Phil Robinson

The total on your main page won't have updated yet but if you click on Account Balance underneath you should see the refund.

Mine has now been refunded - not on the contributor page (yet) but in the account details.

That's funny - I had never seen one before last month and I have seen two since - one in my flat! It's a Box Tree Moth (Cydalima perspectalis)

So you think it may be because I'm still using Window XP?

If you look at the https://www.alamy.com/terms/contributor-contract-changes.aspx for 2nd May 2002, there is the introduction of a new Image Storage Fee 10c "Storage Fee per Image per month, or part thereof, levied in advance of the first day of the month. This charge will come into effect on 1st March 20d3" that's PER MONTH in the definitions listed in the current contract it clearly says this applies to long-dead contract models only. Why it has suddenly reappeared is anyone's guess. Anyway, though we can be pretty confident it will be reversed on Monday it's l

I can understand mistakes being made in percentages charged or a sale being wrongly ascribed as distributor or affiliate, because those things are in the system, but I wasn't aware that 'image storage fees' would be something that could even exist. The term can't have just appeared from nowhere.

Good grief - yes that's appeared for me. In the contract: "Storage Fees"means the Alamy fee per item of Content per month, or part thereof, levied in advance every month. This fee came into effect on 1 March 2003. These fees apply to the discontinued Alamy Green and Red commission schedules only.

Don't think we'll hear anything today.

I do add all my sales manually to a spreadsheet - yes, it takes a long time, and I try to do it every couple of days to minimise the time at one sitting, but the results are very useful. I can instantly see the number of times each image has sold, the total fees earned, and as my file names represent the subject of the image, I can quite easily get a total earned by certain subject categories.

Why would anyone caption an image of one man taking one nap outside one house with those plural forms? A potential client searching for 'houses' wants a picture of more than one house. Likewise 'men'.

On my dashboard page, my Current Cleared Balance has suddenly gone from a half-decent figure to $-3,804. Is it just me?

Dragonfly wings found in the pond in the garden. They have now sold twice. (I still have them somewhere....)

Don't worry about turning everything green. For most images that requires adding tags that really aren't relevant. If you start thinking of adding more keywords just to get to green, stop. Its about "discoverability" but they way the Alamy rankings work, you get penalised if your images get "discovered" by people who don't want to see them. Never add keywords just to make up the numbers. I have 45,000 images on here - about 2,000 are green. I'm happy with that.

I looked at the 610 but there seems to be very little difference - half a frame per second speed. I've used two D600s for ages and have never had any problems with oil on the sensor or anything else.

I don't think a good FX image is really any better than a good DX image. Any modern DSLR can produce excellent files - the difference is that good files are easier to produce with an FX camera. More potential quality, more room for error, basically a higher success rate.