StanRohrer

My first submission was in early 2003. My first sale was $420 (Alamy price) as I recall. I had dreams of making money. I wish I saw $420 sales today! That $420 might actually be my highest sale of all time - I'd have to go back for a look.

I use iMatch by Photools.com. There is no image retouching/editing capability. It is all cataloging of the image database. Keywording capabilities are nice and can be thesaurus based if you build the thesaurus. I manage 175,000 images now and started in 2003.

I've shot cars on and off since 2003. You might add keywords (if they apply): car, cars, auto, autos, automobile, motorcar, motorcars, transportation, [country of origin, i.e. Italy, Italian, USA, United States], classic, old, vintage, historic, historical, history, antique, nostalgia, restored, custom, customized, hotrod, hot rod, streetrod, street rod, muscle car, race, race car, [colors], [year], [decade i.e. 2010s], [make i.e. Chevrolet, Chevy], vehicle, convertible, coupe, sports car, super car, exotic. Here are a couple keyword helpers. Plug in your basic info and see what keywords other people use in the libraries. https://www.keyword.io/tool/stock-photo-research?utf8=✓&keyword=1957+Chevy&musts=&must_nots=&media[]=image&min_sales=0 http://www.mykeyworder.com/keywords?tags=1957+chevy https://imstocker.com/en/keyworder

I often use a cell phone to record a item on the shelf in a store. But I do it to recall the packaging, model number, shelf price, and the phone GPS location - all as a reference for shopping. I have never been accosted by any of the store employees. If I was approached, I would indicate the above reasons for shopping with a phone and if they didn't want me to consider buying at this store I could erase the image from my phone. I also have used a phone app for price comparisons against Amazon, online, and local stores. We have the technology and I figure this store has to compete. I have not been accosted for such use either. I certainly will not pull out my big-boy camera and shoot inside a USA store. I did get requested to stop as a tourist in Shanghai one day though I had photographed on other days with no comments. I do consider each time I am on private property if the big-boy camera might draw unwanted confrontations. Security guards like to protect there turf. I've even had 3 police stop while I was photographing a hospital front while I was on a public sidewalk. No real problems from them, so they said, but just doing terrorist checking. But I don't like these confrontations and it tends to blow my creative moments in photography. I have photographed cars in the parking lots of malls, shopping centers, and large stores. For prearranged car events I expect zero problems. When I and just one car owner make such a stop I have not been accosted by any security when out at the far end of the lot and it's obvious I'm not trying to include the store or the private property - just the car. This is a little different than photographing inside the building and of the merchandise.

Many years ago, when I was shooting a lot of cars, I read an article by an IP attorney about such topics. As applied to my cars and being in the USA, this is my memory (so take it with a grain of salt). I was barely a car photographer and certainly not a lawyer. I could walk into someone's garage and take a pic of a car. The car manufacturer and the paint shop flames would be copyrighted but there is no legal penalty to taking a picture. The copyright problems come from the picture use and especially if it can imply commercial use or commercial recommendations of the copyright holders. Editorial photo use should not be a problem. The car manufacturer may or may not press for Copyright depending on the image use and viewing audience. The paint shop is not likely to have registered a copyright on the flames paint job and is likely so limited in a Copyright suit to make it not worthwhile to pursue. The garage is private property, and the owner has control, so the owner can control whether you photograph or not. Even if you photograph against his wishes he has no control over that photograph. The owners control is only about the property, the garage, itself. If the garage door is up and you shoot from the public street, there is little he can do (other than a loud rant and rave), except the remote possibility of invasion of personal privacy (if he is changing clothes in the back of the garage). If you walk onto his property he could call the police and throw the book at you for trespass. He could further ban you from his property, even as far as a legal injunction to keep you away. If the door was locked he might get you for breaking and entering. If you paid for an access ticket he could get you for breach of contract, assuming the contract indicated no photos. This is all about being on the property, not the photo itself. There is another legal term called Conversion. Say, you agreed and borrowed a friends truck to move your couch. But while having his truck, you hauled a load of turnips to the next town and made a handsome income for your effort. Your friend did not agree to free use of his truck for an income profit venture and your (now ex) friend can make legal claim against your benefit. There are a bunch of subtle points to the legal definition of Conversion, of which I no longer remember. However, the claim of Conversion, as applies to a photograph, was a very long and tenuous thread that very likely could never be met. So the bottom line, as I recall, is taking the actual photograph will likely never be a legal problem in any of these private property cases. Property access might be a problem during or after the photography event. Conversion very likely does not apply. But, even if the photographer expects to win all the legal challenges, the costs of his defense may not be worth the possible confrontations of shooting on private property without permission.

I still sell PU. I have not voted. A file size or pixel size file reduction will not help in the cases I've reviewed. I find some of my sales being used on web sites that are more towards commercial and less personal. For example, I found 2 PU sales used on two different (but related) web sites created by the same web site developer company. Alamy extracted a change in pay for one site use and wasn't able to extract a new payment for the other. Alamy said I could chase the 2nd issue. For the difference Alamy got on the first issue I couldn't justify the time nor expense of chasing that second. With the Alamy precident for the first, how can I charge a penalty if I chase the second? File size restrictions will likely have no impact on this problem. Alamy needs to do serious push-back on the buyer when the buyer does not follow the license agreement. The agreement should have penalties (say, 10x) for miss-use of the purchase agreement. In my first case, the first change of price was not a penalty but just a price per normal scale so cheating wasn't penalized. In the second case, I think the buyer figured out if he did not respond then Alamy wasn't going to carry out the penalty (bill the credit card, send an additional invoice, send the billing change to collections). I can't prove it (Alamy would have the record of sale), but I highly suspect the same buyer bought both images.

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! ;-)