Phil Robinson

I believe the estate of Elvis Presley tried to do the same thing with his image - I don't know how they got on.

I find most cameras and camera grips too small. My Nikon grips are covered with tennis-racket handle stuff - foam-backed rubber grips, cut to lengths and liberally applied. It looks a bit ridiculous but gives a much more solid grasp and is a lot more comfortable if you've got long fingers.

Age isn't, as yet, participating, though Alfonso has made his personal view clear that he thinks it's a good thing.

The statue is in a gallery in Florence and is presumably owned by someone. There's an interesting bit on Wikipedia (so it MUST be true) about a dispute of ownership between the City of Florence and the Ministry of Culture, but it will be somebody's property. So, for commercial use, which this clearly is, there would need to be permission. Interestingly, there is an identical copy of the original, outdoors in Piazza della Signoria - maybe rules regarding that one would be different?

Maybe we've ALL FAILED!

My least used equipment is also probably a monopod. However, last summer I did four days tennis photography and it was invaluable. In fact I did the first day without it and could barely move my arms afterwards. It will probably stay propped up in the corner until the tennis season now, but I'm glad it's there.

I bought a fishing tackle bag from Lidl last year for £20. Took the insides out, put in some cardboard dividers, it's got the most comfortable shoulder strap of any 'camera bag' I've owned and is the only one that can take a Nikon with a 170-500 zoom vertically. Good investment (and I got all the little plastic boxes that came with it for storing small things, not, in my case, fishing tackle). http://www.lidl.com.mt/cps/rde/SID-D391F162-95DAD370/www_lidl_mt/hs.xsl/Offers.htm?action=showDetail&id=2593

It helps with composition - some call it a viewfinder.

Nope. Submissions from 3rd to 7th still waiting. Always good to know I'm not the only one.

Aha! I've just had a 180 surge into my account. And it was an image that has sold twice before for 180, back in 2009 and 2010.

You can add restrictions to the use of your images on Alamy - however, I can see greetings cards and posters on the list, but not prints.

I agree too. I support the QC system and understand how and why it works the way it does, but I really can't see the benefit in delaying the notification of a fail. Perhaps it's to add to the suffering of the failed contributor, as an added incentive to get it right next time, but it has the same unfortunate effect on everyone else when there is a QC overload or a technical problem.

I don't know what percentage of images Alamy check in a submission. 5%? 20%? If it's about 10% (just a guess) that would mean a ten-fold increase in QC work, which would have a huge impact on costs / time / commission. I think this aspect of the way Alamy work is a huge part of their ethos and something that we accept when we sign up. If they did it otherwise, they wouldn't be Alamy. (Why does the Alamy spellchecker always underline 'Alamy? There, it did it again!)

Yes, having any sales with only 71 pics on file is quite an achievement. I really like your images. If you can keep producing that quality in the hundreds I'm quite sure your efforts will pay off.

How many were NOT of storms in Aberystwyth?

We could all try to guess how many sales we are going to make in March and see how close we are at the end of the month......?

Worst month since......last February. Has anyone else seen a pattern?

I'm actually in Canada (the other America). Hopefully, you won't be getting some of the current weather that is hitting eastern North America at the moment. Vancouver, where I live, is an exception to the rest of the country. We shovel rain instead of snow for most of the winter. Bamboo and other subtropical plants do quite well here as well. That's why I didn't say US weather - I would never be so insensitive. I bet a few stock photos of shoveling rain would do well (12 results, but none of them really relevant)

We tend to get your American weather over here about a week later, John. Lets hope it works with American sales as well.

When I submit stuff via the news feed I go back to the images a few days later - when it's no longer news - and alter the data accordingly. If necessary I put all the background information into the description field, or more usually delete it altogether if it has no meaning to the image as stock. If you do a search here for any tennis player you will find dozens of pictures of other players, because at the time the photo was taken they were in a match against the player you are searching for, and mentioned in the caption. For a hot news photo that is important information. As a stock image of the player pictured it is largely irrelevant, but might be of use in the description, as background. The fact is the caption is searchable, whatever you think about that, and if you don't want erroneous search results, hide the unwanted information in the description field.

What's the opposite of surge?

Have you tried 'Net revenue' to see if that's working? - you may find that you have so many sales it has overloaded the system.

If you click on the pseudo name, to the left, instead of the number, THEN on the number in the zooms column, you get more data - the number of zooms and 'total number of views'. It seems the number corresponds to the views, not the zooms. At least it has for me for the last few days.

Hmm - updated, sort of. The page says 7 zooms yesterday - when I click on the little blue seven I only get three images, zoomed once each. It seems Gremlins are at work.

No