Phil Robinson

Thanks for picking mine. I think any cat over 6kg should be given a vote as well.

I too was very impressed with Lynn's 55. My best is 12, with an 11, a few 10s and quite a lot of 9s.

I agree. I've never been in favour of it. I have never been one of those people who expects the whole world to speak English, but in this case sticking to the English language would, I think, loose fewer sales than the mayhem caused by machine mistranslation. I also include foreign place names in keywords - Venezia, Praha, Milano - and I know they have been used in searches. I think it's impractical to do it for all potential search terms. People who contributed to the short-lived Photoshelter library will remember the time-consuming and arduous process of keywording which included, for e

Machine / computer translation from English for single words is impossible. Imagine you have 'tip' as one of your keywords. How can a computer know how to translate it? Is it the point of something, a rubbish dump, a piece of good advice, the end of a snooker cue, money left for a waiter? Those meanings all have completely different words in German (and other languages). If you do a search for "Trinkgeld" on the German site (a 'tip' left for a waiter, a gratuity) you get all the same results as if you'd searched for 'tip' - pointy pencils, icebergs, orange-tip butterflies, white-tipped shark

Best month since June 2012 (when the commission was less) ...and one this morning, so a good start to May.

It's an interesting article but I'm not sure it's aimed at Alamy contributors. 'Editing' can be done for an exhibition, a book, a National Geographic article, an agency with its own editors - or Alamy. Each one is different. When I select work for my £80 Thames and Hudson retrospective volume, I certainly won't be choosing pictures of seashells, chocolate bars, traffic signs, lumps of rock, logs on a train, fake pound coins, computer screen shots, a half-eaten meal, a bowl of lemons, or indeed anything else I've sold on Alamy recently.

Mixed messages for the Getty photographer who took the golf cart

  I know this might sound sarcastic but it is meant seriously. Do you need you eyes tested? My last QC failure came the week before I got my first reading glasses - I haven't had one since. (what on earth is nbsp???)

I've just discovered that the "&" symbol IS picked up by the search engine. Fish and chips - 6,813 Fish chips - 6,813 Fish & chips - 1,116

TWO-HEADED DOG!!

Of course it may simply be that you are the only Alamy photographer who can afford tea at the Ritz... ("Sainsburys interior" = 183 results)

Is this similar? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Durst-Copy-Camera-Attachment-Model-92617-Fits-F30-M-800-New-In-Package-LQQK-NOS-/121322865567?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c3f68039f

Submissions going back to the 17th went through today for me.

Just tick the 'digitally altered' box.

Ditto! A distributor, unfortunately, so a painful amount of commission gone, but welcome back to the sales team after their Easter holiday.

I've used Blurb too - not for a while as the prices seem to have rocketed. I seem to remember having one sale but I doubt I'll ever reach the payout limit. I used to do prints of my favourite images to keep and found doing a Blurb book worked out cheaper. So, I have quite a nice small library of my work but I wouldn't call it a good business move. Considering the price of much bigger books in the shops full of Cartier-Bresson classics, I can't see people paying Blurb prices very often.

As well as tax deductible, much of it is now also half-price. Off to Sainsbury's

and today I've had two emails from Alamy with questions from potential clients about my images. Looking hopeful.

I thought I'd try and post something positive early on to see if anyone else joined in. Still going quite well, including a tennis pic from last year, so I've almost paid for the train fare to Eastbourne. Another thing I've noticed is that most of my recent sales are from quite new material - stuff taken in the last year or so, whereas in the past I did best from older reliable bestsellers. John and Martin seem to be finding the opposite.

"bollards.co.uk" - don't you just love the internet!

I don't think that the BHZ game counts, no. I don't think it 'counts' for anything, as such. It is a useful, if rather vague, indicator of where you stand. You are, after all, only comparing yourself to others who join in the game. I'm not sure the Chucks and the Jeffs play along. It's especially useful to those with more than one pseudo. I use several and comparing their respective performances can be very enlightening (page one / p4 / p5 / p16)

There are some short words that the Alamy search engine doesn't pick up on, and I can sort of see why, but it is producing some unfortunate results / lack of results for some customer searches. In the last week or so there have been searches for "you are here city map" and "You Tube logo". Fairly easy in both cases to see what they wanted. Unfortunately, the search engine doesn't seem to register "you". Or "are". Or, indeed, "here". The search brings up 14,630 images - the same as just "city map" and I had to go through five pages before I found what I think they were looking for.

Not sure from a 'legal' point of view, but as the people who license the images might do their own Photoshopping, they could potentially end up with something very like your new version, so I would avoid it.

Not sure if this is abstract or minimalist. Or neither. Or possibly both. (Barcelona) Guess (not difficult)

After several disappointing months I have noticed three things in the first part of this month. 1 - More sales 2 - All at 50% so far, no distributors 3 - Much healthier average price I know my experience is statistically meaningless in the big Alamy pond, but it is very encouraging. Anyone else had a good start to the new financial year?