famousbelgian

I was told at by Alamy at The Photography Show recently that exclusivity is not currently a factor in the search algorithm, but that they are working on the introduction of a tick box option for customers to see exclusive images only (named perhaps "only available at Alamy"). Marc

It's official, the world has gone mad ...

Has anyone else had issues with the date from the metadata not transferring correctly to Alamy? I uploaded 40 images last week and noticed that all the dates were different from the metadata, all of them had been changed to the same date about 2 years away from the time of the shoot. I had to highlight all images of the batch in AIM and change it back to the correct date. Marc

Mmmm ... I was going to reply but I sense it is probably best that I don't.

Basically, better overall rating means your images will appear higher up in search results, which in turn means they are more likely to be seen and chosen by potential buyers Marc

I had a very long chat with Alamy staff at the Photography Show last weekend and thought I would share a few things which some of you may find useful: Keywording If, like me, you keyword your images in advance before uploading to Alamy and, like me, put the 10 most important keywords in the front, you can ask Alamy to turn the first 10 keywords into supertags. This avoids you having to go into the AIM to pick your 10 supertags manually. A simple email to Contributor Relations is all that is required. Valuable Images I never realised you can ask to create several accounts with Alamy (within reason of course). This means you can have one account (A) for all your more unique or valuable images, and another account (B) for the images you don't mind selling for below-average prices. Images in Account A can then be restricted for Personal Use, Novel Use, Editorial, etc without your images in Account B being affected by these restrictions. This is particularly useful if you have some historically important and unique images which a potential buyer is not going to find anywhere else. Note that having two accounts is NOT the same as having two pseudonyms as any restrictions in one account will apply to all pseudonyms in that account. Batch sizes They confirmed to me that there is a definite advantage when uploading small batches of images, i.e. it is better for your overall rating to upload a batch of 100 images once a week compared with uploading 400 images once a month. Captions Captions are very important to the search engine. In fact, you can submit images without keywords but they MUST have a caption. An example was given of contributors with massive bulk uploads who normally only include a caption. Contributor events I was pleased to hear that Alamy is considering organising more events for contributors, such as their presence at the Photography Show, in order to get more face-to-face feedback from contributors. Marc

Thought I would share this very useful summary of copyright developments over time from DACS : https://www.dacs.org.uk/latest-news/copyright-uncovered-photographs?category=For+Artists&title=N&utm_source=DACS+General+Mailing+List&utm_campaign=f7a41f8e79-DACS_newsletter_Q1_2018&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_de159500fe-f7a41f8e79-223246869&mc_cid=f7a41f8e79&mc_eid=abf8554838 https://www.dacs.org.uk/knowledge-base/factsheets/copyright-in-photographs Marc

I posted the following in November last year, I hope this helps ... If you have a look at my portfolio, you will see that almost all of my images are studio shots of objects against a white or black background. As others have said, if you want to do this well, it takes time and it is not a skill you learn overnight. Perhaps I can share a few things with you, after shooting 100+ images in this way almost EVERY DAY for the last 10 years. - Make sure you separate your background from your subject by sufficient distance to avoid light spill (flash bouncing off the background onto the rear of your object) - It helps to put a large sweep in the background, having the back hanging vertical increases light spill - Always light your white background with a separate light source and make sure it is one stop overexposed compared with your subject, use a flash meter to check, you don't want to overexpose by more than one stop - Every session, make sure you set custom white balance (use a neutral grey card), this will ensure your colour balance is always correct and will save you a lot of time in processing afterwards. Don't assume it will be the same every session, always start custom white balance from fresh. - Use the highest shutter speed you can (1/250s on most cameras, unless you have a leaf shutter) - I personally don't use a tripod, it slows me down too much, but if you use one make sure your IS (Image Stabilisation) is switched off - Be careful what you wear if your object is reflective or you are shooting a flat object held flat with glass. Wear a black cape if necessary. Avoiding reflections is something I could write a book about! - If you're not shooting on white, and you don't want to set custom white balance (or can't), put a small piece of white card in the corner somewhere. You can use this to set white balance later in processing if you wish. - Shoot in RAW if you can, it will make life much easier - Make sure you have a decent monitor and CALIBRATE it regularly - I open all images in ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) in Photoshop CC. Make sure the chromatic aberration and lens profile adjustment boxes are ticked. If you are shooting on black or white, you will almost certainly have some (or a lot, depending on the quality of your lens) chromatic aberration (CA) to deal with. - Use the icons above the histogram to show blown highlights and shadows. These will turn part of your image red and/or blue respectively in blown areas. - To make the remaining areas around the subject white that aren't already blown white, I first use the white slider (not too far), and then the adjustment brush (set at +1 exposure and +5 white) to paint the remaining areas red. Start with a larger brush, then repeat reduce the brush as you get closer to the image. This is a skill that you will perfect with practice. If you have a black background, you basically do the same but using the black slider, and a brush set at -1 or -2 exposure and a negative black brush (painting areas blue). - Don't destroy your subject shadows, these normally need to stay unless you want a complete cutout - Correct any perspective in ACR, it is much easier to do it there. I do it by drawing 4 lines when shooting books, maps, etc. - In extreme cases, you can use the pen tool in Photoshop CC to create cutouts (I try and avoid using the magic wand) - Go for square cropping when possible, this maximizes visibility in searches among other images, it makes your image thumbnail "larger" Marc

Yes, I'll be there all day. Marc

Looks like Google have made it (slightly) harder to save images on their image search facility, which has to be a good thing. It's not going to solve the problem of image theft but every little bit helps in my view .... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43085053 Marc

I have used Photobox for my photobooks for around 12 years. They are very good value for money. One thing however they CANNOT do by their own admission is print pure WHITE on WHITE. If you send them images with a white border / surround such as cutouts (RGB 255 all the way round), it will not blend invisibly with their white paper. Either their paper is whiter than white or they can't print white ... I would definitely calibrate your monitor, but only if it's a decent one. There is no point calibrating a poor monitor. The best £250 I ever spent was on my current HP LP2475w 24" monitor. I've had it for 10 years and it's still going strong after 13,400 backlight hours. That works out at 3-4 hours a day, every day, for 10 years, which is about right. Not many monitors in this price range will last that many backlight hours. I use the next generation HP monitors at work and they are just as good. And no I don't work for or am connected in any way to Hewlett-Packard ... Most of your images look ok to me, but some need adjustment. Make sure your histogram touches on the left AND the right so you are just under pure black and pure white. If you are going to calibrate your monitor, the biggest dilemma will be picking your gamma. If the images are going to be displayed on a monitor or the Internet, use gamma 2.2. If they're going to be printed you probably need to use gamma 1.8 (most professional printers / typesetters use 1.8) Here is an excellent article on gamma settings : http://www.photoscientia.co.uk/Gamma.htm Marc

Views: 10,169 Zooms: 66 Sales: 16 Gross: $381.21 Average CTR: 0.93 Below average month, let's hope we can finish the year with a bang, I am only 6 sales away from my 2016 total. Marc

Before I joined in 2010 I was blissfully unaware of Alamy. Just today, I happened to meet a photographer who has an enormous archive of potentially valuable aviation images and he was blissfully unaware of Alamy. No doubt, in ten years time, there will still be people blissfully unaware of Alamy.

Yes, I don't know how many cans of air I've used over the years! Hundreds! Ultrasonic cleaning is also very useful sometimes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasonic_cleaning Marc

Yes, I miss him too, he was a tremendous contributor to this forum, I don't think I've ever come across anybody more knowledgeable about photography than him. He is on Facebook, and dishes out occasional wisdom there to people so I follow his feed. Marc