Joseph Clemson

Much may depend on how old your present machine is. When mine reached the same kind of point as yours I'd had it eight years and it wasn't new then. I improved it through more RAM and HDD space, but the most impact was seen by upgrading the graphcs card. I've always tried to get by on the minimum spec (and price) I can manage. When my computer eventually gave up the ghost altogether, I went to a local dealer who specialises in buying and refurbishing redundant office computers from large companies. I was amazed to find that, for some years, many computers now come in cases no larger than an external hard drive! I paid £250 for a refurbished base unit of a traditional type case, complete with a mere 250Gb system drive. It blew away my old system like a new Porsche against my trusty 12 yr old Ford Monedo. I transferred my existing graphics card (having alreay made sure it would fit in the case and motherboard) and I've not looked back since. My bulk data storage is on a Synology NAS network attached drive, so the limited internal HDD space was not a big problem. The computer I bought was designed for office work, not graphics, but it is still very capable at my level when I am using Lightroom v.7 (and a very old version of Photoshop). I think I would suggest that before you spend money on your existing machine, have a look what is available in the rufurbished or even new marketplace. Your software demands may well be greater than mine if you are using up-to-date versions of Lightroom etc, but if you are using older programmes, you may find them more forgiving of older hardware.

Ah. Mine must be delayed in hyerspace. I look forward to receiving it.

Eh? What? Where am I? What just happened to the Alamy fourm? It was impossible to sign in for over a week, but it has suddenly started working again. No indication or explanation from Alamy, or anyone else that I have seen Have I been in a loop in a time vortext? Did everybody else find another place to meeet and pontificate and not tell me? What has been happening?

There is a way. Search something/anything - doesn't matter what. Then, in Filters you will find search by contributor (at the bottom). Enter the relevant namr and pres enter to search again Then remove the search term from the search box and pres enter to search yet again. Bingo - you can see all the contributor portfolio.

I would support the replies already made. In addition, I would suggest you need to be more focussed and specific with your captions. The caption plays a major role in what turns up in search results, not just the keywords. In addition, Alamy is primarily an editorial library, which means many buyers are looking for something very specific. A picture captioned 'Lively street in the city centre in a fresh summer morning' is not likely to be found by potential buyers. Which street? Which city? Does it convey 'freshness;'? Your captioning is too generic, it's not productive, given the way Alamy works. You will have benefitted in your early year by Alamy giving you a mid-table ranking in searches. Depending on how your images perform in subsequent searches - how often they are zoomed or sold - your search ranking will go up or down. Have a look for discussions on CTR (click through rate). Your own CTR needs to be be at least the Alamy average, ideally much higher. One of the problems with having large quantities of irrelevant or periperhal keywords in an image is that the image turns up in searches where it's not relevant and is ignored by the potential buyer. As a result, CTR decreases a little and, in time, buyers stop seeing your images in the first results of any search. It may be that you are just experiencing a blip in sales, and this happens to us all from time to time. However, do what is in your power to make your portfolio visible to the right potential buyers at the right time in order to reduce the number and length of such blips. When I had a similar problem some years ago, I created myself a new psudonym. I then steeled myself to put in that pseudonym only images which were tightly captioned and keyworded, sometimes with less than twenty keywords. Now it contains a small proportion of my portfolio but has a CTR well above Alamy average. It produces around 50% of my sales from 10% of my portfolio. At Alamy, taking the photo is only a tiny part of what it takes to be a stock photographer.

You do not pay anything upfront but Alamy will take a commission from any sales you make. Initially you will be on a Gold contract and Alamy's cut is 60% of each sale (with some exceptions where they and their distributors take even more than that). From July 1st each year, a new Revenue Year starts and, unless you have made sales to the value of $250 in the year to that date, Alamy's cut jumps to 80% as you are moved to a Silver contract. You can get back to Gold if you gross $250 of sales within the revenue year. It is unlikely, unless you create an exceptional portfolio, that you will quickly get to $250 per annum sales, through it is not impossible. You will benefit from immersing yourself in the large amounts of inforamation available from Alamy, such as Become a Contributor and then browse this forum to get answers to the questions you will inevitably ask - and some questions that you don't yet know that you need to ask. You would also be wise to study carefully the Contributor Contract, just so you know what you are committing to and the joys, sorrows and responsibilites which come with being a contributor.

On the plus side, it says that at least Alamy haven't given up on selling video. On the down side, this move doesn't seem to bring any closer the possibility of direct video submission to Alamy. Fourteen million videos available from Deposit photos appears to be the entirity of their video library, compared with a subset of the videos from Pond5 which were made available when that deal was done. As far as I know, Alamy still sell only a subset of the Pond5 library. To the best of my knowledge, I've not sold any Pond5 video through Alamy. As I don't contribute to Depositphotos, I won't be selling any through that channel either.

This weekend I very much enjoyed the stage show version of the 1990s sitcom 'Drop the Dead Donkey'. A bonus was to find an Alamy usage in the printed programme: the former cast member, Hayden Gwynne, who died in October 2023. 2GJ3C0C, Matt Crossick

I'm not sure why you would want to make such modifications to the image. The presence of the logo and the distinctive colour scheme of the building precludes selling the image for commercial use. In which case the image needs to be sold for editorial, or possibly, personal use. Editorial images don't usually benefit from extensive editing to remove items such as you describe. Indeed, editorial images ought not to be significantly modified lest the accuracy of depiction is impacted and starts to verge on being misleading. In the case you describle above it's probably not a big issue but, even though I'm not a Pro photo-journalist, I've always understood that editorial images shouldn't be substantially modified.

Broadly speaking, the question boils down to whether your images are going to be used for commercial purposes (example, advertising) or editorial (newspaper, magazine etc). In most cases no release is required for editorial use. You, as the contributor, mark each image as Martin describes and it is then up to whoever licences your image to use it appropriately. If the 'no releases' tickbox isn't checked, the image will be shown as available for commercial use. That may not matter as a savvy, professional buyer will know what is required of them in terms of obtaining appropriate releases or not for their particular requirements. However, a more casual buyer may simply take the apparent availability of an image for commercial use as a go-ahead for use in an promotional leaflet, for example, leaving the door open for a possible kickback from the property owner. The same goes for images containing people and whether there are signed releases for them. If the relevant 'contains people' and 'have signed releases' boxes aren't ticked then the image will be shown as being available for commercial use and a naive purchaser may blithely use it as such. This aspect has even more potential for aggravation as individuals depicted may complain bitterly if their likeness is portrayed in a way they consider detrimental to themselves. Like Martin, I tick the 'no releases' boxes for both property and people on nearly every image I produce. I also tick the 'sell editorial only' box for good measure. And for belt and braces, I add an 'editorial use only' disclaimer paragraph in the additional info section of the photo description. I can't actually prevent a purchaser using one of my images inappropriately, but, my goodness, they will not be able to claim that they didn't know they couldn't! I'm sure being so explicit about my images being editorial only hurts my sales, but I'd rather that than contemplate even the remote possibility of a legal kickback somewhere down the road. What sometimes worries me is that all these important aspects of the image description are in the 'Optional' tab in the Alamy image manager. How these things may be regarded as optional is a mystery to me. Yet, even some seasoned contributors say they ignore the Optional tab. Oh well. Unlike some of the microstock sites who check photos for possible intellectual infringements etc. and carry responsibility for such infringements themselves, at Alamy pretty well all the responsibility and all the risk is carried by the contributor. I, for one, feel that weight on my shoulder every time I submit an image.

Since contributors are required to own the copyright to images we submit, unless we have permission from the copyright owner or there is no copyright on the image, I'm not sure how TV screen grabs might be submitted at all, let alone as exclusive. Am I mistaken in this interpretation? I know there are many movie stills on Alamy, but I've tended to assume they have been submitted by people or bodies who have authorisation to do so.

Sounds like very demanding work to me and I can't see where it says how much it pays. Whether the photographer could also shoot stock would depend on the nature of the contract and whether the employing company claims copyright of all photos taken because the photographer is a paid employee. It's all well outside my field of experience but I would want a lot more detail before I thought of applying.

Interesting you have the perception of The Times being too right wing. I've always thought it was politically balanced and centerist. If The Times is right wing what does that make The Telegraph? However, Guardian, Times or Telegraph are all preferable to the unregulated wilderness of social media as a source of news and opinion. I truly fear for my childrens' generation.

I subscribe to the print edition of The Times at a rather painful £67 per month. My days of accessing an introductory offer are long gone. The cost is painful but I do want to support and access good quality journalism, which seems to be the exception rather than the rule in a free-for-all social media world. I also want to have the printed paper in my hand. I've found that I read more extensively and thoroughly of the printed version than I do of the on-line version, where it's all to easy to skip unpromising item headlines. In the printed version one's eye scans and takes in items which might otherwise be missed. One aspect I do like about the online version of The Times is their excellent daily News in Pictures feature which shows off the photographer's art. I enjoy seeing photos printed in the printed version, but there are so many more and so vividly displayed in the on-line edition. Alamy photographers feature often in this section, as is so well documented in this forum on most days by Bryan. I also support my local newspaper, the Bolton (Evening) News by subscribing to the digital version. It's not perfect but it provides a more stable access to local news than the oft wild ramblings, rantings and outright disinformation of Social Media. I rarely, if ever, go out searching for stock photo opportunities nowadays but the traditional press has been a strong source of inspiration and guidance in times past. Long may it continue, even facing the teeth of the gale of online sources.

Just check deep in the CF slot in the camera that none of the pins have got bent or broken. I've seen a couple of cameras with CF card slots fail in this way after the card was removed and replaced.