Paul Mayall

I have always said it is a numbers game, unfortunately we photographers don't sell thousands of images per month at $1.25. Like many i had the idea many years ago to have a great deal of images online for this to happen, as time went on i could see the future as we see it today and lost interest in going mad uploading as if my life depended on it. I am happy to be past the challenge and just calmly upload a few images here and there as some kind of interest outside my normal life.

you and many others Kimba, unfortunately the industry is where it is now and we can be sure it won't change. The question is if one should accept receiving small rewards for our efforts or give up on supplying images and do something else, the contributors who just like taking photos and feel they are doing something with them and not worried about a substantial reward for their images should find Alamy and other distributors ideal, it is what it is!

Alamy without question was once the best image suppliers to be with for the individual photographer. Slowly over the years prices have been dropping at the contributors expense and will keep dropping, i cannot help but have the impression Alamy dose not care as they now have a very large archive and now one of the big players thanks to the hard work and expense of their contributors "both individual and partner agencies" and of course the recent change in commission dose not inspire us. I know there is nothing we contributors can do accept complain and get some satisfaction to vent our thoughts on this forum. Years ago i would have given Alamy a 9 star rating from 10, today i can only give 3, quite a drop, no doubt buyers would give Alamy 9 as images have become cheaper than chips. Like most i live in hope Alamy will lift their game in increasing the value of our images.

I am sure somebody will correct me on this. From my understanding from the past, exclusive images were sought after by exclusive buyers, e.g. i am a publisher wanting to licence a image for a book cover, not wanting this image to be licensed elsewhere for any other purpose for a period of 5 years, so Alamy offers me a higher fee than non exclusive from $300 to $500, the deal is done. The contributor gets $250 but the image cannot be re-licensed "locked away for 5 years" along time before the image is back on the market. Well that is how i understood the game from many years ago, perhaps it's changed.

Exclusive, been there done that! locking images into exclusive just to get 10% back dose not work for me, i prefer to have my images out there being seen and licensed by many others.

Maybe so Jeff, guess we will see come Febuary.

+1 As much as we don't like it Alamy has made there decision and has informed us with suitable notice of the change in commission. Realistically there is nothing we can do about it, except vent our thoughts here, smearing is not a good way to go about trying to get Alamy on our side.

Same here, however i have seen my work from other agencies on Alamy being submitted without my knowledge, i really think we photographers have lost control of our images as we have lost control of what we receive for them, it is a crazy business to be in where we supply material then are dictated to in regard to how much we will receive financially, recently my lowest fee for 1 image from elsewhere was 27 euro cents. Our financial reward can be so low yet we still get screwed down on commissions, i ask myself can it get any worse, i am sure it will in 10 years as commissions will probably be 30/70 with most agencies. Sorry for being negative folks! but that's how i see it at the moment. However it would be a positive action to contributors and perhaps the industry if Alamy would keep the current 50/50 commission rate and show they are a responsible organisation showing their contributors are a major part of Alamy's success. Alamy, i ask you not to put your financial woes on the contributors who feed you, rather add the little extra on sales and the people who feed us. Paul

Alamy will not fade away by lack of material from individual contributors, Alamy's archive has grown very quickly in recent years through big agencies adding million's of images, this will continue no matter what the commission rate is set at. Paul.

Slowly but surely image suppliers are moving toward the 40/60, Alamy is following many others in this area, we can complain as much as we want but it won't change the future in regard to getting our commissions lowered. If Alamy would or could leave the rate at 50/50 for it's current contributors and offer a 40/60 contract to new future members would restore faith and good will. We live in hope! Paul. ------------------------------------------------

Disappointing Alamy has changed the commission, it seems they are joining many others with the 60/40 commission platform, i would like some good news in the way of Alamy guaranteeing us contributors a reasonable minimum fee for our images e.g. $20 upwards, this would help when it comes to these bulk deals that are made with large concerns. Alamy sell a great deal of images therefore must be flush, is it greed ? we will never know. One thing i do know, the contributor is not flush. Paul.

Yep, thought i would give it a go, maybe it helps sales in some way. I am not currently on social media therefore i might not get exposure. https://www.alamy.com/portfolio/paulmayallphotography

Hi Marb, i would have to say any spots and marks would fail QC, you have nearly 2000 images with Alamy therefore you know what Alamy standards are in regard to clean images.

Thanks KODAKovic and TeeCee, i will go ahead and try my luck. Cheers, Paul.

Hi everyone, can anybody tell me if Alamy is still accepting film, i have a stack of slides and was wondering if it's still the go! Many thanks for your replies, Paul.