Pure Reviews

iStock Photography hits the big 10 on April 7th.  To celebrate a decade of leading and helping shape the stock photography industry into what it is today they will be unleashing $21,000 worth of cold hared cash.  Check out their write up below and see how you can join in the party. iStockphoto turns 10 On April 7, we’re celebrating 10 years of iStockphoto by giving away a pile of cash and prizes. Like a total of $21,000 USD. Yeah, we’re pumped about it too.  Upload your face and win Since so many people have helped make iStock what it is, we thought it would be cool to show everyone off. This means you! To join the “Faces of iStock” you need to take a photo of, well, you, and upload it over at iStock10.com . Then on April 7 we’ll send you an email letting you know how to find your self-portrait and share it with your friends. Did we mention one lucky photo will score its owner a cool $1,000 and a seriously cool iStock swag pack? We thought you’d like that part.

Also the Canon Rebel T1i has gotten a firmware update here .  If your camera is reading 1.1.0 then you don't need the update, this can be found under the settings options...camera must be in a creative mode such as "M".  The update focuses on the two following items, follow instructions on how to update (its very easy): 1. Enhances the reliability of Live View shooting 2. Fixes incorrect indications on the Arabic, English, and Swedish menu screens Canon has released the much anticipated 2.0.3 firmware update for the Mark II , click here to get it.  However they have had users experiencing issues and will come out with a new update soon.  The link above will allow you to sign up your email address so you know when the update is out. Along with these two major firmware updates you can update some of your software if you use them.  Canon updated ZoomBrowser EX , Digital Photo Professional , EOS Utility , and Picture Style Editor .  Check your operating syst

Oddly enough I pulled my portfolio last week from ThePhotoStorage due to the lack of sales and views that I have had with them over the last two years.  Well, they have officially closed their doors as of today...it was originally announced they would close on March 21st...but their website is now gone and taken over by some storage company.  The micro site will join the graveyard with the others.

Dreamstime has changed there uploading rules to allow more uploading across the board for their users. How many images can I upload in a single day? There is a limit to the number of images submitted per day. All users can submit via FTP: - Users with an approval percentage higher than 80% can upload the maximum amount of images daily. This applies for the first 50 submissions if you're a new photographer. - Users with an approval percentage of between 50-80% can upload half (1/2) of the maximum amount of images daily. - Users with an approval percentage of between 30-50% can upload the third part (1/3) of the maximum amount of images daily. - Users with an approval percentage of between 0-30% can upload a quarter (1/4) of the maximum amount of images daily.

BigStockPhoto drops the Photo in the name to reinvent itself at BigStock . Shutterstock bought them a while back and have geared up the new face with a flashy clean new name, logo, and overhauled website. I can only guess that we will see BigStock adding other media applications like video down the road now that their name is more versatile. Below the screenshot are just a few other upgrades the guys have been working on. Join BigStock here . An entirely new design focused on clean presentation and ease-of-use A new and enhanced search engine New image sizes with larger previews and thumbnails A “liquid layout” for search results and lightboxes, allowing users to see more images on the page Full support for multiple forms of Boolean logic in search (for example, show me: horse AND gallop NOT farm) New navigation Redesigned and improved upload tools for contributors Updated and edited text throughout the site A transition from “galleries” to the more traditional “lightboxes

So over the Weekend 123RF not only updated their logo, but did a huge...and I mean huge update on this site. The new colors are black, white and yellow - see below for a screen shot of the front page. They now have easy to click on buttons for all your info instead of the tabs. Overall I think this was a great improvement for the crew over there, keep up the good work. Sign up for 123RF Here .

For those of you using the Promotion deal with DepositPhotos they will be changing the program starting April 1st. Its really a small modification, but if you send in several images that have been rejected for poor quality they may remove you from the program...make sense, they don't want to look at hundreds of crappy photos that people are hoping to get a total of a $100 for. If you are not familiar with their promotion program, they pay out $0.20 per accepted image upto the first 500 images you upload. You agree the the photos will remain on their site for at lest 6 months, overall this is the best promo deal in the industry. Sign up for DepositPhotos here .

Shutterstock back in Aug. of 2009 added a cool little auto posting devices to twitter that would tweet about your new photos and your photos you have sold. Well, sense it has been widely popular they have now launched a very similar item that does so on your Facebook feed. However, just like Dreamstime, you can only post to your personal feed and not your fan pages if you have one. To set up the program click here , to join Shutterstock click here . Shutterstock also hit the 10 millionth image mark in February

Veer has launched their first newsletter and inside is a tease of a new improved Veer Marketplace. Personally I can't sand their site as a contributor, so this could be very welcomed new. You have to click to many links to get to your pages and their stats are just not very helpful. Expect to see this new roll out later in 2010. If you are going to be at SXSW in Austin during March 12-16 then swing by the Veer Booth and say hi as they are going to be attending this year. I will not be there, even know Austin is a few hours away from Houston. Below is the full write up by Brian on the upcoming changes at VEER . We have a lot planned for Veer in 2010 and want to give our Veer Marketplace contributors a preview of what’s coming up. We are very pleased with the success of Veer Marketplace since launch, and we appreciate all your support over the past year – it has made a big impact! As a result of the early success of Veer Marketplace and the steady submissions of great con

Cutcaster has released some minor upgrades and improvements over the last few weeks. First, up they have launched a new improved Lightbox (shut down clip folders)...if you are a buyer, log-in and check it out. If you have noticed things loading faster, your right...they have streamed lined several things behind the scenes to make traffic flower easier...so surf away at light speed. Another thing is their editors are taking more time to check through the media data of images/vectors, etc. so you get what you are buying and nothing more or less. This is just something that any company should be doing to make sure their buyers are not getting bad products. If you are a buyer, help them improve by taking the following survey .

For those few of my followers, I wanted to let you know that I am still here. I have been swamped with studying for my licensing exams in Architecture (still ongoing) and I was out of pocket for a while as I got ready for some eye operations, which have been done with wonderful results. Now for the good news, I should be getting back to blogging more and more over the next few weeks. First up, a lot has happened in the stock photography world while I was out for my short amount of time. So you are about to see several new blog post, so keep up ;-p I am going to start blogging just on each stock site with their label, this way you can follow the articles you want easier. Kevin