Autumn Sky

[Panamanian White Headed Capuchin Monkey (Cebus Imitator) Family resting on Tree in Costarica Manuel Antonio National Park] [Welcoming Scarecrow Family Stuffed Figures Autumn Decoration on Residential Lawn] [Mother and Young Child enjoying view of fish swimming in manta ray underwater exhibit in San Diego Seaworld Theme Park]

Agreed with above, start of the month is the most volatile period. Mine had large jump last week This was because this image was zoomed twice on same day. I tried to establish correlation between sales and CTR; i.e. if you have a sale, does this bump your overall rank and as result your images are shown higher in customer searches, thus potentially resulting in higher CTR. But there are just too many factors and results are inconclusive. I am fairly sure though if image was sold before this will rank that individual image higher when compared to others that had no sales (for particular search term).

Anyone that visited Banff National Park probably went to see Moraine Lake; at one time it was on back of Canadian $20 dollar bill. Lake is beautiful, but it is tourist zoo. 14km winding road ends at fairly small parking lot that simply can't accommodate swarms of tourist cars, tour buses etc. For that reason I don't go there, although there is some world class hiking above. But as the road is not plowed, it is closed off-season. May 31 was last day before re-opening and I went for a bike ride. It is awesome, angle is not too steep and on return you can coast almost all the way back! Area was still largely snowbound and lake just began to thaw. So unable to do any higher elevation hiking I went for a stroll around the lake, following tourist path on the north side. This pic was taken along that path, and it truly showcases beauty of this unique area in Canadian Rockies; and I had it all to myself; in season it feels sometimes like Calgary stampede Trail ends at far side of the lake - roughly lower right of the photo. I admired 2 harlequin ducks enjoying sunshine at lake inlet, wishing I had telephoto lens on me; I tried to come closer, but they wouldn't let me. Then, as I had time, I decided to try to make it to other side of the lake. This was very tricky, crossing raging stream and postholing in wet snow but I made it. Here's the 4x2 pano taken there; if you have seen classic Moraine Lake shot before, would you be able to guess this is Moraine lake too? (Towering Mountain on left side is Mt. Temple, 3rd highest in Southern Rockies) Then the devil inside told me to circumvent the lake, coming back on south (right on pic above). There is no trail and I almost got myself into deep trouble. Had to cross several avalanche slopes without mountaineering gear, but I made it. Hope you enjoyed the pics and apologies for the rant

You are absolutely right. This is why one of key bear-safety tips is to make noise while hiking. Not the bear bells which are absolutely useless, but human voice. Many time hikers will pass by the bear without even knowing, because beast moved away out of sight alerted in advance to human presence. Speaking of tracks, here are some I found while hiking last yr: [Wolf] [Bear] [Cougar] And finally, site of grizzly murder. They tell me it was probably grizzly bear killing and eating black bear (Nice tiger snake story btw!)

Betty: If you ever see bear in wilderness, DO NOT RUN. He will run after you and these things are awful fast. Best thing is to stay calm, talk to him calmly and slowly move back. Give him space, show him you are not threat. If they charge lots of time it will be bluff charge; come halfway, then stop. But in extremely rare case they do attack: 1) Use your bear spray if you have it 2) If it is black bear, fight back. With whatever you have, fight for your life 3) If it is grizzly bear, don't fight. Roll on your stomach and cover your neck with your arms. Sometimes they will just take a swipe and go away. Also, contrary to widespread opinion, bears climb trees. I could give you stories but I am already abusing this thread. There you have it, crash course in bear wilderness safety.

Yes. Most wildlife incidents can be traced back to human behavior unfortunately. Last year Parks Canada fined some idiot that got out of the car, stripped off his shirt, took boxer stand and started provoking bear he spotted by the highway. Can you believe that. btw watch this - this was an Australian couple, visitors, couple of years ago. I can't believe they had cool to actually film this https://dailyhive.com/calgary/alberta-hikers-grizzly-video-july-2018 This is btw right where I live (and where I am going for a walk shortly, lol). Look at the size of that bruin. And how it got off the trail to go around.

That is usual reaction to unknown. I've seen bears many times in the back-country and while accidents happen, they are really not interested in you - unless 1) Sow is trying to protect the cub 2) Bear is accustomed to human food (for which we are to blame). On the other side I've always been terrified of snakes - before spending time in California where I got used to rattlesnakes. This was on a hike to Iron Mountain in Poway, San Diego; just let him pass and continue I am more afraid of cougars because they are sneaky & will follow you for long time before they attack. Only accident I had was because of humans. Last fall on a hike, it was provincial park, 3 dogs came out storming out of nowhere. I did not have bear spray on me as it was not really wilderness; before I could react one came and bit me pretty good, before the guy called them off. They were not supposed to be off leash. I debated reporting the accident, and probably I should, but at the end they would have killed the dog(s), and owner who is to blame would go unpunished. This is why I carry bear spray now everywhere. Still have mark on back of left leg that will probably stay forever.

I have not uploaded much this month... pretty much everything around here I've captured to death. This is one pic from the other day, there is lots of spring snowmelt going on and waterfalls are quite nice. These are lower Spray Falls near Canmore, AB It was actually not easy to get down, had to clamber down some rocks carrying tripod and everything. But then it was nice, had it all to myself & took ~10 shots, different angles; this one I like the best. Its 2 sec exposure, ISO 100, F8, Canon EOS 6D with 24-105L lens at 30mm. That patch of frozen snow still hanging off the cavern is quite interesting. Another note -- as I was hiking through the woods, all of a sudden I spot movement: VERY large grizzly bear. It could have been no more than 70m away. It was feeding & couldn't care less about me. I carry bear spray (not just for wildlife, but for .... guess I won't go there). Backed slowly in the other direction; it didn't follow me.

I would speculate that first confirmation was computer mistake. Who-knows-what triggered an e-mail before actual human QA happened, which then in turn rejected the submission & thus nothing shows in IM. Dumb AI is so prevalent everywhere today.

+1 Genuinely nice person too. I'd be happy to buy Steve a beer if I ever meet him in person

I use Zenfolio too. As Sally said, there are as few or as many bells and whistles as you'd like. It is geared towards photography & ability to organize port via "galleries" is very good. My interest is also hiking trip reports & I was able to incorporate this relatively easily with custom pages, where you have ability to insert your own javascript, css styling etc. For instance this is recent hike I was on & it is custom page. If you scroll into gallery to second last image, it will have "click to zoom" in caption & then mouse click will zoom image (like flickr) & you can look closer if you wish. It was just open source javascript I host on my google git & then pull in from zen custom page. They have built-in selling support I didn't find useful; so with each image I am willing to license I simply provide in description basic data (file size, resolution and cost), then point interested customer to contact me via email. After we agreed on details, I simply create private gallery with images they are interested in & give them download password after my paypal has been credited. This process would be quite time consuming for professional level sales as it is not automated, but for amateur / hobbyist I find it works quite well + gives me greater control. I had issues over the time & their support was not able to resolve it, which was disappointing. But just like many other things, too much effort has already been invested & switch somewhere else would be painful. I also treat site as storage for my (processed) images; on lowest subscription level you can't store RAW files, but you can as many JPG's as you'd like. Support / redirection to your own domain is ok if you don't want zen branding in URLs but it will cost extra

Brief answer IMHO is yes. I've been in stock only ~4 yrs but race to the bottom is evident, everywhere. Why is that so is different topic that has been discussed ad nauseam. So as I enjoy photography, I treat stock as hobby that pays for photo gear. Having personal site can be very enjoyable indeed. Mine is mix of photography and hiking/travel & from occasional direct sales I can cover web hosting costs. So it's all good. But for single individual to make living from stock is super difficult now, maybe impossible.

How is this fair? I get 25 cents, you get $$$ 😃 (Congrats, great bird shot)

I am with you; I also worked for major int'l company where main motto was "our biggest asset are our employees". Flex hrs, facilities, open door management and interesting assignments - going to work was chosen lifestyle, not a chore. Too many companies even today don't understand this. Stock is difficult because industry is oversaturated and overall on downward trend, but core principle should still apply. Alamy is IMHO still better than others; look at how some MS agencies treat their contributors, senseless AI reviews, hard reset on Jan 1 to level 0 for everyone, downloads for fraction of a penny, etc etc. But Alamy is feeling pinch largely created by microstock large subscriptions model that gives content almost for free; and is trying to cope as best as it can. At least this is how I am reading all this.

Wim, this is first thought that came to my mind as well. Primary reason might be simple cost-cutting, and it's designed in such way to minimize # of contributors that might end pissed off & closing ports. Big cats (>25K, studios, I don't know who they are, they don't come to the Forum, are essential to the business) - so don't touch them. Then majority of "average" contributors (i.e most of us on the forum) will stay the same, and even blog says something along these lines. Largest impact is to "average", but exclusive contributors <25K as they take cut from 50% to 40%. Those that sell <250 gross/year are deemed casual / sporadic i.e not really important. It's a tricky subject. I've been in stock ~4 yrs and have yet to see any agency raise contributor compensation (except for one I can't name, but nobody sells there anything anyways) One bad thing this is doing is (de)motivation of new contributors. Yes, they will start as "Gold" but everyone knows how hard it is to make Alamy sale, specially when your port is small. So most of these guys, that might have super content, are likely to be dropped off after 12 months to 20% and lose interest.