Keith Douglas

One argument for giving a higher commission rate for exclusive images is that if the customer finds an image that is exclusive to Alamy they can't then search for that specific image in other sources and Alamy then loses a sale. So why would Alamy give preference in the searches to images that can be bought elsewhere, just because they pay less commission to the photographer? If anything, they should give preference in the search to images exclusive to Alamy. Anyway, I think it would be something that would be fairly easy to monitor by changing around exclusivity on a few images and then seeing where they moved to in the search results.

Hi Andy Still unsure of our Xmas plans, but think that I will be around some time between 27 and 30 Dec. Sorry I can't be more specific. Keith

Same here. 4 sales, including one for $250, which is the highest value sale I have made on Alamy. Glad to get that one in while still in the 50% zone! Keith

12 sales for $305 gross, so a good month for me.

Not tried uploading today, but I have had ongoing problems with the site being inaccessible. This is when I am clicking on links in the dashboard. After a few minutes it starts working again. Keith

Thanks for that Rob

I'm not too far from Blackpool - just up the coast near Morecambe, so it's a possibility for a meet up. Our Xmas plans are in a state of flux at the moment, so let's get in touch again in mid December. Any others from North Lancashire interested in meeting up? I was involved in regular Alamy member meetups (about every 3 or 4 months) in Cambridge and it was very successful. Having recently moved up North it would be good to get something going in this area. Keith

I paid for the Pro Account, $25 per year for a number of years. In January the price will double to $50. That may be 'pretty cheap' but it's a big jump, and clearly needs some consideration about whether it is worth continuing.

Yes indeed, that's what I will do. I'd just like to find one or two other people first to get things off the ground, so this was just a bit opportunistic. It would have been good to have John on board with it as he was in the right location and showed an interest in the idea of an Alamy group meet. I'll keep looking but not having the messaging facility makes it harder.

9 sales for $232 gross. About average for me.

That's a shame (that you don't live in South Cumbria). If I can find one or two other Alamy contributors locally it might be enough to get something off the ground, which is pretty much what happened in Cambridge. And yes, it's a shame that we can't message other contributors any more.

I'm glad to see that the Cambridge meetups are still well attended, and I still hope that one of them might coincide with one of my visits to Cambridge. Hi John I was one of the original attendees of the Cambridge meetups. I moved to near Morecambe 18 months ago and I don't think I'm too far from where you are based. Do you think there might be some interest in setting up a similar group in North Lancashire / South Cumbria? Keith [Apologies to the Cambridge folks for hijacking your thread]

I had a photo of flooding that was used in a national newspaper. A councillor decided to lift it and use it on Facebook to advertise a meeting that he was organising. He didn't bother to ask me about using it so I pointed out to him that he was infringing my copyright and he took the image down. Had he asked I might well have given him permission to use it. I got a lot of flack from a couple of locals for being so mean …. but it's got to be done!

To cause further confusion, I must challenge your statement that "The conversion from MP to MB is a trivial x3 for 8 bit files". In fact one Megabyte is actually 1024 x1024 bits = 1048576 bits. So, to convert from MP to MB you multiply by 3 and then divide by 1.048576. So, an image that is size 3000 x 2000 is 6 million pixels which is 17.166 M bytes (which is where the 17 Mbytes comes from) . There's a simple method of dealing with this which is to multiply the height of the image in pixels by the width of the image in pixels, and if the answer is 6,000,000 or more then the image is large enough. I really don't understand why it needs to be made more complicated than that. Those who fully understand pixels, bits, bytes and are confident that when Alamy say 17 Mbytes they mean slightly less than a 3000 x 2000 image (I'm not), can squeeze out a few more pixels, but I think that the 6 million pixels rule of thumb is much more practical.

Thanks for spotting one of mine in The Times, Bryan. [Keith Douglas UK Weather: Wimpole, Cambridgeshire, England, UK, 25 October 2015, F504YM ]