From 300 images online to 6800+ in 2 WEEKS!

[Chuck Nacke]

54 minutes ago, MizBrown said:

I'm in Nicaragua.  Getting shot during protests is a possibility.

 

 

Miz, you have made me a fan. 

 

Getting shot during a protest does not do you, Alamy or anyone any good, BTDT and I lost a lot of $ during my three months in the hospital.

Unfortunately I never worked in South America,  I speak Russian.  One of my best friends covered Bogata during the worst days and he told

me stories, I know those days are over. 

 

All my best,

Chuck

 

PS  Next week I'm going to do a studio portrait of my cat Bon Jovi.  The shelter was going to put him down because he did not

get along with other cats and was not nice to children.  He is a great cat and maybe he is sort of like me......

Never was a fan of Bon Jovi, the singer.

Edited November 22, 2019 by Chuck Nacke
addition

[MizBrown]

1 hour ago, Jon D said:

Stay safe though please 🙂

 

A friend who was in the US Army said put three masonry walls between you and bullets.   I have that covered.

[MizBrown]

1 hour ago, Chuck Nacke said:

Miz, you have made me a fan. 

 

Getting shot during a protest does not do you, Alamy or anyone any good, BTDT and I lost a lot of $ during my three months in the hospital.

Unfortunately I never worked in South America,  I speak Russian.  One of my best friends covered Bogata during the worst days and he told

me stories, I know those days are over. 

 

All my best,

Chuck

 

PS  Next week I'm going to do a studio portrait of my cat Bon Jovi.  The shelter was going to put him down because he did not

get along with other cats and was not nice to children.  He is a great cat and maybe he is sort of like me......

Never was a fan of Bon Jovi, the singer.

 

One advantage I have is being a 71 year old foreign lady with a very friendly dog.   I took photos of people on both the Blue and White side and the Ortega supporters, never during active street actions, though. 

[Marianne]

My life would be much easier if Lightroom did not alphabetize keywords. I got a huge batch organized and tightened up the keywords in Bridge, but then I used the Adobe Stock uploader to upload to their site and of course it meant that all the keywords were now out of order. I like that Alamy now lets you pick the 10 most important as supertags, so order is not an issue, but Adobe requires that the most important 7 be up on top. 

 

Each site has their own quirks, so it becomes time-consuming if you upload to a bunch. I really just concentrate mostly on 3 plus a fine art site, but each of these has different captioning and keywording requirements. Lately, I've shortened up all of my keywording and captions, so that they need less tweaking if I submit to more than one place.  I still have a lot of old images here on Alamy with too many keywords or weird single word keywords from the transition over from the old 3-part AIM. I found it a nightmare to fix 800-1,000 images and gave up partway through - don't know how those with 10s of thousands managed. I wouldn't want to have to go back and fix so many photos later but each of us has our own way of working. I'm just glad that all my new ones have fewer tags and that helps it all to go faster. 

 

To answer your question, it really varies greatly month to month whether I sell more editorial or commercial - also a lot of my travel photography can be used both editorially and commercially, but if that counts as editorial, then that probably wins out everywhere except dreamstime where I license a fair number of abstract backgrounds from a small portfolio that I haven't added to in years. They license travel too, but backgrounds do especially well there. Adobe, which is commercial only, sells more travel than anything else for me, and until recently half my port there was backgrounds, now it's maybe 1/3rd. Here, editorial wins (counting all travel as editorial) nature isn't really commercial but it's not editorial either - it sells but travel is my bread and butter everywhere (but DT, and strongish there too). As much as editorial is by far Alamy's strength, I've had some nice $$$ licenses with commercial studio concept shots. But the couple of sales I had over $400 here were travel shots. 

 

Edited November 24, 2019 by Marianne

[Marianne]

I live in the New York suburbs, not much of note happens editorially. 

 

When Hillary Clinton was running for president, and when Bill Clinton was president and first moved to my town, there were some nice editorial moments, but not enough to qualify as regular news. Then again, a dear friend of the forum who we lost very recently shot "photo of the day" images on the coast of Wales that made the national dailies on your side of the pond all the time. There is always plenty to shoot if you use your creativity. 

[Chuck Nacke]

Mrz Brown, would be good to know your first name, Rebecca?

 

An old saying among the soldiers I have worked beside is:

"If you hear it, it did not kill you."  I DO NOT RECOMOMEND COVERING

LIVE FIRE and just finally watched 'Hurt Locker'  and thought it was a

great film, and very disturbing.

 

On a happier note Bon Jovi is asleep buy the fire.  Trying to figure out how

to do his portrait.

 

Chuck

Edited November 24, 2019 by Chuck Nacke
addition

[M.Chapman]

Much has been said in this thread about too many similars damaging CTR% (that's certainly true) and that this will damage a contributors rank (which has been true in the past when the effect could be seen roughly every 180 days when Alamy recalculated everyone's rank). But is this still true, or is it really now a myth being kept alive by the forum???

 

I see no evidence of a re-rank in close to 2 years now. But I do still see evidence of promotion of images that have previously been zoomed (if the search term is the same).

 

What I think is true is that if a whole batch of similars is tagged and captioned identically (for speed) it's difficult to control the order in which they appear in searches and the best images may appear last. So IMHO it can be worth "fine tuning" the keywords by careful use of tags, supertags, captions and phrases so the best image(s) appear earliest in test searches. But this takes time, so in the end it's probably easier to avoid uploading too many similars in the first place. Also saves cluttering up Alamy's servers and slowing down the whole system?

 

Mark

Edited November 25, 2019 by M.Chapman

[MizBrown]

On 24/11/2019 at 00:46, Chuck Nacke said:

Mrz Brown, would be good to know your first name, Rebecca?

 

An old saying among the soldiers I have worked beside is:

"If you hear it, it did not kill you."  I DO NOT RECOMOMEND COVERING

LIVE FIRE and just finally watched 'Hurt Locker'  and thought it was a

great film, and very disturbing.

 

On a happier note Bon Jovi is asleep buy the fire.  Trying to figure out how

to do his portrait.

 

Chuck

 

I published under the name Rebecca Ore (too many Rebeccas Brown).

 

Back during the troubles, we had irregular Ortega supporters one time firing rocks theoretically onto roofs on my block which had built barricades.  I've got a little collection of stones that came over the roof into my courtyard (if you see them, they didn't hit you).   The kids on both sides had front loading, fuse-fired hand cannons called motaros.  If they were supporting Ortega, they often painted the tubes red and black.  If supporting the opposition, blue and white.    Teenage boys were running around with these, and an occasional pair of binoculars to scout the opposition positions, and apparently finding the whole mess exciting.   The military confined its teenagers to barracks for duration at least locally.  The military doing guard duty in town were older, and only there to protect property, not to shoot at demonstrators.   Apparently, that was respected.

 

I had both an Ortega supporter and a young soldier (when the army finally let the younger soldiers out of the barracks) chat me up about my dog (different weeks).   After all the mess ended, the Cubans put up a steel fence around their medical mission compound, which I haven't photographed. 

 

One of my friends had active shooting in front of her house (again, back bedrooms with three masonry walls between the street and her bedroom).  I re-read "Homage to Catalonia" during the nights when I went to my back bedroom early.  Orwell thought street fighting wasn't that dangerous until someone brought in artillery.  

 

Photoshop has made creating hysteria even easier.

 

Just submitted three photos of house renovations going on across the street, some older ones, and one of Maude, one of my cats.   Supposedly, the Opposition was planning a general strike before the end of the month, but Maxi Pali, our usual marker of what's going to happen, has pallets of smart t.v.s in front of the store, not pallets of rice and beans.  My impression is that most Nicaraguan would rather get back to work and not have things that disrupted again for any reason.  I've seen two house rehab projects in the neighborhood.  The weekend that there was some recent problems, Maxi Pali had a pallet of cases of beer available.  

 

The expats where I live all stayed here.  One couple is trying to sell but everyone else I've talked to or heard about doesn't plan to leave.  The expats who'd been sold pipe dreams about the areas developed by gringo real estate interests fled in much larger numbers.   People who land in the north central mountains here tend to actually know something about the country and have Nicaraguan friends.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 25, 2019 by MizBrown
just one time with the motaro fired rocks

[MilesbeforeIsleep]

On 19/11/2019 at 08:53, hdh said:

Alamy too many similars (more in keywords than in content) will hurt your CTR and potentially decrease your rank, long term

 

This sounds very strange to me.  Tell me I'm misunderstanding.   You wrote: "...too many similars (more in keywords than in content) will hurt your CTR...."

I don't see how anyone who shoots editorial stock would NOT have a great many similars in keywords.   If you live and shoot in London and 90% of your images were made in London, it's reasonable that 90% of your images will have the keyword "London".  If I have an image with people in it, I use the word "people". 

 

Do you perhaps mean that  incorrect keywords will hurt your ranking?  

 

Again, I probably misunderstand.

 

Thanks,

Michael

 

[Jon D]

6 minutes ago, MilesbeforeIsleep said:

 

This sounds very strange to me.  Tell me I'm misunderstanding.   You wrote: "...too many similars (more in keywords than in content) will hurt your CTR...."

I don't see how anyone who shoots editorial stock would NOT have a great many similars in keywords.   If you live and shoot in London and 90% of your images were made in London, it's reasonable that 90% of your images will have the keyword "London".  If I have an image with people in it, I use the word "people". 

 

Do you perhaps mean that  incorrect keywords will hurt your ranking?  

 

Again, I probably misunderstand.

 

Thanks,

Michael

 

This is exactly my point and why I think it's a bit of a myth all this talk.

Not only the word "London" would be in there but probably at least 10-20 others all relating to just London that everyone would be using.

In correct Keywords are what I think some have meant of course, which is obvious. 🙂

[geogphotos]

12 hours ago, MilesbeforeIsleep said:

 

This sounds very strange to me.  Tell me I'm misunderstanding.   You wrote: "...too many similars (more in keywords than in content) will hurt your CTR...."

I don't see how anyone who shoots editorial stock would NOT have a great many similars in keywords.   If you live and shoot in London and 90% of your images were made in London, it's reasonable that 90% of your images will have the keyword "London".  If I have an image with people in it, I use the word "people". 

 

Do you perhaps mean that  incorrect keywords will hurt your ranking?  

 

Again, I probably misunderstand.

 

Thanks,

Michael

 

 

 

Having the keyword 'London' ( as an example) does not make multiple images similar. Additionally, it is very unlikely that a client would use just the word London on its own. 

 

A similar image refers to its visual similarity to others. If you have many similar pictures the client is unlikely to click on all of them so that will lower your CTR ( Click Through Ratio). This will feed through to your Alamy Rank if you have too many similars on too many occasions.  

 

The contributor needs to make a decision whether offering more choice is the better strategy or whether offering a tightly edited selection is likely to work best. Personally I am happy to leave that decision to the contributor and not comment on their choice unless an opinion is requested. Our relationship is with Alamy not other contributors.

 

 

Edited November 27, 2019 by geogphotos

[MilesbeforeIsleep]

4 hours ago, geogphotos said:

 

 

Having the keyword 'London' ( as an example) does not make multiple images similar. Additionally, it is very unlikely that a client would use just the word London on its own. 

 

A similar image refers to its visual similarity to others. If you have many similar pictures the client is unlikely to click on all of them so that will lower your CTR ( Click Through Ratio). This will feed through to your Alamy Rank if you have too many similars on too many occasions.  

 

The contributor needs to make a decision whether offering more choice is the better strategy or whether offering a tightly edited selection is likely to work best. Personally I am happy to leave that decision to the contributor and not comment on their choice unless an opinion is requested. Our relationship is with Alamy not other contributors.

 

 

The phrase  "...too many similars (more in keywords than in content) will hurt your CTR...."  clearly refers to two conditions: (1) similars in keywords and, (2) similars in content.  It was  (1) similars in keywords to which I was referring. 

Michael

Edited November 27, 2019 by MilesbeforeIsleep

[geogphotos]

1 hour ago, MilesbeforeIsleep said:

The phrase  "...too many similars (more in keywords than in content) will hurt your CTR...."  clearly refers to two conditions: (1) similars in keywords and, (2) similars in content.  It was  (1) similars in keywords to which I was referring. 

Michael

 

 

This is one of the consequences of the diversity algorithm. Before it was brought in you could have the same photographer taking every slot in the first pages until all their images had been used, and then would come the images from the lower ranking photographers. The DA changed that and split the images up. One negative consequence was for specialists. For example, I recall photographers who were real experts in polar regions complaining that their genuine shots of polar regions were diluted by all sorts of other stuff such as husky dogs, polar bear toys, and the like that would perhaps drive buyers elsewhere. 

 

Looking at some of the very top Alamy sellers - one person I looked at only offers a small number of shots of each place/subject but they know that they will secure the highest slots on page one because they make use of their high Alamy Rank. For example, three or four shots of a town with one shot each of major landmarks. Then by looking at the dates taken you can see that he/she moved on to the next town and on through the day. So, in time systematically covering entire regions and countries going after the top slots for each location and then moving on.

 

Others like me have more comprehensive coverage eg) I have over 1100 images of 'Suffolk village church', and you can be sure that the ones that appear first aren't always the ones that you would choose! So, realistically I'm only going to get sales when somebody searches for a specific village church by name. But it is probably more likely that a busy picture researcher will be happy with any page on decent pic of 'Suffolk village church'. My first one is slot 32, and two more of the same church and that's it for Page One.

 

There is no easy answer.

 

 

Edited November 27, 2019 by geogphotos

[hdh]

7 hours ago, MilesbeforeIsleep said:

The phrase  "...too many similars (more in keywords than in content) will hurt your CTR...."  clearly refers to two conditions: (1) similars in keywords and, (2) similars in content.  It was  (1) similars in keywords to which I was referring. 

Michael

 

If many similars are keyworded distinctively different, putting the focus of each picture onto a different subject, would not hurt CTR as pics would hardly show up in the same search.

The point is that it is the combination of both, similar pictures and similar keywords, which may affect CTR.

Hence keywording could be important when applied to similar pictures.

But as Geog said, its all up to each individual contributor and I may be too theoretical on that topic. 

Edited November 27, 2019 by hdh
typos

[meanderingemu]

On 26/11/2019 at 22:36, MilesbeforeIsleep said:

 

This sounds very strange to me.  Tell me I'm misunderstanding.   You wrote: "...too many similars (more in keywords than in content) will hurt your CTR...."

I don't see how anyone who shoots editorial stock would NOT have a great many similars in keywords.   If you live and shoot in London and 90% of your images were made in London, it's reasonable that 90% of your images will have the keyword "London".  If I have an image with people in it, I use the word "people". 

 

Do you perhaps mean that  incorrect keywords will hurt your ranking?  

 

Again, I probably misunderstand.

 

Thanks,

Michael

 

 

 

I think people who do major editorial stock, Live News, expect their sales from Live News, so speed, and may not worry about ranking as much as this is a different system.  I actually noticed a few AIM results recently where my images actually ranked ahead of the Live news residuals once images moved to stock. 

[Jon D]

37 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

 

 

I think people who do major editorial stock, Live News, expect their sales from Live News, so speed, and may not worry about ranking as much as this is a different system.  I actually noticed a few AIM results recently where my images actually ranked ahead of the Live news residuals once images moved to stock. 

Hi Michael, it seems there are many many factors that I need to be researching and understanding that's for sure, this will be another interesting one! 🙂

Thank you for that, but first I have nearly 5000 more images to Keyword etc 😞 😞 

[MaliNic]

I am fairly new to stock photography and hope to make it my career one day.  It's encouraging to see that if one puts in effort, it can be done.

[Jon D]

14 hours ago, MaliNic said:

I am fairly new to stock photography and hope to make it my career one day.  It's encouraging to see that if one puts in effort, it can be done.

It is certainly possible that's for sure! More so if you're a free man or women who can go anywhere and do what they want when they want!

That will certainly help with the variety aspect! 

The one thing I will say is the income aspect is still totally irregular and that's the hard part.

Some months are excellent, some shocking but that's the stock it seems.

I'm still totally new to Alamy and I won't really know what's going to happen with my port until this time next year I expect, but I hope to have sales from late Jan onwards.

 

Your portfolio is nice I think you will do very well! 🙂

Good luck

[John Gaffen]

Jon,

 

Please could you tell me if you have got images taken with the DJI Mavic Pro 2, through Alamy QC? I am very interested in this drone and in taking up the challenge of getting involved with Aerial photography. I know I would have to get CAA qualified first.

[Jon D]

3 hours ago, John Gaffen said:

Jon,

 

Please could you tell me if you have got images taken with the DJI Mavic Pro 2, through Alamy QC? I am very interested in this drone and in taking up the challenge of getting involved with Aerial photography. I know I would have to get CAA qualified first.

Hi John, 

Absolutely I have taken some stunning images in the last few days and uploaded them funny enough! I will put them onto my portfolio page somewhere near the top!

They are of a Solar Farm! 🙂

 

Go for it! Worst cases is you will have a load fo fun with it! 🙂

If you have any questions please feel free to ask! 🙂

[Jon D]

4 hours ago, John Gaffen said:

Jon,

 

Please could you tell me if you have got images taken with the DJI Mavic Pro 2, through Alamy QC? I am very interested in this drone and in taking up the challenge of getting involved with Aerial photography. I know I would have to get CAA qualified first.

Sorry John, 

I have tried to update my profile on Alamy, but the images submitted in the last few days aren't unto date yet.

Please check my Commercial page on the website here, all these images well 90% have been taken with the Mavic 2 Pro! 🙂

Hope this helps!

https://www.jondawrant.com/commercialphotography.html

[John Gaffen]

Thanks Jon,  I've taken the plunge now!  

[BidC]

On the subject of Alamy rank, similar, keywords etc, this may be helpful:

 

http://www.epuk.org/news/alamy-under-fire-over-new-search-engine

 

Having said all that, it may be remembered (though I hope not in fact), that I tentatively asked a very simple question on here many months ago, and effectively in the end had my portfolio dragged up and enthusiastically trashed by people basically saying I should 'listen to my elders'.  Mostly the question wasn't really answered.

 

As it happens since then my CTR has risen considerably, and I have had zooms and sales without doing anything (literally *nothing*, as I was so taken aback and upset that I put the cameras away and took several months 'off').  So, it *is* possible to recover from a poor CTR.  [My only action was to cull literally a handful of images as I couldn't bear to look at some images '*others* had rubbished - they will disappear this month (March)]. [But don't worry: no more tears have been shed ! ]

 

A couple of images people said were 'dull', subsequently sold, and, as I say, I have had 'zooms' over the subsequent months. This month I have also had several sales of older images.

I have started to submit again as I quite enjoy the shoot, edit, upload and 'see if anyone might find an image useful' cycle  [ I was a nurse (now retired), so the 'cut throat jostling, competitive, must-earn-a-substantial-income' world is not my own ]

 

Basically what I am saying is that I have found many contradictory comments, odd mathematical guesses, talk about pseudonyms, comments such as 'cloudy images don't sell' (etc), made through the forum that seem to mean very little. ( Sincerely, no offence intended - we all speculate from time to time to try and change how the dice may lie, and maybe that is  helpful to some .. ).

 I have also seen some very nice regulars making conversation and being helpful and encouraging, but also the usual jostling - though maybe that's merely a way of 

thrashing out a topic in the end, (as long as no one gets hurt).

 

What I'd say (using life experience more than anything, as I am very new to the world of photography and stock) is use your own judgement about your images, be selective in what you upload (to Alamy) (though experimenting doesn't harm, imo). Give it your all, which is all anyone can do. If the image starts to grate, then delete. 

 

The very best advice I received at the outset, from Ian Davidson, was to caption well, choose keywords carefully (and revisit at times), and yes, not to upload too many similars. Quality, quantity and variety are all plus points. Accept that one's portfolio will change and improve with experience and time.

 

I won't be a regular returner - I just looked through as a guest today, and thought the above info (webpage) worth posting in case it helps.

 

very best wishes to everyone.

Bid.

 

 

 

Edited February 29, 2020 by BidC

[NYCat]

Don't panic anyone! That article was written in 16 November 2006 .... Definitely before my time here. I have seen references now and then to the idea that specialists are at a disadvantage here. I don't know about that. I seem to do very well compared to others who are not as specialized as I am so I don't really worry about it. Of course, my wildlife is up against the National Geographic Collection and many, many photographers I stand in awe of.

 

Paulette

[gvallee]

An article about how the search engine used to work fourteen years ago??!! Really?? Honestly....