Chuck Nacke

Love the image Steve. Chuck

Janet, I'm afraid that I am "Old School" I only work with 36MP NIKON's in RAW, 16bit with aRGB color space. I select the images that I want to process for Alamy or clients and import to LR. I do all of my corrections and lighting adjustments, then export as 16bit TIFF to a separate folder. Then I do any final cropping, spotting and my IPTC (File Info) and drop to a 8bit file as a JPEG for upload. I do save all original RAW files, 16bit TIFF files and JPEGs in separate folders ( I have quite a few external drives ). All TIFF and JPEG files are saved with all of the IPTC fields filled out. I do not use presets at any point of the process and while I've played with Adobe's new AI retouching, I do not like it. I still do everything by my own hand. I guess that is why after almost twenty years contributing to Alamy I have less than 2,500 images online. PS I did take a look at a few images linked to you and the few I saw looked very well done. I did not look at your IPTC info. Best, Chuck,

I'm with you Brian, except Thank God I'm not with you in PA, lived outside of Pittsburg for a few years and I hated it. I got more speeding tickets in PA than I have in my entire life. Chuck

Dionis, You are welcome. So you are in the country of Georgia? Been a couple of decades since I was there. If you are in Georgia, I don't think the eBay warrantee will do you much good? The old FUJI S5s are good DSLRs, but are a bit outdated. I have seen NIKON D2s and D3s for sale pretty cheap. They are heavy, but they do work well and they are tough. I never liked the crop frame NIKONs (D300, D80 etc.). If you can manage it, I have seen a lot of NIKON D800s for sale pretty cheap or a good D600 might work for you. MDM, that is an old falsehood. I worked with S2 and S5 FUJIs for years, still have one somewhere. I always shot RAW and got a 42xx by out of them or the equivalent of a 12MP sensor. FYI, My images shot with the FUJIs are more middle aged. Alamy has also licensed an image several times that I shot with a LEICA M3 on Kodachrome 64. That I would call "old" Chuck

Have not read the entire thread, but one word of advice about buying cameras on eBay; Buy the Four-Square warrantee. Over the years I've bought many DSLRs on eBay and am still using two of them (D800s). Every time I've bought a DSLR on eBay I bought the warrantee, and when the body needed repair, I had a check in my hand before my service people had finished the repair. On another note, for an inexpensive DSLR I would consider the FUJI S5. Alamy just licensed another one of my images that was shot with one of my S5s. Chuck

From what I've read this is constructive thread and full of good advice, my opinion. I would only add to Kit and all, "EDIT" what you upload. For me it is not about throwing everything against the wall. Find images that are well thought out and properly selected. Caption and keywording is also very important. My first concern about any image I select to photograph, edit and to upload is what does it illustrate and how do I see it being used in publication? Chuck

Well, I go back far enough as a photographer to remember when many working photographers said, "Stock photo libraries would be the end of photography." Not a fan of AI generated images, but I do not think it all really matters that much. Chuck

The answer is "42" .... Chuck

Rae, I would suggest starting from scratch and reading the submission guidelines. Your IPTC (Captions and Keywords) are hopeless as well. Chuck

Don't use FTP very often, but the best program I've used was CuteFTP and in the past it has always worked well for me. Chuck

Well, it appears that the Sky has not Fallen..... At least for me all seems to be working, but things have been a bit slower than I would like during the last two months... Chuck

Payments have been annoying the last couple of years. For a decade I had the payment from Alamy in my U.S. bank within a couple of days (normally three) and now it is taking eight, nine and ten days to see the credit for the deposit. I do understand that there was a problem with the clearing bank that Alamy was using in the U.S. but I had hoped that the system would have been improved (shorter wait time for deposit to credit). Chuck

I support ASMP and their linked statement above. This has made me think for the first time since I purchased PS2 about other options to using or licensing Adobe products. Chuck Nacke ( a current CC paying client )

Well I've been trying not to contribute to this thread, but........ I do agree with Phil's original post and it is an ongoing problem for all "News Photo" agencies. I do believe that Alamy is doing the best that they can dealing with contributors who are mostly not trained journalists. In my opinion, a larger issue are the individuals and agencies who just "dump" images onto the news feed without any editing (selecting) images. Not sure why anyone would upload 20, 50 or more images that are from the same event, often showing the same thing? To make it worse their captions accompanying those images are not specific and often not accurate. Just my opinion, Happy Friday Chuck

Edo, One of my mottos is "keep doing it until you get it right and there is no "Right."" All the best and have fun with the stone Fab Four... Chuck