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Looking for people to tear my portfolio to shreds.


Cbridges

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I think you have an excellent portfolio.  My view is that some of your keywords are very generic and could result in false positives.  My view, and o hers know much better than me, you need to focus tightly on the subject, but I could be wrong.  Your photos are loverly.  

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Great photos, but you need to be more specific in the keywords, as Ian said. All those flowers at Eden need a common and latin names. Same with the underwater Rockpool life. No-one is going to tear your photos to shreds, but editors looking for a specific plant or flower will never find yours. Ditch all those woolly keywords like "posy", "pretty", unless it is actually a posy. Keywords should answer the question who what where why and when and how.

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Cherie,

 

You have some really nice underwater images that should do well, they just need better caption and keywording.

Keep in mind that I spend as much or more time on my captions and keywords then I do preparing my images

for upload.  I would also suggest trying to keep you file sizes bigger, if you can.  Even though my originals are

7360 by @ 300DPI I usually knock them down to 4200 by.

 

Good luck, you should do well.

 

Chuck

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Beautiful pictures... keep going and upload lots more.

 

Photos containing people sell well too so if you could add more people into some of your images, that might help sales a little.

 

I notice you have pictures of Falmouth in the snow... which makes me think that maybe you live there (as not many people go to places like Falmouth on holiday in the snow)? If so, you might be well placed for getting "UK Weather" shots and uploading to Live News. This could be people sunbathing on the beach, eating ice cream in warm weather or large waves crashing against the harbour wall (Keith Morris based in Aberystwyth does well in this respect). Of course, if you don't live in Falmouth and I am just jumping to conclusions then ditch that! 🙂

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8 hours ago, Matt Ashmore said:

Beautiful pictures... keep going and upload lots more.

 

Photos containing people sell well too so if you could add more people into some of your images, that might help sales a little.

 

I notice you have pictures of Falmouth in the snow... which makes me think that maybe you live there (as not many people go to places like Falmouth on holiday in the snow)? If so, you might be well placed for getting "UK Weather" shots and uploading to Live News. This could be people sunbathing on the beach, eating ice cream in warm weather or large waves crashing against the harbour wall (Keith Morris based in Aberystwyth does well in this respect). Of course, if you don't live in Falmouth and I am just jumping to conclusions then ditch that! 🙂

Or the OP could move to Falmouth on your recommendation?!  I used to live in Helston, which isn't too far from Falmouth.  Nice part of the world.

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Definitely fix the keywords, another example  T0KJ45, is not a "Nemo" and I can't suggest the species without seeing more of the animal. For shots like this, always grab a photo of the fish side on, so you can accurately ID it when keywording.

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As a biologist I can promise that this fish is a Clownfish (perhaps the nickname of Nemo wasnt a relevant keyword?) - and has been keyworded with the appropriate latin names and species identification as well. Clownfish are the only fish that are immune to sea anemone tentacle stings  -  as they have a thick coating of mucus which protects them. 

 

However, I completely agree that I need to rework a lot of my keywords, I'm absolutely terrible at plant identification! But I'm slowly working my way through.

 

Colblimp / Matt - I used to live in Falmouth! Thanks for the tip on UK weather shots though. Question - when it comes to images of people, I assumed that they didnt sell unless you had the release forms, so I'm assuming it's okay to put group images of people without these? 

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19 minutes ago, Cbridges said:

As a biologist I can promise that this fish is a Clownfish (perhaps the nickname of Nemo wasnt a relevant keyword?) - and has been keyworded with the appropriate latin names and species identification as well. Clownfish are the only fish that are immune to sea anemone tentacle stings  -  as they have a thick coating of mucus which protects them. 

 

However, I completely agree that I need to rework a lot of my keywords, I'm absolutely terrible at plant identification! But I'm slowly working my way through.

 

Colblimp / Matt - I used to live in Falmouth! Thanks for the tip on UK weather shots though. Question - when it comes to images of people, I assumed that they didnt sell unless you had the release forms, so I'm assuming it's okay to put group images of people without these? 

Images without releases can be sold as editorial - for news reports, non-fiction etc, and I often see Alamy described as a primarily editorial agency.  So long as you use the "optional" tab and mark number of people and no releases you will be fine.

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2 hours ago, Cbridges said:

As a biologist I can promise that this fish is a Clownfish (perhaps the nickname of Nemo wasnt a relevant keyword?) - and has been keyworded with the appropriate latin names and species identification as well. Clownfish are the only fish that are immune to sea anemone tentacle stings  -  as they have a thick coating of mucus which protects them. 

 

However, I completely agree that I need to rework a lot of my keywords, I'm absolutely terrible at plant identification! But I'm slowly working my way through.

 

Colblimp / Matt - I used to live in Falmouth! Thanks for the tip on UK weather shots though. Question - when it comes to images of people, I assumed that they didnt sell unless you had the release forms, so I'm assuming it's okay to put group images of people without these? 

 

As Starsphinx states above, they do sell and sell very well as "Editorial only". Most of Alamy's business is Editorial in nature. The majority of my pictures which include people fall into this category.. I only ever get releases from family.

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2 hours ago, Starsphinx said:

So long as you use the "optional" tab and mark number of people and no releases you will be fine.

 

Good practice of course but for Rights Managed the default will display as having no model release even if you don't fill in the number of people, I am aware that there are different opinions about this subject on the forum though. Asked an Alamy representative at the Photography Show whether for Rights Managed there was any need to go in and give the number of people, failed to get a definitive answer unfortunately, so if they don't know how are we supposed to?

 

Filling in the number of people leads you into having to make the subjective judgements about what constitutes a person, essential for model released images, not so much for Rights Managed. Alamy rep seemed to agree with that, but I may just have been asking entirely the wrong person.

 

 

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18 hours ago, Cbridges said:

As a biologist I can promise that this fish is a Clownfish (perhaps the nickname of Nemo wasnt a relevant keyword?) - and has been keyworded with the appropriate latin names and species identification as well. Clownfish are the only fish that are immune to sea anemone tentacle stings  -  as they have a thick coating of mucus which protects them. 

 

However, I completely agree that I need to rework a lot of my keywords, I'm absolutely terrible at plant identification! But I'm slowly working my way through.

 

Colblimp / Matt - I used to live in Falmouth! Thanks for the tip on UK weather shots though. Question - when it comes to images of people, I assumed that they didnt sell unless you had the release forms, so I'm assuming it's okay to put group images of people without these? 

 

I did not say this fish was not a clownfish, I said it was not a Nemo. The "nemo" clownfish in the movie (assuming that is what you are tagging this fish as), was a very different species to that in your photo - even though a "cartoon" fish, it was bright red and white, more in keeping with Amphiprion percula, or A ocellaris. Similar to my forum photo.

 

The keywords that I can see for this image do not have a latin (species) name for this fish, eg Amphiprion clarkii (just an example, as I said in my previous post, I can't ID this fish from the photo). The only scientific name I see is Amphiprionae, which is only the subfamily name for all anemonefishes. It is not a species name for this fish. You should also include any common names as well.

 

Perhaps you have refined the tags to include this since my advice, but the site has not yet updated? Because at the moment, anyone searching for this particular species of clownfish, will not see your image.

 

And also a note that you have the tags clown fish (together, but with a space), but do not have the tag clownfish (without a space). This does make a difference, depending on the search term used. Example, since 1 July last year, to date, on AoA, there have been 10 searches including the words clown fish, but 19 including the word clownfish. Your image would not be seen in the 19 searches.
 

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