Harry Harrison

Yes, of course, thanks, wasn't thinking it through. Might try it in that case.

Given that meanderingemu's pictures went up OK it's hard to think what this other variable might be since presumably yours don't have the Photosphere xmp data, don't show significant distortion or stitching errors and are 'Equirectangular'. Somehow I've managed to be given 5 star upload status so I'm reluctant to take any risks of having images rejected even by an error so hopefully you'll hear back from Alamy as to what was causing your initial rejection.

It's just possible that the likelihood of your (our) pictures being used is affected by the fact that you haven't been uploading. No-one knows for sure but it could be one of the factors that affects the position of your pictures in the search results. I think I've noticed it for myself but it could just be paranoia. I certainly haven't always followed the advice but from looking at this forum I think the best course is to keep on uploading regularly, even small amounts, and to keep refining and improving the keywords and captions of your existing images.

It's a testament to their quality for sure, don't know how that Sony crept in. Weightlessness would be a big advantage with the D5.

Not much wildlife in space hopefully but Nikon seem to have found favour on the International Space Station: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cameras_on_ISS

Yes, that would be a huge obstacle for me as well, I suppose you could tape it over.

Excellent, thanks, just the ticket.

Don't be discouraged! That course seems to cover all the right areas and if done well should give you a very good grounding, not too expensive either, some people charge that for 'portfolio reviews'. I can understand that you need a suitable camera to make full use of the course though I'm still not sure that fixed lens is the way to go. I mentioned Micro 4/3 because the cameras and lenses are smaller and lighter than their APS-C equivalents and you wouldn't have to try quite so hard to make sure the images get through QC as you might with the Sony RX-100. See the Alamy page for an idea of sensor sizes, the Sony has the 1" sensor: https://www.alamy.com/blog/alamys-rough-guide-to-digital-cameras I'm hoping that someone that knows and uses the Micro 4/3 system can recommend a camera and suitable macro zoom lens for you. If you don't mind buying secondhand then a camera and lens from a few years back will still be fine for Alamy. If you don't take the lens off then it becomes a fixed lens camera (!) until you accumulate the knowledge and skill to maybe get another lens or two. David Tipling, the illustrious bird photographer, uses Olympus Micro 4/3, at least he does now. https://davidtipling.com/

Well I'll start the ball rolling, I know the Sony RX100 range is excellent from what people say on here but be aware that in the main these are experienced professional photographers who know how to get the best out of it and avoid stretching the boundaries of what it is capable of. Couple that with the fact that wildlife and macro photography are both pretty demanding areas skill-wise and so it's going to be down to you to learn those skills with a camera system that is flexible enough to accommodate them. I think I might be looking at a Micro 4/3 camera system from Olympus or Panasonic, I've seen great wildlife pictures taken with them, but APS-C 'crop' sensor cameras would come a close second. A single lens that is good for long telephoto (bird close-ups?) and macro is asking quite a lot.

That's good to know, I was going to upload some 2:1 images so I'll do the same, might be good to email them again with your findings if you haven't already.

No change for me, perhaps you could give a bit more detail about operating system etc., and whether Chrome is up to date.

I imagine that you'll get some very informed and informative responses on this though high end Eizo monitors come in above your budget I think. BenQ have been producing monitors for the professional photographic market so are worth considering. I seriously think that you should budget for a calibration device though, whichever monitor you get. The X-Rite I1 Display Pro won't disappoint. I use a couple of Dell Ultrasharps which are pretty good if calibrated, probably very similar in quality to older non-Retina Imacs.

I don't think Alamy actually say what aspect ratio is required for an image to appear in the panoramic filter so I tried looking at the least 'panoramic' images in a general but wide-ranging search using that filter (UK landscapes I think), I came across one that was exactly 2:1 but none less than that so I suspect that is the threshold. However we can all upload images of any aspect ratio providing they are above 6MP so I don't think that can be associated with your problem. I've not uploaded any 360 degree images, or any panoramics come to that but I've just looked at the Alamy guidance page here: https://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/guidelines-for-submitting-images/ One of the criteria is that the images have to have an aspect ratio of exactly 2:1 so I wonder if you've fallen foul of some bug in their upload software. You'd think that it would look for 'Photosphere XMP metadata' first (whatever that is). Quote: 360-degree spherical panoramic images These images are usually several pictures stitched together to create a 360-degree, spherical image that is fixed around a central point. You can upload 360-degree images to Alamy, provided they fit the following criteria: The images must contain Photosphere XMP metadata. Projection type must be Equirectangular. The image must have an exact 2:1 aspect ratio, as it’s uniformly mapping 360° horizontally and 180° vertically. Maximum compressed file size of 200mb. The image must be free of stitching errors and have little optical distortion, with uniformity in luminosity and colours.

Thanks for the link, they do their videos very well. It's not so much about where the images are stored, more that it seems that Capture One doesn't work as well as a database, or digital asset management system, as Lightroom does, or that's what I've read anyway. The more images there are in a catalogue the more it slows down, Lightroom is I believe much better. Hard to tell if it would affect me though. Here in this official Capture One page the photographer says "When I was using Lightroom, I had every image I’ve shot since 2000 in a single catalog, but Capture One Pro does not work well with this many images in a single catalog, so it’s best to split images into multiple smaller catalogs." He then had to break his catalogue down into smaller separate catalogues by year in Lightroom in order to create the same separate smaller catalogues in Capture One. https://learn.captureone.com/blog-posts/get-your-lightroom-catalog-into-capture-one/ Also here on the DPReview forum someone got a reply from Capture One that ""We recommend keeping catalogs to under 35k images to keep loading times to a minimum. Previews are generated when images are imported, but additionally any adjustments and metadata to the files are logged to the cocatalogdb file, which can take considerable time as well." https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/60292314

I was impressed by the amount of resources also, however I currently have all my digital images, including scans, in the same catalogue because I find it convenient to select from any source for a particular application. I used to keep them separate but ultimately found it a nuisance switching between them, LR works brilliantly for that. However I gather that from their own video that C1 doesn't like many images in a single catalogue and isn't designed to be used like that. Not sure what the realistic maximum images in a single C! catalogue is before things start to fall apart.