Brian Yarvin

Maybe you should take a look at my work first, and maybe my keywording too.

Those famous photographers had to start somewhere, but stock isn't where they'd get that recognition.

It may or may not be wishful thinking. Stock photography has absolutely nothing to do with being recognized as a great photographer. Indeed, if Robert Frank was uploading his images to Alamy (I have no idea if he did or not), his fame and reputation would be of zero value here.

Bursts of sales followed by periods of inactivity are pretty normal. It's not a USA thing, it's just the way the stock photo industry goes. And don't confuse what people on these boards shoot with what Alamy is selling. There may be a bunch of photojournalists contributing here, but they don't represent the whole of what Alamy does. There is room for every conceivable specialty. (You have a specialty, right?) The most important thing you can learn from this board is to do the best job of keywording and captioning you can. Somebody is searching for what you've got, will

At Alamy, I keep mine half and half, just to make sure.

Ruth, it's been more than a decade since I've seen a difference.

Greetings from beautiful, downtown Lancaster, Pennsylvania!

Matt, I'm with Jill on this. My first impression is that there are too many similars. You don't need to have that many images from each shoot. This will drag your stats down and affect your placement in client searches.

There's one more important point. As in every other business, there's a relationship between price and quality here. The higher our image quality is, the more money we can command. And of course, the more respect the entire Alamy collection will have. That other agency didn't accept your phone images because they're kinder or more enlightened, they did so because they charge less and pay photographers less. As photographers, the only real way we can make Alamy better is to submit better photos. We need clients to look at our work and say "this costs more, but it's worth it!"

Yes of course. Without a solid list, I wouldn't know where to start.

Hi, if I am remembering this correctly, Alamy no longer has this feature.

Ian, while there are at least a few who do, it's been my experience that they aren't shooting editorial or travel content. In my experience, both do very poorly at the big micros, but still life and concepts are another matter entirely.

Ian, when I said "Thank goodness you're not my editor!" I meant it.

Thank goodness you're not my editor!

Ian, we're talking about the usage of a word, not the experience of all too many of us. That's a whole different story and probably shouldn't be discussed on a board moderated by an agency.