"Your Alamy portfolio page"

[Allan Bell 1,724]

14 minutes ago, Reimar said:

Ha! 

Allan, that has to be the best example of compression artifacts yet.

 

And yet it is a straightforward shot with very little work done on the raw.

 

Allan

 

 

[John Mitchell 3,304]

36 minutes ago, Allan Bell said:

 

Like my new header image?

 

https://www.alamy.com/portfolio/allanbellimages

 

Allan

 

Very subtle...

[Starsphinx 401]

Having had a play with other peoples images and galleries I would like to see it so when you click on a contributors name it takes you to their gallery with the tabs etc - at the moment it takes you to an ordinary search page - and if you have changed the order of images on the front page of your gallery that does not show, the images are in the presumably default order.

I think the gallery makes a much better interface for someone clicking on a contributors name.

[John Mitchell 3,304]

11 minutes ago, Starsphinx said:

Having had a play with other peoples images and galleries I would like to see it so when you click on a contributors name it takes you to their gallery with the tabs etc - at the moment it takes you to an ordinary search page - and if you have changed the order of images on the front page of your gallery that does not show, the images are in the presumably default order.

I think the gallery makes a much better interface for someone clicking on a contributors name.

 

That sounds like a good idea. Perhaps it's in the works.

[amycicconi 14]

Another thing - it would be incredibly helpful (and logical) to be able to assign an image to a gallery from the Image Manager - so that as you are keywording and working on sending an image live you assign it to its gallery.

[Starsphinx 401]

The more I play and the more I visit other peoples galleries the more I come to think that it is essential Alamy makes them easily viewable to customers.  I have, in my time, been on the image sourcing side of things (in a very small way but still) and when doing that I was still likely to spend some time in the random brainstorming mode - or without a totally firm idea on how to proceed.  So on a coffee break - or that last 10 minutes at the end of the day - I would quite often just do random image searches.  For me it would be a great workflow to type something random into Alamy - have a picture catch my eye, click the photographer, see their portfolio tabs, visit a tab which grabbed me, see a picture in it which triggered another thought, search that thought and repeat.  I can in 10 minutes visit an awful lot of random photos doing that.  If I can do it all on one site I am much more likely to buy from that site.  The portfolio tabs add a new element to the mix - because people group things differently.

Now I am well aware I am a bit weird - and maybe the rest of the world does not work the way I do - but I do believe making portfolios accessible to customers would be a good thing.

Edited November 24, 2018 by Starsphinx

[John Mitchell 3,304]

9 minutes ago, Starsphinx said:

The more I play and the more I visit other peoples galleries the more I come to think that it is essential Alamy makes them easily viewable to customers.  I have, in my time, been on the image sourcing side of things (in a very small way but still) and when doing that I was still likely to spend some time in the random brainstorming mode - or without a totally firm idea on how to proceed.  So on a coffee break - or that last 10 minutes at the end of the day - I would quite often just do random image searches.  For me it would be a great workflow to type something random into Alamy - have a picture catch my eye, click the photographer, see their portfolio tabs, visit a tab which grabbed me, see a picture in it which triggered another thought, search that thought and repeat.  I can in 10 minutes visit an awful lot of random photos doing that.  If I can do it all on one site I am much more likely to buy from that site.  The portfolio tabs add a new element to the mix - because people group things differently.

Now I am well aware I am a bit weird - and maybe the rest of the world does not work the way I do - but I do believe making portfolios accessible to customers would be a good thing.

 

I totally agree. Doesn't sound weird at all to me.

[Liam Bunce 36]

If our images are plastered all over social media will that not increase the likelihood of image theft?

[Thomas Kyhn 45]

57 minutes ago, Liam Bunce said:

If our images are plastered all over social media will that not increase the likelihood of image theft?

 

With watermarks? Are there that many people who are interested in watermarked photos?

[Liam Bunce 36]

12 hours ago, Thomas Kyhn said:

 

With watermarks? Are there that many people who are interested in watermarked photos?

It is not to difficult to remove watermarks with the software that is available. 

[MDM 1,097]

 

 

14 hours ago, Liam Bunce said:

If our images are plastered all over social media will that not increase the likelihood of image theft?

44 minutes ago, Liam Bunce said:

It is not to difficult to remove watermarks with the software that is available. 

 

Stable doors and bolting horses come to mind. Alamy images are all over the internet anyway as they show up in Google searches. Any image you put on Alamy can be downloaded now as a large preview. These are almost 1300 pixels and Alamy have enabled downloading of that with a right-click. If somebody really wants your image and can remove the watermark there is nothing you can do about it except chase up infringements.

 

 

[Thomas Kyhn 45]

1 hour ago, Liam Bunce said:

It is not to difficult to remove watermarks with the software that is available. 

 

Is there any software that will do this automatically, or do you mean by editing/retouching in Photoshop (etc.)?

[John Crellin 8]

16 hours ago, Starsphinx said:

The more I play and the more I visit other peoples galleries the more I come to think that it is essential Alamy makes them easily viewable to customers.  I have, in my time, been on the image sourcing side of things (in a very small way but still) and when doing that I was still likely to spend some time in the random brainstorming mode - or without a totally firm idea on how to proceed.  So on a coffee break - or that last 10 minutes at the end of the day - I would quite often just do random image searches.  For me it would be a great workflow to type something random into Alamy - have a picture catch my eye, click the photographer, see their portfolio tabs, visit a tab which grabbed me, see a picture in it which triggered another thought, search that thought and repeat.  I can in 10 minutes visit an awful lot of random photos doing that.  If I can do it all on one site I am much more likely to buy from that site.  The portfolio tabs add a new element to the mix - because people group things differently.

Now I am well aware I am a bit weird - and maybe the rest of the world does not work the way I do - but I do believe making portfolios accessible to customers would be a good thing.

 

I quite agree - in fact I assumed Alamy would be doing what you describe. Disappointing that a Google search for "John Crellin Alamy Portfolio" gets me a page of forum stuff and no link to Alamy itself at all. Amusingly Google eventually includes my own website picture of Sheep Poo - that must be my star picture in Google's eyes!

[Starsphinx 401]

2 hours ago, John Crellin said:

 

I quite agree - in fact I assumed Alamy would be doing what you describe. Disappointing that a Google search for "John Crellin Alamy Portfolio" gets me a page of forum stuff and no link to Alamy itself at all. Amusingly Google eventually includes my own website picture of Sheep Poo - that must be my star picture in Google's eyes!

I am sure there is meaning in that - I just have no idea what it is lol.

I would imagine that it is Alamys longer-term plan - seems a bit of a waste if not

[KevinS 131]

2 hours ago, John Crellin said:

 

I quite agree - in fact I assumed Alamy would be doing what you describe. Disappointing that a Google search for "John Crellin Alamy Portfolio" gets me a page of forum stuff and no link to Alamy itself at all. Amusingly Google eventually includes my own website picture of Sheep Poo - that must be my star picture in Google's eyes!

It's my understanding that pages need to be "indexed" by Google, a process that can take days (&days). Being so new, your page may not have been indexed yet. 

[Starsphinx 401]

Just now, KevinS said:

It's my understanding that pages need to be "indexed" by Google, a process that can take days (&days). Being so new, your page may not have been indexed yet. 

Yet if you start a blog that is supposed to be private and forget to click the bit about preventing search engines Google will manage to index it and put it top of search results in nano seconds.

[KevinS 131]

Searching "Kevin Shields Alamy Portfolio" or "Kevin Shields Portfolio Alamy" only gives me the equivalent search from the Alamy homepage for "Kevin Shields"(a rock guitarist, some sports figures and a smattering of my photos). Folks who are more adept at searching might know how to really search for the portfolio pages. I don't seeing this leading to increased sales, though, so not spending time on it. I like the feature, so I hope I'm wrong about sales. 

[Cryptoprocta 711]

23 hours ago, Starsphinx said:

Having had a play with other peoples images and galleries I would like to see it so when you click on a contributors name it takes you to their gallery with the tabs etc - at the moment it takes you to an ordinary search page - and if you have changed the order of images on the front page of your gallery that does not show, the images are in the presumably default order.

I just saw that, and assumed it was a mistake on my part.

It doesn't make much sense if the people you send it to can't search within your photos, with perhaps a subsequent option to search Alamy if a desired image can't be found. Otherwise, it's rather deceptive, and of little use to an individual supplier.

Edited November 25, 2018 by Cryptoprocta

[amycicconi 14]

It can take months for Google to index new pages, FYI.  However, as I noted above, Alamy is not even including the photographer name in the contributor profile page title so not helpful to SEO relative to searches for the contributor name.  

[John Crellin 8]

I'm not actively involved with search engine optimization any more but, when I was, any commercial site worth its salt could get Google responding to changes within hours not days. But 5 years is a long time in the cyber world!

 

It may well be that Alamy and the like don't fit any business model that Google recognize though - they have always seemed to do less well that I might expect from the volume of  traffic I suppose them to have.

 

My point really was that by the time they launched the portfolio Alamy should have tried their best to optimize for a pretty unambiguous combination of not very common words "alamy portfolio". Maybe they did.

 

John

[Ed Rooney 2,235]

On 11/22/2018 at 11:00, John Walker said:

Seems like an interesting 'Work in Progress' at the moment.

 

My whole life is a work in progress. 

[Starsphinx 401]

1 hour ago, Ed Rooney said:

 

My whole life is a work in progress. 

Hold on to that - as long as that is true you cannot get old. 

[Russell 1,727]

Just a thought. I'd like to see a page counter on our portfolio page, just to give us an idea of how many visitors we have and whether it's worthwhile actively curating it.

[Bhandol 131]

Here's mine:

 

https://www.alamy.com/portfolio/647811.html

 

Parm

[Reimar 357]

Good question Jeff.

Here's another one:  When I look at my portfolio page in edit view, or even when I click the "view as public" button, I see nice large thumbnails.

When I go to https://www.alamy.com/portfolio/reimar I see tiny thumbnails.  What do you see?  How can I set the portfolio to display only the larger thumbs?