Bryan

Doesn't apply to me as a Mackem, rather than a Geordie.

Yeah, used last month's Alamy income to buy it. Intend to have it shipped over and added to the collection already across the river Tyne.

There are certainly more lucrative things to do with your time! I'd earn more per hour stacking shelves at a supermarket, but then that wouldn't be anything like as interesting/challenging. Over the years I've done many jobs, particularly as a student, including emptying dustbins, working in a bar, assisting the council rat catcher, cutting grass, delivering mail, labouring on a building site (actually the most remunerative) etc, - all paid better than stock.

Just read through this thread, and have to confess that I have many shots including people from France, Spain and Italy (not to mention a few from Quebec). To be honest I find the none UK European market to be challenging, with proportionally fewer sales than from elsewhere, but my one repeat seller from Spain includes clearly recognisable unreleased people, (it includes the magic selling keyword "couple") and you would expect that the end users would know and understand what is permissible. The only non UK problem that I have encountered to date was with a photo of a statue, where the sculptor insisted that I remove it from sale. Image speedily deleted. Maybe the lawyers are busily preparing their cases against me as I write this response......

Not sure that it makes any difference, how is it possible to judge! I have three, two with geographic connotations, and one a dumping ground during deletion. Not seen any improvement in sales since moving from 2 to 3 but so many other variables at work......

HMRC used to run free training sessions for those starting a new business, I don't know if they still do, but I found the course to be invaluable - could possibly do with a refresher! The law changes from time to time as each new Chancellor of the Exchequer has their own take on how things should be done. From memory one of the most important aspects is the need to keep good records so that you can justify any claim with evidence. So keep all receipts and detail any travel etc. I believe that there is a maximum time that the tax man can drill back into your affairs, is it 6 years? In which case you need to keep your records for that time. A friend once had his considerable car mileage questioned by the taxman, but he was able to detail the purpose of every trip made and his claim was accepted. Sadly the effort expended on doing this was not in itself deductable, so better to avoid scrutiny by ensuring that your claims are indeed accurate and realistic.

Need to be realistic, if your expenses exceed your photo income and you are using the deficit to reduce your overall tax bill I suspect that HMRC will be interested, and that could cause a degree of misery. However, as Mark says, you can reasonably apportion expenditure, on your phone, travel (holiday 90% photography 10%) etc. Just don't get carried away!

Great thread, made me chuckle as I recognised many of the symptoms, but, clearly, I am not sufficiently dedicated. One to add, arrive at airport in good time but can't find camera. Despite vigorous protests from spouse, drive home to get it. Can't find it there either, it had fallen behind driver's seat, but in state of panic don't find it. Had a miserable holiday without camera. Form of torture seeing all of those scenes, but unable to capture any of them. Actually that part is not true, after coming to terms with the situation, wonderful to be able to relax and just enjoy the day.

2009 $360 - but only 2 sales! 2010 $143 2011 $86 2012 $42 2013 $56 2014 $33 2015 $34 2016 $30 2017 $33 2018 $31 2019 $29 Can't recall when I joined the Newspaper scheme, that probably boosted sales but significantly reduced average value. Downward trend. 2017 best year for revenue.

Patrick you can get to see up to date details of each deal if you "Download sales report" and choose "Date of invoice". You can also download in greater detail as a spreadsheet CSV file. If your photos are exclusive to Alamy and annotated as such then your share is 50% - photos of artwork without context, i.e. someone looking at it, cannot be marked as exclusive. If they are not exclusive or not annotated as such, you get 40% If you sell via a distributor, they also take a cut, so your share is reduced to 30%. You can opt out of distributor sales, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Cheers John. All is satisfactory thanks! I'm pretty sure it's a combination of two hardware faults that cause it to shut down. One, it gets too hot probably due to dirt in the cooling channels, and maybe a breakdown of the thermal paste between processor and heat sink. Two, the battery is flat and won't take charge, while there is a connection fault in the power supply socket. If you waggle the lead it loses the connection and the computer shuts down. Re software etc, the primary user is my wife and she mainly uses Word and Gmail. It's hardly ever used for processing photos. We get regular updates and I occasionally purge it of irrelevant stuff and scan with Malwarebytes or similar.

Thanks for the further responses. To bring you up to date, thinking about buying refurbished led me to contact a local computer repair person, liked what he had to say, and put it with him. Visited the other day to find the laptop completely stripped down and cleaned and him ordering a replacement on-board socket for the power supply. Hopefully this will see us get a few more years from the machine..... Possibly general knowledge but news to me - he told me to remove the battery if regularly using the laptop with a mains supply as otherwise the battery will rapidly become defunct. - it did. Apparently it needs a discharge - recharge cycle to remain healthy. Oh, and it's a Toshiba, not a Panasonic (doh!), our TV is a Panasonic.

Wildlife a very competitive field (not unlike most things these days!). Don't go there myself but suspect that you need to have outstanding images in order to sell consistently. To my untrained eye some of your shots are from quite a distance with the subject quite small, while it is useful to have context, it's probably better to go for the subject occupying more of the frame. Not sure that creatures taken from behind e.g. T0KD1F or partially hidden e.g. T0KCXD and T0KD48 are going to do well. Always a balance between making something available on the off chance of a sale but maybe damaging your CTR. That said you do have some good looking images, presumably you have made some sales?

Thanks for the responses folks, appreciated! Need to acquire an anti static cloth apparently.

Hi Harvey You need to obtain the address of the image when you can post it using the Insert other media tab. Once upon a time you could do this by right clicking on the image in Alamy, but no more. I recall someone more knowledgeable than me posting that, in Windows, if you drag the image to the top of the screen so that it forms a new tab, then you can right click and obtain the address. Alternatively you can delve Into the html code of the source page to find the address. It's better to use a customer's search to obtain the image, as you will then be able to access a larger file, rather than use Image Manager. Finally I don't think that this is the place to ask an identification question, this section of the forum is intended for portfolio review.