Robert M Estall

I've been away from Canada such a long time; I have no idea what is in those bags/packages! The prices don't help me guess.

You could caption better and edit tighter, sure, but if the same images are available at much cheaper prices at microstock sites you are NEVER going to sell on Alamy. Well, you might get lucky once or twice.but buyers do shop around for the best deals

are these same photos also available on a micro-stock site? If that were the case, why would anyone pay more. Clients do check other sites. As others have suggested, your information is limited. You hardly ever name the location. Clients really want to know this information.

I clearly remember when the TV picked up this story of an old soldier walking his garden terrace with his walking frame to raise £1,000 before his coming 100th birthday for the National Health Service. No one could imagine how this would take off and the roughly £39 million could wind up in the fund. Heroic! The end came very quickly which, sadly, is how this virus so often works.

photos from mobile phones are improving all the time, but a phone is still a phone and a camera is a camera, not a phone. As ever, use the right tool for the job

The whole egg mayonnaise sounds a great idea at first, but what to do when you want to make a souffle or maybe meringues if you don't have a store of spare egg whites? The whites don't seem to mind being frozen so I keep a couple of little pots in the freezer and top them up every time I have a couple left over from my weekly mayonnaise. If I get too far out of balance, the dog is a willing option. She may look a bit designer-dog but will eat anything.

one little cooking tip many probably wouldn't know. You can't make mayonnaise with eggs which have been frozen. I can't imagine why that should be. I always get my eggs from the local little shop who get their eggs from the bloke up the road who has several hundred rescue hens from battery producers. They scratch & peck right where I walk the dog in the mornings. They gather the eggs every day and keep them in a draughty shed. We've been having heavy frosts so they likely freeze. You can beat those yolks as long as you like before drizzling in the oil but they will never thicken. Happened

finally broke my duck on the 26th of the month. $$ PU which doesn't really save the month. Same image which fetched very high $$$ back in August. Go figure?

nothing, nada, zilch, so far in January. No refunds at least!

An alarming horde stashed away with batteries removed: several Canon F-1s with lots of FD lenses, couple of Pentax 67s, a wide angled Fuji 4.5x6. All earned their keep all those years ago. All in good nick. I toy with the idea of sending some of them off to Ffordes but don't get it done

The sky has fallen Henny Penny and the bottom has dropped out . A few interesting zooms but where are the sales? To bed and hope for better news tomorrow.

Regardless of the niceties of a photographer being in a public place, Many schools set their own rules. I even encountered one which had an informal understanding with the police who considered that as legally binding. Of course they were wrong but picking a fight with a school is probably unwise. I do adopt the fly-on-the-wall approach to photography; not sneaky but not obvious either. My Pentax K-5 is very capable but doesn't smack as Pro gear. If you spend a lot of time in the area of street photography you will encounter objections but that is not to say accusations of possibly being a pae

Lemmy has been on Alamy for some time so will have a fair idea of prices achieved here. When you have a long history of £250 fees, it's hard to accept really low fees but it's often quite a bit better than that. But I would get away from Rex as a matter of principle anyway.

I shoot with a Pentax K-5 which also has a 16 megapixel sensor, most likely the same sensor. That's going to produce a 48Mg file before any cropping. No problems with QC. If in doubt, reduce size down towards 20 Mg. Don't push your luck by submitting high ASA rated images or anything liable to noise. Just submit well lit straightforward shots for your first submissions. The new K-3 III will not be cheap and will almost certainly have a 24 Mg sensor and ratle long at a speed few photographers will use. But it will be good value compared to many alternatives. Put a quality piece of glass on it.

Good luck recovering your originals from Rex! They are not what they were

I know I am in the minority, but the whole duty free enterprise at airports and ferry ports could go to make way for more useful facilities. The value is often dubious and you might often do better at a high street shop with more knowledgeable staff. I go to airports to catch a plane not waste my time on a buying spree. In fact I seldom fly anymore, I've done more than my share in the past

I'm not that bothered about the UK/US variations, it's pretty basic to try to cover those if you are at all professional about keywording, but there are lots of other alternatives come easily to mind. Use as many as you have room for or feel comfortable about. Whatever brings up my images in answer to searches is OK. But copying other peoples keywording is definitely not OK!

you ask which of your photos have sold. Out of your portfolio of 26, you only have 5 photos and they are hardly keyworded at all. 5 won't hack it, 500 might start to show sales if you can put more effort into attaching information

since I was a boy, spelling has been a problem. I've just learned to live with it, but these days many people and institutions just can't be assed. Social messaging and rapid thumb inputs on mobiles mean it's just not relevant to many. Why should database searches be any different? Your deliberate and accidental mistakes will affect which images emerge from the abyss of any image collections

CTR hanging in around 1. Zooms 16 at the moment, almost half from a site in New Hampshire for which I seem to have the only images. Odd! And a zoom for Stonehenge! There was a time before Alamy when I sold lots and lots of Stonehenge. Don't think I've sold one in 20 years. Is this the moment?

commiserations to all those who make much of the various groups who celebrate about this time of year. We will have to settle for a roast turkey with a visit from son and daughter-in-law, a few silly games perhaps and a generous fire. Situation pretty normal for us, but I feel for those who like to make a lot more of it. Let's hope for a better year to come!

My CTR lurks mostly around the 0.75 and 1.25 marks so perhaps that means at least I'm visible. Oddly sometimes my highest pseudonym is a very small contributor who has never sold a thing in 15 years. Just the very occasional zoom is enough. I think he once went over 7. his portfolio is in single figures; he seemed a good idea many years ago but faded fast

I'm sure most of us would wish for a whole lot more detail on several topics but this is a public forum. Let's hope some of the suggestions found fertile ground. Back in the day, I was very impressed by the couple of contributor gatherings in London I attended, but much has changed. I'm glad the audio came across better; a little attention to lighting and camera work wouldn't go amiss. Not that hard, that's what some of us do!

But slightly better is all it takes. I often remember my mate Mark Burns who worked as picture editor at Stony Stone who said "Second best hardly ever sells" It's not 100% the case, but it'll do as a working principle.

I quite like that handy Adam Savage bloke. The question really reminds me of all those times I struggled when meeting picture researchers in gatherings. Always they would ask"what do you specialise in?" usually I would be rescued by some clever wag who would chime in "He specialises in lost transparencies!" I wouldn't dare say I do general photography so would go for Megalithic Archaeology as an response but of course that was a very incomplete answer and I would have starved if that had been factual. In fact, stock photography is a very handy way of wearing several hats according to circums