Phil Robinson

The submission in QC was there for about 10 minutes before passing. The one I've just uploaded went straight through.

After several submissions passing immediately, the one I have just sent is now 'in QC'. It looks like the policy has moved from checking one or two images each time to checking random submissions.

Sold these yesterday. I assumed they were for use on invites to the Labour Party Karaoke Night tomorrow evening but it turns out they were used by Fullfact.org The weird thing is that though the pics come up in Google searches on links to the articles, they are nowhere to be seen in the actual articles. But I got paid so I'm not too bothered.

Thanks for spotting that. I saw it had been zoomed - good to know I'll be getting my $4 soon...!

I don't do many food photos but I did sell this one once. What I still don't understand to this day is what made me decide to stop eating and take the photo at this point.....

Two shots and a bit of Photoshopping?

I am careful about which countries I upload - not British or US for example - and mark them all as editorial only, but I was wondering about Alamy's view of what constitutes a 'work of art'.

I have a lot of photos of stamps. Do they count as 'artworks'?

I did this years ago and it took AGES. Finally all that hard work has paid off and I got $7!

Putting your home address in the keywords is cheating!

Today equaled the number of sales I made last year - over a month to go. Money received isn't as high yet, but given the change in commission that's not surprising - not that far short and still hoping to beat last year's total.

I tried diversifying into video - which meant looking for a new agent. When I found one I discovered they sell short clips of music as well. So I bought a cheap manuscript composing software program, dusted off my O Level harmonising skills and started writing string quartets and piano duets. There's half an idea to link them with suitable video footage one day to make a complete package - if I ever write anything suitable. I do it at weekends mostly, so I don't feel like it's getting in the way of doing something that might actually make some money one day.

This month I've had more $$$ sales than I can remember for years. Normally the first half of the month is quieter for me and I always keep my fingers crossed that the floodgates will open in the last week. This month has been great so far and hopefully, when the newspapers report, it will get better. I hope I'm not sounding too smug or boastful - I just want to point out that these things go up and down and it's impossible to deduce a trend from a couple of months' sales.

In theory the ranking system does deal with this. I have always thought that the way the search engine decides which images are seen first is THE MOST IMPORTANT feature of the whole Alamy business. I'm not sure how this works now - it doesn't seem to be as straightforward as it used to be.

I recently bought three bars of chocolate - dark, milk and white - with the plan: Buy chocolate, photograph chocolate, eat chocolate. Somehow managed to get it in the wrong order and had to buy more chocolate.

Best start to the month ever - sorry. It goes up and down. The bigger and more varied the portfolio, the greater the chance of consistent sales. I've got quite a few on file and my income still goes up and down like a (not very enthusiastic) yoyo.

I got several today of that prime minister who will be resigning tomorrow (fingers crossed) You were missed - you had something better to do?

I had a book cover two days ago for a very healthy amount. I've had covers that left me with $20 before - this one was a nice $$$

Yes, that does make sense. Thanks. I think adding "better updated version available, see 2HK4NSV " as mentioned above is the best plan.

This has been interesting to read. I can't find anything in the contract about changing / deleting captions and tags once images are on sale. I do it rather a lot. Can anyone point me to the relevant info?

Get a cheap but good camera that gets you access to a professional system so you can upgrade easily. I'd recommend the Nikon D7000 / D7100. £200-300 secondhand and brilliant quality.

I'd say the downside is the $6000

I used to shoot RAW backed up with JPEGs on the second memory card. When doing live news I used the JPEGs but now I just do RAW for everything, news included. It's an extra 2 seconds to get the file open and if I need a bit of exposure or contrast adjustment I do that in RAW first before converting. I know time is of the essence in filing live news, but I'd rather have better quality images going through two minutes later. Most of my 'news' sales come later as stock anyway rather than next day newsprint and I like to spend more time getting better quality stock to replace the ones I did in a hurry on a laptop in a cafe in Westminster.

So, didn't Andy Murray do well yesterday........

Well this one's had a couple of sales recently - I quite like it.