Christopher Holt

Bill, many thanks for that reply - sounds like a true digital replacement for my Ricoh GR1 at last! Will have to try it myself. John, personally, I would still run them through Lightroom to get the preprocessing advantages. Chris

Bill, I assume you've gained a weight/hassle advantage, but are the images comparable? Which model have you chosen? Chris

apparently, based on this email; it belongs to them (Photoshot Holdings Ltd) Scary, very Scary. Time to find me that tinfoil hat, again. The Copyright belongs to the photographer and the photoshot contract (as it is right now) is non-exclusive. That's my understanding of the oontract too. In fact, I haven't actually signed a contract with Photoshot. I placed images with Construction Photography.com, who photoshot took over.

For those that have their images with stock photography providers OTHER than Alamy, this might be of interest. Photoshot have acquired a few other libraries of late and have subsequently instructed Imageprotect.com to trawl the web and find infringements. So imagine my surprise when I received a somewhat "un-delightful" series of emails from Imageprotect of all people, threatening to sue the pants off of me for using my own images on my own website. To be clear, this wasn't a polite cease & desist type email. It came across more that they actually wanted £1000 per image and the

One thing I've notcied more recently than ever, is how shooting at anywhere near f16 creates really soft images. I was shooting with the 24-105mm Canon L lens. Great at f8, and f11, but shockingly soft at 100% using f16. Something to note for future shoots.

I think it's worth noting that there are a variety of sharpening modes these days, whereas there really used to be only one in previous years. 1. Capture sharpening can be done in camera, but IMO is actually best performed in Lightroom: Mask, Detail, Radius, Amount in that order, using the ALT ket to preview whilst at 100%. Assuming your images are practically spot-on in the first place, this can really bring them up to scratch for Alamy or anyone else for that matter. Older RAW images benefit from this too. http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1951754&seqNum=4 2. Print

Thanks John! Gives us a ball park figure to hope for! :-)

This thread seems to be missing the actual data: Just what is the CTR value that Alamy reckon is in the top 10%? If this isn't stated or clear, what's your best CTR is the past few months perhaps? (Purely on a need to know basis )

I think this is key to sales and interest in your collection. One ot two images of this and another of that seems to serve best. This is probably because picture editors eventually view your collection because of your style/subject area and might find the variety more appealing.

Wimbledon Common has similar byelaws. I agree with Spacecadet though. The fine was probably put on expenses, and anyway the fee for the story effectively makes it a win. Utterly ridiculous situation though: It's fine to swear and threaten someone, but tripod users are the truer evil. Makes our fair isle look progressively backward.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11452004/British-productivity-is-a-national-disgrace.html Can I just say that I think these images (by PSL images) are pretty fantastic! :=)

Personally, assuming you're selling RM, I don't think you absolutely need a MR unless it's going to be used in advertising. Making portraits for editorial might sway the position somewhat, but I'm no lawyer in that regard. I'm sure there are a few grey areas.

I would say that once you have "cracked" the algorithm (searching amongst your own images for prime keyword patterns should help there) then the most important thing would be to keep adding to your library. I've come to the conclusion that your oldest images are pushed to the back of results if you don't submit regularly. Ie: your RPI of fresh and archived material will be less if you don't keep adding. Sounds like a pyramid scheme of sorts.

Zero sales here too. I decided to improve the keywording of many of the images in my collection this month though, and having done this last year also I noticed that the CTR, zooms and sales all hit zero. Maybe all these images all get sent to the bottom of the results? Who knows.

Quality of photography versus your ability to fully comprehend the Alamy keyword gaming system is another thing. Alamy should give more information in this regard so that the quality of photography is what defines it's collection. As it is, I often wonder if I'm better served spending more time on their algorithms than my output! Ridiculous maybe, but more often than not true.