Have just gone over 1000 photos on here so time for a critique

[Gareth Sewell]

Hi everyone,

 

I would love some feedback on my portfolio please, I've been on Alamy since Jan 2019 but didn't have much on here until recently when Alamy asked for more French content (I usually visit France often as my wife is from there)

Here's the link to the portfolio, am on half creating sub galleries so some tips on that would be useful too.

https://www.alamy.com/portfolio/664703.html

 

Thanks in advance

 

Gareth

[Steve F]

On 30/06/2020 at 23:36, Gareth Sewell said:

Hi everyone,

 

I would love some feedback on my portfolio please, I've been on Alamy since Jan 2019 but didn't have much on here until recently when Alamy asked for more French content (I usually visit France often as my wife is from there)

Here's the link to the portfolio, am on half creating sub galleries so some tips on that would be useful too.

https://www.alamy.com/portfolio/664703.html

 

Thanks in advance

 

Gareth

 

Bonjour Gareth,

Comment va ton francais?

 

I'm a bit dubious about the Alamy portfolio to be honest. I haven't seen any feedback on the Forum at all about how useful it's been to anyone, although maybe there's a hidden post somewhere I haven't seen. Maybe it's useful if you have a huge collection, or you photograph something very niche, or you have a very distinctive photographic style. Otherwise, I'm not sure how many clients are going to search anyone's portfolio when they can just do a new general search for a different image. But I stand ready to be corrected by someone else on the Forum!! It won't hurt to curate your images and I see you've already started.

 

I like your La Defence photos a lot. There is a saying that photos with people in sell well. I don't know what the rules are in France for people in images in public spaces, is it the same as the UK? So have you thought about photographing people AND the buildings? Also, have you thought about doing some closeups on some of the buildings as some of them have quite cool geometric patterns - would be nice abstract photos although I'm not sure if that sort of thing sells much on Alamy.

 

It's normal that you're going to get converging verticals in your pictures when you're pointing your camera up from horizontal so much and you're not using a tilt and shift lens. It's quite excessive in some photos though - are you editing to reduce this at all?

 

Some photos look quite underexposed, are you trying to go for a dark look? The histogram for these pictures will be really skewed to the left side and your whites will not be actually be displaying as whites.

 

Some pictures have shadow areas that are really dark and could do with them being lifted in editing:

 

 

Also, my camera for example has a tendency to produce pictures that are quite blue, it's just the way the white balance works in the A7iii so I need to adjust the white balance in Lightroom. It looks like a lot of your pictures are quite blue - I think it's actually quite a good look for the skyscrapers, but maybe not for some other cityscapes:

 

Captions - you are generally describing quite well what the photo is showing and where it is. But not always:

Bordeaux August 2019 - Image ID: 2C2JA7W

 

So good luck, I hope you enjoy your France trips, I'm very jealous!

Steve

 

Edited July 3, 2020 by Steve F

[spacecadet]

3 hours ago, Steve F said:

I'm a bit dubious about the Alamy portfolio to be honest. I haven't seen any feedback on the Forum at all about how useful it's been to anyone

I played with it when it came out but haven't touched it since then.

 

Edited July 3, 2020 by spacecadet

[spacecadet]

3 hours ago, Steve F said:

Captions - you are generally describing quite well what the photo is showing and where it is. But not always:

Bordeaux August 2019 - Image ID: 2C2JA7W

Well, it is Bordeaux- I'm guessing somewhere behind the Place de la Bourse- but buyers won't guess, they'll look somewhere else. Or more likely it won't be seen at all because the tags are too general.

[Steve F]

7 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

Well, it is Bordeaux- I'm guessing somewhere behind the Place de la Bourse- but buyers won't guess, they'll look somewhere else. Or more likely it won't be seen at all because the tags are too general.

That's what I meant, it's too general, not specific enough.

[Gareth Sewell]

1 minute ago, Steve F said:

That's what I meant, it's too general, not specific enough.

Yes, this has slipped through the net, they were all set to that initially but some went direct on sale from QC before I could change the caption and this and probably a few more have been missed by me for re-captioning so thanks! (I'll do a proper reply on your first comment later when I have some more time)

 

9 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

Well, it is Bordeaux- I'm guessing somewhere behind the Place de la Bourse- but buyers won't guess, they'll look somewhere else. Or more likely it won't be seen at all because the tags are too general.

Haven't seen which photo this one is yet but you're probably right and I'll go and add more detail if I can. Thanks!

[Gareth Sewell]

5 hours ago, Steve F said:

Comment va ton francais?

haha, basic but ok.

5 hours ago, Steve F said:

I'm a bit dubious about the Alamy portfolio to be honest. I haven't seen any feedback on the Forum at all about how useful it's been to anyone, although maybe there's a hidden post somewhere I haven't seen. Maybe it's useful if you have a huge collection, or you photograph something very niche, or you have a very distinctive photographic style. Otherwise, I'm not sure how many clients are going to search anyone's portfolio when they can just do a new general search for a different image. But I stand ready to be corrected by someone else on the Forum!! It won't hurt to curate your images and I see you've already started.

This could be handy to link to from my own website, or to integrate into it. It could also help with alamy SEO to help some photos rank better, I'm guessing that's why Alamy brought it in, and it's easy for me to send my portfolio to editors or content / copywriters for them to check out. I attend networking events with content creators so I guess this could be handy for that.

 

 

5 hours ago, Steve F said:

I like your La Defence photos a lot. There is a saying that photos with people in sell well. I don't know what the rules are in France for people in images in public spaces, is it the same as the UK? So have you thought about photographing people AND the buildings? Also, have you thought about doing some closeups on some of the buildings as some of them have quite cool geometric patterns - would be nice abstract photos although I'm not sure if that sort of thing sells much on Alamy.

 

Thanks! Good idea, something I can try next time. I have a mix, some with people and some without, I'll try some closeups next time, maybe take a telephoto with me so I can get in closer.

 

5 hours ago, Steve F said:

It's normal that you're going to get converging verticals in your pictures when you're pointing your camera up from horizontal so much and you're not using a tilt and shift lens. It's quite excessive in some photos though - are you editing to reduce this at all?

I am using a keystone tool to reduce or remove it in some photos but I've only learned to use that recently so I'll be giving more space around buildings next time so that I don't lose so much when I "straighten". I wanted to keep a few with the converging verticals though just for creative reasons, likewise some of the La Defence ones are dark, it was getting dark anyway and these are lighter than shot but I didn't like them as much when "properly" exposed according to the histogram so left them as they were to create a moody look, I'll need to check the tags to see if I've added something like that. Have seen plenty of these darker skyline type shots used over the years so there must be a market.

Having said that, fair point on some of the other daytime photos that have a lot of shadow, the one of the street/alley definitely should have been lightened, it must have gotten missed out of the edit.

 

5 hours ago, Steve F said:

Also, my camera for example has a tendency to produce pictures that are quite blue, it's just the way the white balance works in the A7iii so I need to adjust the white balance in Lightroom. It looks like a lot of your pictures are quite blue - I think it's actually quite a good look for the skyscrapers, but maybe not for some other cityscapes:

 

Yep, A7III here too, noticed a tendency towards blue, especially in certain lighting conditions or with certain lenses. Something I need to pay more attention to, I shoot RAW so should be able to correct. The AWB has been getting better with firmware updates, originally it was too biased towards yellow! I recently bought a colorchecker passport to help me, though that's more for my indoor photography, the software may help me with my editing, should probably colour calibrate my monitor as well..

 

Thanks a lot for the feedback, plenty for me to take into consideration.

 

G

[Steve F]

40 minutes ago, Gareth Sewell said:

This could be handy to link to from my own website, or to integrate into it. It could also help with alamy SEO to help some photos rank better, I'm guessing that's why Alamy brought it in, and it's easy for me to send my portfolio to editors or content / copywriters for them to check out. I attend networking events with content creators so I guess this could be handy for that.

Those all sound like good reasons.

 

40 minutes ago, Gareth Sewell said:

I am using a keystone tool to reduce or remove it in some photos but I've only learned to use that recently so I'll be giving more space around buildings next time so that I don't lose so much when I "straighten". I wanted to keep a few with the converging verticals though just for creative reasons, likewise some of the La Defence ones are dark, it was getting dark anyway and these are lighter than shot but I didn't like them as much when "properly" exposed according to the histogram so left them as they were to create a moody look, I'll need to check the tags to see if I've added something like that. Have seen plenty of these darker skyline type shots used over the years so there must be a market.

Having said that, fair point on some of the other daytime photos that have a lot of shadow, the one of the street/alley definitely should have been lightened, it must have gotten missed out of the edit.

I do like the effect of converging verticals in these pictures - it is subjective - just making sure you were trying to go for this. Yes, I try to leave more room around too. That's interesting about the darkened skylines, I'll keep a look out now. You could keep the dark shadows, but maybe increase the highlights...? Just a thought.

 

No problem, have fun.

Steve

Edited July 3, 2020 by Steve F