Phil Robinson

But these WOULD be news.

Great Auk in West Cork

One I've just noticed - "Butterflies in Belarus". Ironically, there is a chance they actually are almost newsworthy, as they are Painted Lady butterflies that will have migrated from Africa, and that is a story every year. Shame, therefore, that there is no mention of migration in the caption - or even the species of butterfly. How do these get through???

I do sometimes, especially headshots of people if I have better ones available. I do often go back to files I sent as live news and put more effort into the processing to get better quality images for stock, if I think they are worth it - then delete the news ones.

Report it by all means but don't get your hopes up. I am a big supporter of Alamy but their Unauthorised Use department is consistently the most disappointing part of the business. Expect to get a message in a couple of weeks saying they sent an email but didn't get an answer so there is nothing more they can do.

Thanks for finding that - there's been a lot of interest in photos of my extensive collection of Interrail tickets this week.

That's most of them these days.....

I would totally agree.

I'd agree with that - to a certain extent. Experience shows that spending an hour or two in Downing Street on a Tuesday morning can be worthwhile, even if there are another six of the usual suspects (including Ian) there. Unfortunately, though live news sales can pay for all that standing around, stock sales of the same images (to newspapers for $6 a time) later bring in VERY little these days and shouldn't really be seen as a justification for being there. However, the vast majority of my income still comes from general stock and for me a morning in The Street is usually followed by an afternoon elsewhere in London, taking the sort of stock that brings in most of my sales. If I can get a shot of a cabinet minister that pays the train fare (and more, hopefully) I usually go home with a few dozen more shots that I add to the portfolio.

That's a good average!

Hi Ian - tempted not to try any 'advice' as I'm usually standing next to you trying to sell the same pictures.... Like you I now have a growing collection of the same people walking out of That door (though most of them won't be doing it any more since last week) - and tennis players from my annual trips to Eastbourne. I have been trying to edit them. A lot look VERY similar and, while they get used for live news occasionally, once they become stock I really don't think I need so many. I've been going through, person by person, picking the best ten or so and deleting the rest if they don't offer anything different. Hopefully that will mean the ones potential customers see first are likely to be better and more likely to be picked. At least, that's the plan. Some way to go yet.

.

Best month ever for for the number of sales - not so for amount earned but the best for a while, and well above average. I agree with the above about newspaper prices - appalling, if not live news.

and that one! You're doing a great job.

Thanks for finding that

One thing certainly worth doing is checking which of your images have been zoomed in Alamy Measures every day - and checking whether they are exclusive. Those have a slightly higher chance of selling and it's worth making sure they are exclusive before they get invoiced. I've had a few decent sales recently where the difference between 40 and 50% made the work worthwhile. I've also started adding a keyword code to those that aren't exclusive, so I don't to check them again.

Exactly my approach. Something that might not have been there on another day or five minutes earlier - pigeons, litter, (which you could pick up before taking the photo if you are very public-spirited) cigarette ends, people - can be edited out. Stuff that is always there - street furniture, littler bins, signposts - I leave. I have been known to remove bits lampposts and things creeping into the corner or edge of a frame that I could conceivably have avoided by changing my lens / position.

My favourite pic from the day. Newspaper, print, decent fee - don't know which one, if anyone saw it I'd be interested to know where it was.

I think this is about right. I know I have loads (thousands) of images that will never sell - the problem is knowing which ones they are. I know for a fact that if I had decided a year ago to cull 10% of my images, I would have got rid of some that have since sold. Culling similars is useful. I now have too many pics of some politicians and tennis players and I am trying to cut each individual to the best ten (maybe 15, possibly 20?) If I can't think of a reason why an image should be chosen rather than one one of the others, I will delete it. But I'm not doing it enough yet.

Thanks!

If only it were that simple. Most of the images I had licenced as NU for 91c had previously sold for two and three figure sums. They are not microfodder, they are the same editorial images I rely on for my income, being sold in bulk for nothing to people who should be charged 'proper' (whatever that means these days) fees. .

Me too. Originally NU was proposed as a way for people to use an image for a purpose that wasn't covered by the standard licenses - to put on a mug or a fridge magnet etc - and I was (reluctantly) OK with that, but it is now being used for sales that fit perfectly within existing licenses - use on a website with thousands of pages and millions of views is NOT 'novel use'.

Thanks for finding that - the sale came through today and I wondered who had used it.

Really glad this one sold - it's one of my recent favourites. Pity it made so little......

I understand that some system is necessary, but why can't somebody develop one that works? If getting through the system that requires us to recognise a traffic light or a fire hydrant, is it too much to expect the system itself to know what they look like? And it's difficult to know whether a collection of bricks and a bit of a window are part of a shopfront. Have a security feature, fine, but one that can at least do what it is asking us to do, and can be used on a mobile phone without use of a magnifying glass.