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Everything posted by CM photo
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Not distributor, but affiliate. 13% even though is says 10% on the website. Let's all sell our cameras and become affiliates. Money for old rope.
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Mis Labelled Images - report or let owner know?
CM photo replied to John J Bloomfield's question in Community support: ask the forum
If you're concerned about mis-captioned images, don't even think about going through natural history photos. On some pages up to half are incorrectly identified, sometimes honest mistakes and sometimes, I suspect, to generate more "hits". This is a massive problem for Alamy, caused by allowing contributors to do their own captions and keywords and reflects on everybody. Unless it affects me directly, I no longer contact member services about this as I have better things to do with my time than police other peoples images. -
Questions from a newbie.
CM photo replied to Gerry Bishop's topic in Stock photography discussion and contributor experience
You have nice stuff and I'm sure it will sell over time. Natural history is a tough area with lots of competition so it will be important to get your images seen - i.e. on the first few pages of searches. Check this by doing some searches of your own, and check in Alamy Measures, to see if tweaking your keywords helps to improve your ranking. Forget visibility and don't be tempted to use spurious keywords just to change the colour from orange to green; it won't help. There's always been a trade-off between shooting obscure subjects (not much demand but not much competition eithe -
Apostrophe displaying incorrectly
CM photo replied to sb photos's topic in Alamy Quality Control and technical talk
Deleted (mis-understood!) -
In fact, "agouti" is often used as a colour, in cats, rats, mice, guinea pigs, etc. It refers to a flecked mixture of black and brown hairs (like an Agouti).
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It all looks pretty straightforward to me - if you have the same image with another agency then it is not exclusive, otherwise, it is. I noticed a change in the rates for "affiliate sales" whatever they are. Can we opt out - I prefer my fees to be divided between the photographer and the agency, not some other hanger-on. Or perhaps I've misinterpreted something. Chris
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Alamy on an iPad Pro?
CM photo replied to Ed Rooney's topic in Alamy Quality Control and technical talk
We had the same email message a few days ago and, in one of those coincidences you can do without, the hard drive crashed the following day, so it's definitely worth following up. In our case we managed to get the laptop to boot after three attempts, contacted Apple support, who were brilliant, and have made an appointment with the Apple store in Cardiff. We were told it would take about one hour to replace the faulty part(s) but that data may be lost. We have backed up to iCloud and will also make a copy on a portable drive with TimeMachine. The take-home message being: if you -
Product Shots-Point of focus
CM photo replied to DarkSlide's topic in Alamy Quality Control and technical talk
Or, indeed, use a Canon tilt and shift 90mm lens, which is "almost" a macro (it goes to about one-third life size). But don't expect to earn enough to pay for it anytime soon! Personally, I'd go for selective DoF, or use a small number of stacks. Helicon Focus is an alternative to Photoshop stacking. Chris -
Thanks, Kevin. The reason I asked was that I have placed PU restrictions on some of my images but I am still getting the odd distributor sale (I am only signed up for a handful of territories). I think I need to go through my distributor sales to see if any of them involve images for which I have restrictions, but it's unlikely to be conclusive. And, as you point out, the word "may" will cloud the issue still more.
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While we're on this subject, did anyone come to a firm conclusion over the link between personal use and distribution? There were rumours that preventing personal use would also prevent distribution. Is this correct? And, if so, does this apply to just those images that have personal use prevented or is it "one out, all out"? I don't remember seeing any conclusive statements from Alamy on this - perhaps I've missed something?
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John Obviously, I don't know if the direct sales come as a result of opting out. However, I do get sales from parts of the world where I would normally expect them through a distributor (based on the time when I was opted in). I understand that buyers might prefer to go through local distributors, and I'm sure I lose some sales because of this. My point is that the enhanced fees obtained from forcing them to buy direct, might compensate - at least to some extent - for those lost. It depends what you shoot, obviously, but if you have images they need then there should be at least some
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That, of course, is assuming that foreign buyers don't go straight to Alamy if they can't buy through a distributor. After all, that's the whole point of the "world wide" web, isn't it? I have had direct sales from overseas that have avoided the distributor system because I have been opted out. Obviously, there's no way of knowing how many distributor sales I've missed out on but at least I do get a reasonable share on the odd(?) ones that get sold. Does the higher fee make up for the ones I miss? I don't know. My strategy is to allow distribution for certain countries where I have had g
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Ikea LADDA batteries
CM photo replied to MichaelG's topic in Alamy Quality Control and technical talk
I've gone over to Energizer rechargables, which got the highest rating in a recent Which? survey. But as Bryan pointed out, it's hard to know if you've made the right decision until they've been in use for a while. So far so good though. I've been concerned for a long time about disposing of spent batteries, especially in countries where there is less awareness of the hazards involved. -
Images sold throuigh Art.com
CM photo replied to Wawa's topic in Stock photography discussion and contributor experience
Apparently not. I still get a few distributor sales (I'm only signed up for a handful of countries) even though a proportion of my images are opted out of personal use. -
"Boletus Erythropus" Strictly speaking, Boletes erythropus, the specific name always having a lower case initial letter. Biological convention (often not followed!). Chris
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Correct
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super tags & tagging
CM photo replied to JBross's topic in Stock photography discussion and contributor experience
And that's because "England" and "English" are in the keywords (as are "Derbyshire" and "Buxton")?????- 12 replies
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Alamy Affiliate sale
CM photo replied to John Richmond's topic in Stock photography discussion and contributor experience
The 38.5% figure is due to the 3% that goes to Rakuten, which is taken from the Alamy/photographer's slice of the pie. Alamy and the photographer get 38.5% each. -
3 min keywording per photo - too long?
CM photo replied to Pietrach's topic in Alamy Quality Control and technical talk
This is my approach, too. I look on the keywording as research, which adds to the enjoyment of taking the photos; time spent reading around the subject is never wasted, in my opinion. Looking at the appalling keyword lists that accompany some photos, especially those from certain agencies, I can see why people who keyword sparingly but accurately probably get better returns. Chris- 42 replies
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Yes, I agree. I'm a big fan of LR and having been using it since version 1 - I just thought Bridge might bring something new to my workflow. Putting together a nested series of keywords in LR when you already have thousands of individual keywords listed is not a viable option; dragging, say "wolf" up the list to "animals" takes forever - and then you have to do it all again with "zebra"! Life's too short. Chris