Robert M Estall

Yes, I would usually agree about numbers, especially the tiresome tiddlers, just got carried away with the Christmas cheer

Most months I am waiting patiently to get off the mark and need a week or more for the first to drop in. To-days the 4th and a shot from Norfolk thumped in with a very pleasant $495 which I did for my first book way back in 1972. As has been often said; This is indeed a waiting game! Best not to give too much away as the site is very accessible and to be honest, there's nothing all that remarkable about my shot. There are a couple of similars from other contributors. Book : Duration: 25 years. Amount of Uses for Secure Electronic: Unlimited. Amount of Uses for Non Secure Electronic

I painfully recall making presentations to picture researchers and editors fresh out of art college. I had some nice attractive well shot transparencies to show. They viewed politely and made nice murmerings,then came the total put-down: Arty-farty photography. Crushed! But they were right, I had not demonstrated any ability to follow a brief, so I wasn't getting any commissions. So to get on track I had to stop flogging that aspect and show I could produce the goods before I got any work. It was a hard lesson. Years later in the travel brochure sector, I found myself doing a lot of re-shoots

Once you discover how easily these home espresso machines make superb coffee you'll chuck all those instant jars away. The ones which use pods are a waste of time and money. As to flat whites, Lattes and most of current offerings, I really don't get it. Cappuccino qualifies as coffee, most of the rest don't. Why we call watered down Espresso AMERICANO I have no idea. In Italy they give you a glass of water alongside your espresso just in case you are thirsty. I'm pleasantly surprised how so many little cafes in the UK have a decent Espresso machine and will give a proper coffee. Mostly they ar

Lots of people have preferences for non prescription painkillers. I've never understood how anyone would shell out for branded painkillers when the generic own-brand option which will be exactly the same thing at a fraction of the cost. This is one of those areas where "you get what you pay for" doesn't work out. Fool & money soon parted fits better. Ibuprofen can be more effective than paracetamol for some but reduces the effect of high blood pressure treatments which many of us elder folk are on. Codeine might help you sleep but I wouldn't want to take that for a month. I can take it w

Football weekends were colossal piss-ups. If you had recall, you were doing it wrong. The engineers usually led the charge

Marshall McLuhan took a course or two from my Dad at Queens. He certainly didn't learn anything like that from him

Yeh, there were times when a few of the images were linked and there was hardly any room for dialogue. I suppose the three dots takes up a little less space as well, but I don't really see much advantage. It wasn't broke so why fix? What did unsettle was the system demanded I log in with ID and password. I did that meticulously and it said I was wrong. Checked it and was 100% sure I had it right. It then blocked me and reported via email that someone in Pebmarsh Essex had been trying to access my account. It all went away the next day. I don't know anyone in Pebmarsh (photographers or oth

I'm not sure I agree with that list except for the "get it free" option. That's been going on for a long time; as a travel photographer I was long frustrated by the publishers who started their search at British Tourist Association and bent the truth in order to quality for free photos. Researchers did not go to individual photographers collections unless they were mates, long preferring to source from an agency where they could press for bulk rates. Bulk rates might start at two! I became a very small agency so that myself and a very few friends could compete for a few bulk-buy hunters. That

America is American-centric. They buy images of America or as America sees the world. That is an exaggerated simplification, but if you are hoping to sell images to USA, you won't go far wrong with that as a selling strategy. Keep note of the locations Americans pick for film locations in the UK. You could count them with two hands, no need to roll up your socks and start counting your toes. Sorry if I offend, but it's almost true. Out here in East Anglia they remember US bomber bases from WWII and that's about it. Oh, and Cambridge. Here in Sudbury, we have four silk mills, who would want to

Just as examples, I have three sales showing so far this month: AXAHFF Aerial St Lawrence Seaway circa 1985 BBAHA2 Excel centre London circa 2010 AMY0UP Dover Castle circa 1990 the two older ones are scans from slides The aerial might well put you in hot water these days as we were just doing a sightseeing flight over an international border and above an installation which should be fairly high up any security list these days. note these are A & B prefixes so they've been on Alamy some time.

4 year old photos are not old photos. Of course there is a market for the most recent shots but 95% of my portfolio is much older and trundle along producing sales

Yes The Kingston Whig Standard was the one. As a lad I delivered a round of about 50 by bike, collected the moneys which I think was 35 cents a week, so I knew my 35x times tables. We rolled up our many coins and cashed in on Saturday mornings 'round the back of the downtown office. It was only as a contributor that I entered from the front. They stopped the lads collecting the money years later and now I think it is a free-sheet just relying on the advertising for revenue. Here in the UK quite a few big titles are free-sheets now; the most obvious being The London Evening Standard which publi

Back in the early 60s I used to sell the odd few soft news photos to my local paper in Kingston Ontario. The fee was always 5 bucks. They gave me grief for being a bit slow off the mark. Even way back then I thought for just 5 bucks, I should be quick off the mark? Would you believe, almost 60 years later the offer would probably be less? And I had to process the film, make prints and hump them 'round to the paper. How did I make that work? I was living at home and mom provided. Provided nicely!

Marianne, you saying that QAnon is bollocks? That's great to hear! more sane Americans please. Sorry, not supposed to do politics here.

oops, thanks. soon fixed. several other photographers seem to have visited lately

We have to face the fact that We are putting our stock out through a portal/agency which is now owned by a mixed group of newspapers. They can use Alamy to market their own material although I struggle to see that as a great match, but that's down to them. It's pretty obvious they won't be impressed by having even a modest chunk refusing them access. Newspapers have long found it convenient to do their own reporting of use and arrange how and when they might pay. As a professional photographer for a long time my approach has never been a good fit with the newspaper sector but we scrape along.

I have little patience with so many who moan about keywording (tagging if you insist). How do they think anyone is going to find their way to your wonderfully crafted images? Just think you might luck in? We could all improve but just taking a quick stab at a few words and rushing onwards isn't going to cut it

My Dashboard loads quickly enough but Sales History and Alamy Measures are very slow, sometimes to the point of Time Out report. My internet connection is pretty quick. 68 Mbps download/18 Mbps upload : just tested

"I have a bath once a year - whether I need it or not!"🙃 The charming image of the family sharing bath water in a tin bath in front of a coal fire in the sitting room is getting to be a dim memory. Well not a memory for me, but a hundred years ago it was a reality for more than a few. In our comfortable Suffolk house, we had the central heating system upgraded a couple of weeks ago and quickly ran out of hot water. For a few days things got pretty basic. If that's all we have to moan about, things must be OK. The wine rack looks healthy, we have good local shops and enough loo rol

Most current cameras fall into the hand naturally to shoot horizontals and pay little attention to how they are going to work moving to the vertical shooting. A lot of that and photographers would soon be in need of physiotherapy. I once had a neat Fuji roll film camera which produced a vertical 4.5 x 6cm image when held in what appeared to be the natural horizontal shooting position. I liked it but didn't use it as much as I meant to. It got 15 shots from a standard 120 roll and 30 from a 220 roll. I never met any other photographer who embraced 220 film. It just made so much sense in so many

In film days before photoshop, the answer was often simple. Shoot a vertical (called portrait for no convincing reason) and crop off the bottom 20%. I even had a special pack of cardboard mounts which achieved the effect for the archive. Eventually we settled on the A4 shape which was a little longer than 8x10 and fitted the more likely printed format. In the US they clung onto 8x10 and foolscap (or "legal") There was also "quarto" We don't really need all those terms these days

back in the days of film there were a lot of cameras shooting 6x6cm which solved this problem. It also meant editors could get out their cropping L-shapes and fiddle about on the lightboxes. Everybody loves cropping. Makes them feel creative!

Sounds like you were getting set to do the City & Guilds cert. I've still got mine from the days when Oxford Brooks was called Headington Tech. Thanks for the tip, but I don't think I'll be doing banks.

That's the one. That could easily be one of mine. There was an obvious vantage point so we would tend to take similar shots. Hauling a Speed Graphic kit into the woods sounds unnecessary but clients rule. My visit would have been about the same time as Bill's. Early 70s. I think I had about a fifteen minute hike in from an access road. I was alone with the site and it was a really good experience. There were a few other sites I managed to paddle a canoe to in Ontario. I had my Dad with me on most of them. We liked paddling canoes together. I can recall several other sites like th