Phil Robinson

31 sales, average 1/day. That's more than normal but smallish amounts mostly resulting in an average month.

I probably spend too much time as a virtual window cleaner and remover of chewing gum.

I may be wrong, but I don't think that sales are included in your CTR. They do affect your rank, but I think CTR (click through rate) is purely the ratio of views against zooms. Are you getting more views as well as more zooms?

Thanks for asking the question. I'd never bothered to work it out. It turns out that outdoor ('travel') shots are mostly vertical (just over half) but studio shots are mostly horizontal (c70%) I am taking even more vertical outdoor shots now since I bought battery packs with vertical shutter release buttons. (see photo, left!) Of my last 60 sales, 39 here horizontal, 3 square and 18 vertical.

Phil - Was it one of these? Country: Worldwide Usage: Editorial Media: Textbook - print and e-book Print run: Unlimited Placement: Inside Image Size: 2 page spread Start: 01 January 2014 End: 01 January 2039 All terms and rights granted as per the Alamy Preferred Vendor Agreement dated 26th January 2010 prevail. Flat rate per image, license period 20 years. $180 I had one also today, my second of these this month which hopefully demonstrates that the $180 textbook sales which seemed to have disappeared a few months ago are back... Kumar Sriskandan It did look very much like that - word for word, in fact.

...and a three-figure sale reported on a bank holiday Monday morning! That's a first (for me).

8 for me this week $11.70 (gross). Not much, but they were of a lemon, a lime and some grapes, so that covers the cost of the fruit, and I got to eat free grapes for once.

After a very bad start - a 3 figure refund - this has been a pretty good month, Not as good as last month yet but still a few days left, fingers crossed......

If a researcher does a search under just the name of the country, they are clearly looking for a wide range of subjects relevant to that country - it would be a shame if yours didn't show up. If they are doing a narrower search, they will add other words - town, temple etc. I always put the country in essential, UNLESS it really isn't relevant or there are other keywords I think are more important. If there's room, I include it. Of course, that can depend on the country - 'Slovak Republic' uses up more space than 'India'

I don't have online backup, but I do have hard drives at my parents' house, where I regularly go to get a decent meal and copy everything I have done since the last visit. The chances of both premises being burgled / destroyed by fire on the same day are, I hope, pretty slim. I have a possibly unjustified distrust of storing anything in 'the cloud' - fueled by the number of sites that have been hacked for personal details.

I agree. If you check through the results they are almost all, with the exception of "travel and France", searches for travelling-related subects (travel aganet; travel journal; travel trains; travel documents; travel medicine......) rather than just searches for places. The results seems to vindicate the restriction of the use to images relating to the act of travelling rather than world destinations.

+1 I have never seen the point. 'Travel' could apply to any picture taken of any place, because unless you live there, you have to travel to see it. I use it for pictures of transport, people who are clearly traveling, but wonder if there's any point with over 5 million images using the same keyword. Having said that, I've just checked 'customer search activity' and it does get used, in conjunction with other words. (9 searches for just 'travel' got 39,240 views and 56 zooms!) I occasionally use 'tourism' for images including obvious tourists (groups with cameras, getting out of a coach, excursion ticket kiosks etc) but not for general travel images.

I agree. I am confident it would pass QC, but I would probably blur the mirror image a bit more, and spot off the white marks on the mirror. And maybe that telegraph pole (?) on the right.....

I've had a couple of interesting ones this month: 'Print/e-book/web/all manner of media/custom/derivative works/international student version/life of the product family edition.' and 'book, talking book, cheap pulp novel, illustrated book, encyclopaedia, travel guide, map, atlas, content part, back cover' "All manner of media"? "Cheap pulp novel / talking book / encyclopedia"? What does the back cover of a talking book look like?

True, but neither should we pretend to be if we aren't. Incorrectly captioned nature photos on Alamy are very common. I've even seen hoverflies captioned as wasps, moths as butterflies. Accurate captions are very important for all images, but whereas it is usually possible to identify a church or statue with a bit of research or a guidebook, nature can be much, much harder, even for a specialist. Many species of insect can only be identified for certain with a dead specimen and a microscope. An incomplete caption, though not much use to many potential customers, is always preferable to a wrong one. If I can't be sure of a species I will either keep the caption simply to 'fungus', 'shieldbug' etc or, more likely, let it languish in my 'unidentified' folder, unless it has particular artistic merit. There are plenty specialist libraries out there who are experts in their fields and have a reputation for reliability. The Alamyrank system goes some way to sorting out bad keywording - I'm not sure it is so effective with bad captions.

Panic over - found the problem. It seems the cache of thumbnails was corrupted somehow. I cleaned them all out and things seem to have gone back to normal. It seems to be a common problem, judging from the communication in forums on the web.

Since a very brief power cut this morning when the computer went off, I have had a couple of problems. The most serious is that I cannot see files as thumbnails in folders. Internet images work fine, as do images opened in Photoshop but I can only get icons for images (JPEG NEX and TIFF) in Widows Explorer. I'm guessing there is a Windows Image Viewer or somesuch that has been corrupted. Can anyone help? Thanks in advance Phil (edit) I have just opened a couple of folders where the images were visible - then disappeared one by one. I have checked folder view options.

What I like to shoot - travel. The trouble is, one man's travel is another photographer's local. What makes money - things I photograph on my kitchen table. I have recently given up the day job and gone full-time with the photography. I will not be travelling anywhere any time soon. I may be investing in a new kitchen table.

I hope nobody gets the impression that if they aren't in the newspaper scheme they won't get any newspaper sales. I have never joined but still sell to the papers. How the numbers and fees would differ if I did.........?

Perhaps they sell all their pictures in Japan.

Interiors / stained glass windows (better with diffused light) / statues / narrow streets which can be impossibly contrasty when half in the sun / details. Statues and stonework can be a nightmare to do in direct sun due to excess contrast. I would, however, agree that a certain amount of time spent in pub can only be a good thing.

Was it a "partial fail" -- i.e. processing errors only -- or the real thing? Alamy does say "up to" 28 working days, but I can't remember receiving a "failed QC" notification in less than a month. No, that was a total fail for interpolation artifacts. It was the first for a long time and I haven't had one since so I think the 'up to 28 days' can indeed be flexible.

My only experience of the China Daily is finding numerous photos of mine that they have reused from the Daily Telegraph. You should be honoured that they are offering to pay anything!

The last fail I had came through in 2 days. I don't think there is a standard 30 days for everyone. That was quite a while ago - maybe things have changed since then.

I've been submitting a series of repeated, symmetrical patterns made from duplicating images of various things - rocks, butterfly wings, seashells... I think they would make great wrapping paper - anyone got any other ideas or any keywords I might not have thought of? Any thought most welcome. Thanks