Simon

I'd thought I'd share this story with you all. I took several pictures of the full moon coming up behind St Michaels Mount in Cornwall last year. This one I uploaded as was, and then with a crop as I thought the ship spoiled the picture. As well as putting out with Alamy live news I also sometimes tweet my pics and sell to the local papers. The WMN put the picture on the whole of the front page including the ship. Shortly afterwards I had people emailing me asking to buy prints - all were related to the boat in some way, either the owners, crew etc.

Hi Mark, Thats a really good ratio, so well done .. I'd be intrigued to know what sells the best for you having had a quick scan through your images. regards Simon

Hi - did a quick search on the forums for this, but nothing should up recently so here goes. Do you have any recommendations on an IOS app for model releases, also any comments on their suitability vs a piece of paper. I've googled and found a few, but just wondered what the "panel" thought ? regards SImon

Drop me an email info at cornwall-ideas.co.uk

Hi Mark, I can put you in touch with one of our suppliers. Every so often they have an absolute bargain on new Dell desktops with a very high spec. I got an I7, 32gb ram, 512gb SSD hard drive ( you could fit another internal drive, or use a NAS for storage ). Way lower in price than your budget. ON their stock list at the moment they have an i7, 16gb ( which you could add to ) 256gb SSD drive + a 1Tb hard drive and a 2Gb graphics card ( although not sure which one ). 3 year on-site warranty for < £700 . Alternatively go have a look at Dell factory products, again they quite often have more ram in as standard and less price than if you configured one up as usual.

What I need right now is the weather to go downhill ..grey skies, no wind, mild temperatures and flat sea doesn't work for dramatic news pix.

For those of us not in the know, what's the "American POD" site ? Simon

Hi I actually got the Dell original one from Amazon. Search for Dell 65 W USB-C Auto Air Adapter

Hi All, In terms of why his picture sold rather than mine ( I actually did get one online use in the Telegraph ), then I would agree that his photograph had better light, he'd caught the sun better than me. Also Matt is a very experienced photographer, and from my brief conversations with him a very nice and friendly guy - he's been doing this a lot longer than me, so I can only learn from his work. Lastly ( taking into account the above ) it's very difficult for me to sell against Getty and PA because my understanding is - and I'm open to correction - is that they have deals with most of the papers where they pay a fixed fee to receive news pictures over the year, rather than having to pay per picture like they would with Alamy. I've done quite a few events over the years where it's just been me, PA and Getty and their pictures usually beat mine into the papers, often with very similar shots. Down the line I've made the odd stock sale, but not the news sale. I should just stick to weather really, I make more sales from a 10km radius of my house than all the events added together, and we do get some decent weather in Cornwall at both ends of the spectrum.

When I first started in photography, not that long ago, I soon realised the limitations of my very cheap lenses and entry level camera, so little by little I invested in better kit. I still want to move up a level but what I've got can produce some pretty good quality pictures now for the shots that need it, and I'm investing only when the profits justify it. Anyhow, I was standing on a windswept cornish coast a few weeks ago photographing the portrait in the sand that was being done to commemorate WW1 casualties on Armistice day, when up comes and stands next to me a very well known Getty photographer who'd driven around 200 miles for the shoot. Needless to say he sold more pictures than me, in fact one of his made the front page of the Telegraph. I emailed him, congratulating him on his sale and saying I knew I was doomed from the moment I saw him. He replied back, "we're all doomed" the picture that made the front page was done on his Iphone.

I've got a small Dell 2-1 computer for my "field" uploads. 12" screen. i7 processor. 16gb ram. 256gb SSD. High resolution 2560 touch screen. It fits nicely into my camera bag if needed, works fine with lightroom. Biggest drawback is the lack of SD slot as it only has USB-C connector, however an adapter was around £7 from Amazon. Also got a 12v car to USB-C power adapter, so I don't have to worry about the charge running out on it. I did have a lower spec one before with a standard screen resolution, which I really struggled with for editing as the resolution / colour just wasnt good enough, so I would say get something with a decent resolution display. SSD disk is essential nowadays. This retailed for > £1000 originally, but being in the IT trade one of our suppliers has some occasional stock clearance offers, so I got this for £400 with a 3 year on-site warranty !!

HI Keith, I wish it was mine, mine were from the same spot. I had Matt Cardy from Getty standing next to me, he came all the way down from Somerset to Cornwall just to get the pictures. Whereas I had a 15 minute drive.

I did read some time ago that some downloads of Filezilla had some potential malware in it. I changed to Cyberduck. Virustotal is a good site to go and check any potential download before you install it, as it submits to multiple engines.

Hi Guys So .. is the consensus that if an image sent to live news is full size ( eg > 5000px ) then some news desks will not use it based on the size rather than the content ? I regularly send in live news images which don't sell as news, but sell from stock down the line. Also I get live news images taken up reasonably regularly ( but not as much as others here ). regards Simon