StanRohrer

Yes, you CAN licence an image as RM on one site and RF on another. However, there are a lot of concerns that make this a bad idea. The sites you use may include competitive restrictions in their contributors agreements. Exclusivity agreements at sites will certainly specify limitations across sites. RM licensing is intended to track uses and a reuse requires a new licence (money). RF is a free for all on usage. You may be competing against yourself in terms of sales and pricing and repeat licensing. Tracking of RM use and infringement will be difficult if an image is also sold RF. RF has little tracking of the sale for copyright or infringement issues. Price points generally differ for RM vs RF licenses. You may be competing against yourself in terms of sales and pricing and repeat licensing. High volume sales might allow for a price reduction at an agency. A competing agency, with your same image, will not be happy if your image is available for a lower price elsewhere. You are contributing to the industry wide race to the bottom of the price tier. Competing against yourself, again creates lower income across the industry.

I went to click and noted the missing forum link. Alamy is messing with my automated brain/click sequence.

If 3/4 of the stop light is in one frame, do I click both frames with the light or just the main frame? Does the light post count for a stop light or just the light fixture itself? This CAPTCHA thing can be a real lesson in frustration.

I see a change of format on the Account Balance page. Color coding is nice for the currency values. However reading the Cleared/Uncleared entries are now a bit tougher than just finding the previous x/o symbols. Please add color coding to Cleared/Uncleared.

I have uploaded a group of images from a shoot where there are 3 basic subsets. I want to be able to search for "locomotive 6777", or "locomotive 365", or "locomotive 765" from within only this one submission set. Then I can keyword and annotate that subset of images. I don't want to search (in this particular usage) my whole portfolio. Please add the Search capability to the confines of 1 or more selected submission batches.

So Alamy thinks it can grow it's business by damaging the relationship with it's suppliers? I really don't think there are many companies that can make that work. As a supplier, now I have less income. So my products have to be reduced in value and/or reduced production. I really don't think there are very many suppliers that can increase their business based on reduced income. I think Alamy is stepping onto the very slippery slope with this decision to reduce contributors royalties.

I check each image at 200% and 100%. 100% is a zoom to 1 pixel of the image projected to 1 pixel of your screen/display. You are looking for concerns such as: chromatic aberration, sensor dust/dirt, things in the image that would resemble sensor dust/dirt, bad sharpness (lens/camera quality and shooting technique issues), noise, hot pixels, dead pixels, bad retouching (I often retouch at 300% to get clean edges and tone transitions), copyright concerns (logos, trademarks, art/buildings/designs where the copyright is enforced), people (even small parts or silhouettes may need model releases). So you are doing a technical review as well as a legal review in the process of submitting and deciding RF/RM/Editorial/Released categories. Alamy submission inspections do not check so much on the composition or sale-ability of an image but if these are not viable then the image may be added to the library but still won't sell. The learning curve via Alamy is going to be tedious at best. Alamy does a random sample of your submissions so you really don't know from experience where the acceptable thresholds are for each of the potential technical problems. Failing an inspection will put you into the time-out corner where you be stuck for weeks and cannot make new submissions. So front end photography learning is likely better done with a mentor and/or technically proficient photography club or classes.

The captcha for my login today asked for "taxis". Two were obvious with marking and top light. I was forced to also select a yellow Ford Mustang with no markings and no light. I don't think a Ford Mustang small size will ever masquerade as a taxi!

I have a new thought. These Captchas are the new Alamy artifical intelegence to check image submission keywording. Are you spamming your images? Your peers will help find you out! ;-)

I had to click for street signs. So is the sign post still a part of the sign? If somebody has a finger in the edge of our submitted photos then we need a model release. So is a post a part of the sign? Is the sign small border corner in a segment still a sign? Is that thing way down the road still a sign or an unrecognizable object? I think it took 4 screens to get in here today. Do Alamy submission rules apply to the Captcha images?

Look up the tour bus sites. They would be hitting the sites and attractions to fit the tastes of visitors. It's been years since I've been to NYC, but the tour guide said that visitors tend to do it wrong. They should take the bus tours on the first days and then decide if they want to spend more time at any of the stops they can visit again on the later days. People too often go out on their own and then take a bus tour before leaving - only to again hit some of the places they've already been too and don't really need to see again. But for your question, what are the highlighted bus tour stops?

Many years ago I landed on the next to last page of the BHZ game. My sales were better there than when I was around page 10. Good Luck! It will be interesting to see if you note any sales change.

I haven't looked at BHZ in many months. For years I've hung around pages 9 or 10. I found myself at page 4 just now.

Fixed the Super Tags?

My quick flash through a few of your pages indicates the images are good enough on a technical and visual basis. Now the question is who will buy them? What will the image be used for? What does the customer want and why will he choose your image over some other? These are tough questions to answer when working through an agency. Some of my work sells to textbooks, tour guides, and magazine articles. Do your images "sell" a location? Do they represent the total essence of a given location? Do they strongly invite a viewer to come to the location? Do they invite exploration? I've sold a few "calendar" shots. Are your images enticing to draw people in? Are they of places people recognize and want to visit? Do they look good hanging on a wall of your neighbor down the street? Some images are sold into advertising. Again, how do they connect with the viewer? Are they model/property released so they can be used commercially? We all need to think like a potential buyer (good luck with that!) and shoot towards some form of usage. Even if your mental buyer image is wrong, it is at least a step towards a sales end.