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I'd love a Critique!


79Photography

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I would really appreciate a critique and some feed back of photos. Im coming up to nearly 6 months and 1000 photos on Alamy and I know its a waiting game on here but ive only had 8 Click zooms and no sales so far! Would that be considered normal?

I can see and understand that my mostly South East Asia travel photos are quite different from what the regulars of this forum mostly submit but please fire away with your comments so hopefully i can improve. Must point out though the travel photos are already shot (i ran out of travel money and i am back in the UK now) and the 10k loosely ear marked for Alamy are slowly being worked through. 

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You have some very nice images, but it's difficult to see how many of them could be used to illustrate articles in magazines, newspapers, etc. or in books.

 

Remember that Alamy is mainly an editorial agency, so you have to think editorially. 

 

P.S. You also have quite a few similars -- e.g. surfer images.

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You have almost 1000 images, but not many subjects.  I think there were almost 2 pages of beach and people surfing.  Seven photos of the snowy egret.

 

You need more subjects, not more photos of the same subjects.  The surfing images are okay. The waves aren't really huge and they would be better if you had closeups of the surfer in the wave.

 

As John said, Alamy is mostly editorial, so beautiful beach shots and landscapes rarely sell here.  Sometimes, but not a lot.  People doing things, urban life, etc are good subjects.

 

Jill

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As highlighted above count the number of 'subjects' and it is way below you 1000 quoted, may be not even 100

 

So that is 100 in an Alamy collection of some 110 Million - the maths say it all

 

Remember stock photography, of this nature, is an ultra marathon, it takes time and distance; it is not short or quick like a sprint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Thanks for feedback guys. I do see a common theme from it, more themes! I was kind of aware of this and have started deleting photos a while ago but have the 6 month wait. 

 

2 hours ago, GS-Images said:

The shot posted above really is stunning. You do have some very good images in your port, so no problem there.

 

I didn't see many similars when looking at the first few pages APART from ones of the sea! JGEEDA is an example. You have something like a whole page of those and they all look similar. I used to have quite a lot of images of waves at sea but was advised to remove them, which I did. You should too. Remove the tags and captions FIRST, then click the delete button.

 

Remember to use tags to describe more than what you factually see. I only looked at tags and captions of a couple of your images and could see you're doing a fairly decent job.

 

It's likely you've already had images used but the sales haven't shown up yet. Some customers take longer than the 3 months we're supposed to wait for them to report uses, and that doesn't seem to be an issue, strangely. It's completely wrong in my opinion but that's the way it is. Give it a few months and hopefully you'll get some show up.

 

Geoff.

 

What does deleting the tags and captions first do? I’ve already deleted a fair few but just by deleting the photo!

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13 hours ago, Jill Morgan said:

The surfing images are okay. The waves aren't really huge and they would be better if you had closeups of the surfer in the wave.

 

 

Size doesn’t always count ;) the location is one of the worlds top surf locations and waves are of “the type I will most likely never see again.” 

But I agree a bigger zoom would of helped. 

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You can crop down to 3000 pixels on the long side which might make some of your images more attractive to buyers.  I would concentrate on the UK images as those seem to sell well.  You can create different versions of the same photo also.  You also have a lot of foreground in some of your surfer shots, try doing crops of those.  Try to find the common and scientific names for your animals and insects.

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2 hours ago, 79Photography said:

Size doesn’t always count ;) the location is one of the worlds top surf locations and waves are of “the type I will most likely never see again.” 

But I agree a bigger zoom would of helped. 

 

If you search "surfing indonesia" you will see just what the competition has.  Editors want powerful images, especially if its a travel article on places to surf, a surfing magazine about a specific country or place.  They are going to choose images with the most impact for their readers. Yours are too quiet.  Now, that is just my opinion, and I don't surf, so take it for what it is worth, but always check what other photographers have to offer.  No point in uploading images that won't be zoomed as this will continue to affect your CTR on Alamy.

 

Jill

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On 21/09/2017 at 16:06, Jill Morgan said:

 

If you search "surfing indonesia" you will see just what the competition has.  Editors want powerful images, especially if its a travel article on places to surf, a surfing magazine about a specific country or place.  They are going to choose images with the most impact for their readers. Yours are too quiet.  Now, that is just my opinion, and I don't surf, so take it for what it is worth, but always check what other photographers have to offer.  No point in uploading images that won't be zoomed as this will continue to affect your CTR on Alamy.

 

Jill

I did actually do a search check for these photos but for "desert point lombok" and there was only 2 photos at the time. Maybe this was too specific for that many photos. 

Im learning and understand your point about not uploading images that wont be zoomed.

Thanks for your feed back.

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On 21/09/2017 at 15:11, Johnnie5 said:

You can crop down to 3000 pixels on the long side which might make some of your images more attractive to buyers. 

To give them a sharper look? 

 

On 21/09/2017 at 15:11, Johnnie5 said:

You also have a lot of foreground in some of your surfer shots, try doing crops of those.  

Most of them are actually already cropped and i didn't want to push the quality too low. And my thinking the foreground shows the shallowness of the sea and danger to the surfers plus makes the photos less "just another surfer on another wave" but i guess that didn't work! lol.

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Don't give up on empty space. Sometimes the buyer wants a place to put their text. Personally, I've always rather liked compositions that have the main subject in a corner so I do it to please myself and then I put "copy space, copyspace" in the keywords.

 

Paulette

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2 hours ago, NYCat said:

Don't give up on empty space. Sometimes the buyer wants a place to put their text. Personally, I've always rather liked compositions that have the main subject in a corner so I do it to please myself and then I put "copy space, copyspace" in the keywords.

 

Paulette

Yes I did know copy space is important and when i remember I do keyword it in.

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