good or bad?

[Gangoo]

Hi guys,

well, I know about the "never ending building up your portfolio" etc. 

 

BUT

could you gimme a feedback if the images I have uploaded so far have any chance on market?

 

if NOT, where should I be focused more...

 

Thanks, im a bit lost today...perhaps its the damned autumn coming:)

 

gangoo

[Allan Bell]

Hello GanGoo,

 

Your images seem ok to me on a quick look. Personally I don't think landscapes do too well on Alamy, but could be wrong. Anything and everything could sell on Alamy. You have some good saleable images. Just keep on taking more of people doing things etc.

 

Allan

[Mirco Vacca]

Hello Gangoo,

 

Some look saleable and other are not really belonging into stock.

Just like mentioned there is not really a specific rule. Sometimes the great looking image is not downloaded and the lessed expectd four times. This i saw from experience. Variation, volume, keywording, patience and quality is the way. Just keep on going with a good spirit and dont break just because the sales are not coming inmidiatly. Before you see regular sales it can take many uploaded images and months. Even if you would have a download today in many cases you will see it reported afer couple of months. The biggest step you take at the beginning. When you see the first sales coming after some time then you know that you are on the right way.

[Ed Rooney]

+ 1 I must agree with what Philippe says . . .

 

But let's see the glass as half-full instead of almost empty. Frankly I'm surprised that many of your images passed Alamy quality control. This is not about giving you a few tips and sending you on your way; it's more about you learning the basics of stock photography. You need to look at a lots of published images at your library and see how they differ from yours. You need to learn post processing, and you need to learn how to use keywords. I will give you one tip: most good "night" shots are in fact taken at dusk when there's still some detail in the shadows. And another tip about that tip: nothing in art is 100% true—there are always exceptions. 

 

Get to work and good luck.

 

Ed

[Mirco Vacca]

On hind from me. The image below ohas a really bad shadow over the subject. This is not acceptable. The subject should be clear and visible in this case. This is some standard thing that you have to feel in stock photography. It is like anybody say not a attack but just a honoust truth. Would you download this image for a good looking magazinge?

 

[Ed Rooney]

Also in this breakfast picture, I see artifacts on the top of the white table cloth. And that main dish is called an omelet, but I see what looks like a fried egg. (I'm not really sure what that yellow round thing is—maybe a peach?) In addition, the table cloth is burned out and the shadow area, where the main subject is, could easily be opened up in pro editing software. 

 

That's my last word; I feel as if I'm beating up on Gangoo, which is not my intention. 

[Doc]

Hi Gangoo,

 

Thanks for asking for critique and well done for doing so - its not easy but it can be very helpful. I would hope you find this criticism to be positive!

 

1. The evening night images are far too dark - they will not reproduce well in mags/papers/books and are very unlikely to sell - need to lighten things up either with artificial light or high ISO 

2. Grey skies do sell on Alamy, but nothing like as well as blue skies especially when linked to themes like cruise ships

3. If you try and include more people in your images they will sell better for editorial use; when you do, try and get close to them - your image D88KB of the camel ride is too far from the camel, and sell better if a. the people/camel were larger in the image and b. you actually had the pyramids in the image as they are mentioned in the caption

4. Keywording well is just as important as a good image - in D9RYRC you have a good moody shot of the Bosphorus ferry in Istanbul yet your essential keywords do not mention ferry or boat, but do have "Hagia Sopihia" in them which is a tiny spot on the horizon

5. Colour casts are obvious in eg. DET6K8 and DET6KH (a cyan cast); note also these are both put up as RF, but no model release or Property release which they should have if you want to sell them as RF - they should be RM - 

6. Of the images I see, I think D808N5, and the image taken looking down into Halong Bay would sell, , and D9RYRC, DDY86G once you have redone the keywording (in DDY86G you must have the country in the essential keywords for yhis type of image or no-one will ever see it)

 

I hope that all is helpful and it hasn't made you feel bad - that is not intended, but constructive criticism is the best way to improve! welcome to Alamy and good luchk in the future

 

Kind regards

 

Kumar

[Allan Bell]

^{My original post was after a quick scan of Gangoos images for content only. I did not have time then to look at them in depth.}

 

^{After further appraisal I have to agree with most of the comments above.}

 

^{Sorry to pop your balloon.}

 

^Allan

[York Photographer]

Some nice pictures, you obviously get around abit! Some are a bit on the dark side, don't get disillusioned, it takes alot more than 67 photographs to start getting sales

[Mark]

My best investment when I started at alamy years ago (and now 20k + images moved through alamy), was this book. Not all the content is relevant (a good majority is), but certainly the sections on understanding colour space, histograms, image adjustments, colour correction, darkroom effects, using layers, montage etc. I see he has a book on Lightroom too, so I will order that since I moved over to Lightroom 4.

 

More from this Author

[Gangoo]

Hi guys,

 

thanks a lot for your replies!

 

Especially thank you Philippe, only real critique can push someone forward!

 

I have implemented some of your advices (especially with the keywording) and the rest needs some time..

 

 

 

Unfortunately yes, I do postprocessing on Laptop so far...

 

 

A long journey ahead, fasten your seat-belts, passangers:)

 

 

Thanks all again!

 

michal

 

 

 

[Bill Brooks]

Good advice, except I always include complete location information in the caption, even if the subject could be anywhere. I spent 5 years as photo editor and when we did books on, for instance, the province of Ontario Canada every image had to be taken in the province of Ontario. Even if it was a bird like the Canada Goose that could be found and photographed anywhere in Canada.

 

We were always concerned that readers would spot some vegetation in the background that would place the image in a different province. A flower may have minor differences between east and west ends of the country . A textbook would have to be recalled. The other thing is that an editor may be dealing with thousands of images at a time and wants the location information to follow the image in the caption.

 

We would also pin the image locations to a map of the province to make sure that we covered the entire province with our images. Therefore exact location such as the nearest town was important. Local bookstores wanted to point out that the generic image of a flower was taken near their town so that information might be included when the author wrote the captions in the book.

 

You also have to  consider that the photo editor may lack local knowledge and get confused.

 

I would caption an image of the island of Hawaii as "The Big Island of Hawaii in the State of Hawaii USA". This is because you have many islands in the state of Hawaii such as  Maui, Oahu, Kauai, Lanai, Molokai, Niihau, Kahoolawe, and finally Hawaii which is called "The Big Island" locally. Captioning something as Hawaii (state of) will not cut it, if the book is about the the island of Oahu only.