Robert M Estall

I think the main thing about wills is to avoid a situation where solicitors/lawyers/executors gobble up significant chunks of your assets. When it comes to photographs it's relatively simple; you leave the copyright to someone specifically (preferably someone actively interested in your photography) or set up a trust and then it is down to them to proceed with Alamy or other agencies. It would do no harm to drop Alamy a note in advance of any clog popping, but don't expect them to get actively involved while your feet are still on the ground. Or in your clogs. more likely to be crocs theses days

This idea seems to be the Holy Grail to so many photographers. But when it really comes down to it, the only person who is any good at it is yourself. You are the only person who really cares and have a huge head start on anyone else: you were there! Hopefully, you were there because you had done a little research. How useful is it to just describe what you see? Throwing a thesaurus at it is going to wreck your CTR and rank before too long. There are services in India offering all kinds of assistance, but they are usually not really totally fluent in English so they have a real handicap. I've taken up a couple of free trials in the past and they were woeful!

They ask?

Yeh, I've been through the issue of offspring stripping the power out of a range of devices leaving them useless. They are shameless on this issue and can not understand why you should find this a problem. It used to happen with printer cartridges as well until I bought a printer with a unique ink supply.

The Ikea alkaline non=rechargeable come top of the assessment in terms of value. I've used them and they are good. So, I would give their rechargeable ones a go, I doubt they are downhill from the eneloops. What are you wanting to do with them? I used to have a whole raft of rechargeables but gave them up as more and more of my needs demanded the higher voltage of alkalines. I buy whatever seems the best deal from Battery Station. Their delivery charges are modest. Currently I have several 10x boxes of Industrial Duracell which I'm happy with. Energiser come out high in ratings. The ONLY ones which work in my wife's little Canon Powershot are Lithium non-rechargeable. Pricy, but all the others give up after a couple of shots. I wouldn't use it for Alamy, but it takes remarkably good shots of paintings for her web-site. Before anyone berates me on environmental grounds, I am careful about only disposing of them in dedicated sites

Back in the 80s we fought a long hard fight to win our rights to copyright and moral rights culminating in the 1988 act. PLEASE do not let anyone pressure you into giving up those rights. Of course, you can negotiate some shared rights for GOOD MONEY but they are really just trying it on. They can not negotiate after the fact. Lots of clear legal precedents.

we seem to be getting more than a few posts from newcomers who clearly have not paid any attention to the requirements. We all recognise the " never mind the manual, let's just wing it" approach to things, but it just isn't going to work out when it comes to joining Alamy. If you haven't uploaded the first assessment batch of 3 successfully, you simply can not have uploaded 107 images so far as you state above

You need to improve your approach to keywording or tagging. You have an old 60's pick-up with an Ontario plate but you don't say Canada nor Ontario. In fact you should nail the year and make . That Arret sign could only be in Quebec, they use Stop in France. Fairyland at dawn? What kind of a title is that doing here? This isn't a camera club, it is a commercial site where we hope to make sales after imparting some information attached to our photographs. So your recent proposed upload is on Getty Premium Selection already? Alamy are happy with non-exclusive, you sure this is OK with Getty? Alamy does have a separate side for smartphone pix, but they have to be taken on an iphone Let's not get into why!

With only 6 images uploaded so far, I would be thinking of adding more rather than getting rid of any. But if you insist, follow Sally's advice. Also, you can make it pretty impossible for a client to find your photo by removing almost all your caption and keywords. But you have to leave something in those fields or the system will keep your original words. Just make the remaining words complete nonsense or just words which do not exist. I'm afraid no clients are even the slightest bit interested in your exposure settings. Save yourself the bother. Similarly, some newcomers seem to think clients might be interested in what camera was used. They really are not!

Frinton know how to party, but they don't do pubs. They are a bit up themselves. Harwich certainly do pubs, but their bit of beach is pretty miserable. We like Dovercourt but in spite having an official Green Flag beach, I don't think it is quite ready for bubbly and up-market beach parties. We could always opt for Clackers, I'm sure they will be up to speed

weather looks set to be good so I think we'll go to the beach. Tie a flag to the beach umbrella and upgrade the bag of beers to a bottle of pink fizz. Walton or Frinton might be in the party mood. Pack a camera just in case things come together. But I wouldn't dream of joining the fray at Windsor!

odd, your first 16 or so images come up with: Sorry, this image is not available on Database when you click on them to see your caption & tags. The following 280 or so seem OK. Lots of excellent shots. More!

dust cleaning software such as ICE doesn't work on negative scanners, so you would have a lot of time cleaning up. Many now use a macro lens and dupe rig or you can find a selection of scanners at Ffordes. They could advise, the prices vary a lot. As ever, the more you spend the more you get Wim is right as usual, a Nikon LS-5000 is excellent, but they have long been discontinued and used ones fetch a good price http://www.ffordes.com/category/Printers_and_Scanners/Film_Scanners

I've had mixed experiences shifting gear no longer needed. Mostly, I just shove it in the bottom drawer and forget it thinking I won't get much for it. I remember years ago trying to sell a 16-on Hasselblad film holder. I seem to recall being offered £50 when the real value was several hundred pounds. The shop didn't know me and quite likely thought I might be desperate to take whatever I could get. I kept it! On the other hand I updated my fairly recent Pentax K-5 at a shop which was keen to keep me as a customer and got a very good price. Some of my old film gear might be getting to the collectable stage and fetch a decent price. I can dream!

Hi Kathy. We can only see three photos so far and two of them are not your normal kind of lighting. The reflection shot could be just about anything, the sea & sunset shot looks rather dark, but some might just like it like that. Just look at the landscape including an American flag and tractor. Are you saying that looks OK on your monitor with detail in the shadows and a full set of colours in the flag? If so you have a problem! Or are you just uploading without any adjustments after you have loaded your photos from camera to computer? Incidentally, I'm looking at your photos on an imac which has only been adjusted for brightness. My only calibration method is to send a couple of images to a couple of other computers and go 'round to them and see if we have a reasonable match. Perhaps that is the lazy way of calibration, but I don't see the point of my viewing system being technically correct and the other world including clients being wrong.

Not too many clients are searching for B&W, sorry to those who love the look of monochrome but this is a business, not a salon. We have at least one contributor who only submits B&W; that's how he chooses to work and that's totally OK If you have uploaded both B&W and colour versions of a shot, the Alamy diversity algorithm may cause your B&W version to appear on page one of a search and your colour version on page three for instance. They certainly wont be presented side-by-side. The client only looks at the first two pages of the search and there you are, shot squarely in your foot.

There are lots of short cuts mostly invented by people using smartphones to save time while texting. I don't understand many of them but IMO seems to be In My Opinion Redsnapper is quicker off the mark!

I've always rather liked the term SHOOTING BRAKE but to my mind it was always reserved for the upmarket makers like Jaguar and Rover. I once saw a Bentley shooting brake which was probably one of those custom body jobs and I dare say Daimler might have made a few. But a Station Wagon is a YANK. Not a term of abuse to cars or nation, just a mostly kindly term for those older big bouncy flamboyant American cars which fetched up in the UK. God knows they drank gas or even petrol. I don't think they ever made one which drank diesel. That has turned out to be a good thing.

There are lots of bullies in the film & TV industry at every level. And then the are a whole bunch who are just fine. As ever, you have to assess each situation and play it by ear

There ya go: nearside/offside; to anyone but an Englishman with a few miles on the clock, that explanation is probably correct at the same time as being totally bonkers. Fortunately it is hardly ever used except perhaps for describing to a rental car condition report or a scrape being reported to an insurance company. Invariably we just use left side/right side and we all know where we are. Hardly anyone says filling station anymore and boots/trunks is redundant. We just throw it in THE BACK. Most cars to-day are a similar kind of aerodynamic blob so sedan/saloon isn't much in play. Me (and perhaps James West still) drives a VW converted van from the late eighties which is just a box on wheels so much of the terminology doesn't apply. The crazy thing is, it's probably worth more than when new even though it has 150K on the clock. Actually the clock itself is the one bit which doesn't work anymore. I can live without it!

Having been a Canadian youth growing up with lots of sharp fins on cars, I was totally unprepared for the jungle of competing dialogue when referring to almost anything to do with automobiles and trucks/lorries when I washed up on the UK shore. To this day, I have no idea which side of a vehicle is the near-side and the off-side no matter how many times it is explained. It just wont stick in my brain as perhaps I think just left and right side is so much better. It is utterly pointless trying to suggest which term is right and which is wrong just use as many as come to mind.. The main thing is to take care which side of the road you set off on when exiting a roundabout/traffic circle. Just use all possible terms as tags, or move on to photographing your lunch. Edo and I could probably construct a fairly comprehensive catalogue of terms but by the time we finished we'll all be moving about in driverless cars with little regard to which bits are called what.

I gather Malaga isn't the rather grey old uninteresting city it once was. I did go to a bullfight there many many years ago and it was certainly impressive. I also sat next to John Wayne in a bar there! Nobody else recognised him. Gosh, the airport has three terminals these days.Now that is a change. I remember once doing a shoot for Clarksons and sitting in a little Court Line BAC 111 waiting for the wind to change for best part of 36 hours ( we did get off for a night's sleep). The only way to take off is straight at the mountains to the north and the pilot or traffic control wasn't up for it. Malaga introduced me to Tapas bars, now that is a good thing! It looks like there is rather a lot of good material on Alamy for Malaga already and I fear there may not be a huge demand . There is some nice coast to the East of the city, but the demand will be for the resorts to the West

Of course you are posting images that don't sell and will not sell. But that's what we all do! Nobody can or will spell out which are going to work out for you. What you and many other fairly new comers to stock miss is the great importance of attached information. Many years ago, my now wife was a picture researcher at Readers Digest Books. Included on a search list was an item "Emden Goose". That's your pretty standard white long necked goose. Lots of photographers sent in pictures of geese, lots of them Emden Geese. Only mine were captioned Emden Goose and that's why mine was chosen for publication. Because Readers Digest placed great importance on accuracy! I knew what I was talking about, or at least appeared to know, the others didn't know so they didn't make the sale. It doesn't aways work that way, but that's the way to go. Of course it has to be a better than average photograph as well but you need both halves.

Do remember that we are in competition for sales in many cases. Some of us have a few fairly simple accessible subjects which most photographers have overlooked so far. We are unlikely to point you at them. Helpfulness only goes so far! I quite like your Cuban cars, but there are quite a lot out there, Many are from my time in Canada and I could put names and dates on quite a few. That wouldn't be hard to look up and might help sales potential. Don't expect clients to do your work for you.

I can't make up my mind which I hated more, the tobacco grad or the pink grad back then. Please stay back "then" ! No need to come 'round again. The blue or neutral grads made some sense and I admit to some limited use. Fortunately we can adjust better and more subtly in Photoshop without carrying all that extra kit about.