your contributors and limiting anyone of those’ ability to express their views is a deal breaker as far as I’m concerned.
• unfair terms of service. The great thing about it, is that i finally learned my lesson as to read the entire Terms of Service and any other attached documents (as hideously long and redundant as they often are) before accepting anything. Unfortunately, it happened right when i decided to close my account (what looked like a bug in the Sell the Rights feature helped me made up my mind). Some of the rather disturbing stipulations i missed the first time were the inability to close your account or remove all files earlier than 6 months. You’d imagine that a service boasting several million photos wouldn’t mind loosing 50 files. You’d be wrong. Remember that they are a company which is only interested in making a profit, so nothing is too out of line if it doesn’t affect the user base. Giving them the benefit of the doubt or trusting their good intentions is either naive or stupid depending on your choice of words.
• lack of transparency and lies regarding the things influencing the search results standings. As a designer, i see the search feature on any stock agency’s website as their most valuable asset when it comes to selling their content. It only matters if it’s effective in helping me find the right content in as little time as possible, without having to try every possible keyword combination in the book. I honestly don’t care about who’s the photographer, what’s his track record, if he’s “harassed” the support department with emails or if he has a high rejection ratio. These are all things which the service should take care internally, without affecting the quality of results and wasting the clients’ time by trying to punish a punk contributor. If you couple this complete lack of transparency with the fact that a lot of editors are also top contributors, it really makes you doubt their integrity.

Still, at the end of the day, as far as most users are concerned, the check is all that matters. Does it really pay that good for the average contributor to make up for the time lost editing, uploading and keywording the files? I honestly doubt it. For me at least it didn’t. Of course, I’ve heard success stories of users making 10-20k or more a month, but let’s face it, that’s hardly the kid toying with his camera type of user. These are probably (semi)professional photographers who have ready access to a studio, props, models and equipment most amateurs can only dream of. For the rest there’s the joy (?) of making a hundred bucks every other month.

If these are all things you can stomach, then by all means go ahead and share your content with the world. After all, without inexpensive high quality photographic content, a designer’s job would be both harder and more costly. Still, a more constructive and transparent attitude from the agencies would certainly improve the overall experience for all parties involved. I for one am done with microstock and focusing my efforts into providing free photography via Flickr. More details to follow soon.

It’s fairly common knowledge that when it comes to displaying digital photography, either offline or online, less is more. Some photographers even go as far as suggesting that you should go with a grayscale palette or at the very least use desaturated colors. While that would certainly work in the best interest of the images, it might also bring about some usability issues which could make such a website an unfriendly place and deter the visitors from exploring it further.

Since I’m not a fan of the extremes, i set out to design a WordPress theme that would be both simple and easy to navigate, while also putting the photographs center stage. That’s why things such as complex gradients and textures were discarded in exchange for some clear typography in bright colors, all laid out using a 960px wide grid system on a dark background. Despite  some statistics pointing towards a two column layout as the most popular choice among bloggers, i went against the trend due to several reasons such as:

• there’s something that simply doesn’t feel right about an endless sidebar;
• a narrow main column improves readability by limiting the number of words on each line to what’s usually the recommended value for proper typography;
• it also helps better accommodate photos both in landscape and portrait mode;
• allows to display a significantly larger amount of navigation elements above the fold;
• provides more flexibility when including ads of different sizes.

During the design process, there were two main aspects i had to concentrate on: colors and typography. Pretty much from the get go, i knew i wanted to use a nice cyan hue along with yellow. That’s how it wasn’t long before i settled on a CMYK inspired palette. Furthermore, it was essential to keep the colors in check, using as few as possible, while also maintaining a certain logic. For example cyan ended up being used for links, while magenta would signify visited pages mainly because of their relative resemblance to the classic blue and purple choices. On the other hand, yellow stands mostly for static headings.

As a fan of typography, i wanted to use something different from the usual web safe fonts. Also, it was essential to find a condensed looking typeface that would take the least amount of space even for longer headings at larger sizes. While i like League Gothic a lot, it didn’t fit right for this particular instance. Several searches later i found Miso which is free and comes in three weights. Its geometric and neutral appearance means it doesn’t have such a strong personality that could otherwise interfere with the rest of the page elements. Still, it has clarity and elegance, which combined with the other qualities make it suitable for a wide array of uses.

Besides designing the core elements you will also find ready made styles for some of the widgets/plugins I’m currently using on this website: Better Tag Cloud, Contact Form 7, Flickr Widget and Wickett Twitter Widget. For all the extra elements not included, you could go ahead and try to further customize it to your own needs: adding a logo, changing the header background or its height, using different colors, moving the widgets around and I’m sure the list could go on.

Normally, you should be able to simply upload it into your themes folder and activate it. There are three widget areas: the two sidebars and the footer. Having worked as a web developer for quite some time now, I’m not too keen on having things hardcoded into the interface. That’s why having a widget into the footer area made more sense, as it allowed mixing blocks of text maybe with the blogroll, latest comments or the calendar without any extra programming. After activating the theme, you will however need to reposition your widget into their respective areas. While it appears they are saved into the Inactive panel, it wouldn’t hurt to manually back-up any custom code.

Bear in mind that while the actual programing code is licensed just like WordPress under GNU General Public License, version 2, the CSS, font and image files are not. You are free to use them (as part of this theme) in both personal and commercial websites. However, you are not allowed to redistribute them in any way or link directly to the archive file(s) without prior written consent. Also you must not remove the credit/copyright message from the footer. While further attribution is not required, if you enjoy using this template, you might consider letting people know about it, so others can benefit from it as well. In that respect, it’s only fair to thank Theme Shaper for their wonderful tutorial on WordPress theme design.

Feel free to leave any comments or questions about this theme below. Should there be any interesting suggestions for improvement or things that i might have missed, I’ll try and update the files based on your feedback. Also don’t shy away from mentioning what kind of theme i should try next.

Click here to download the theme and here for a set of ten extra header backgrounds.

Set consisting of twelve fleur de lis symbols in one-color designs. Six of them are simple monocromatic shapes while the remaining ones have different hollow ornaments on the inside as well. They all feature various types of curls, fleurons and the spade like shape in the middle. Inspiration came from various history and architecture books, which pictured details from medieval castle facades or from extended ornaments built around a certain coat of arms. You can use them straight up after download, tweak them around a bit to suit the exact needs of your project or break them down and employ the resulting shapes for your specific design scenario. If you’re interested in downloading the background texture as well, just visit my Flickr photostream (see the menu on the right) and you’ll find it there along with others.

As always check the EXIF for licensing. You’re allowed to use it in both personal and commercial projects. While, you shouldn’t redistribute it or link directly to the file, you can link to this post instead. Attribution is required.

To download the archive click here.

Set of 8 truck and ATV tire tracks brushes of different sizes and geometric shapes, each colored in a different earth tone hue. The patterns range from simple alternating ones with two or three threads to more complex variations with several irregular shapes on each side. Some of the caterpillar tracks have larger gaps between them. Each of the track is saved as a swatch, with proper clipping, so you can simply apply it to the strokes.

I came up with this set of vector graphic images after working on a website for an off-road vehicle dealer. Because the animated Flash header already featured some ATVs racing on a dirt track, it wouldn’t have made sense using the same idea as the background of the site. That’s why i went for a simple dirty green gradient with all sorts of fading tire tracks overlaid on top. This gave it a nice touch without cluttering the page or distracting the viewers. While i could have easily went and bought any of the previously available stock vector graphics, i thought it would be more fun and creative to try and create my own.

As always check the EXIF for licensing. You’re allowed to use it in both personal and commercial projects. While, you shouldn’t redistribute it or link directly to the file, you can link to this post instead. Attribution is required.

To download the archive click here.