portfolio critique please!

[thrillerfillerspiller]

I've uploaded 3000 images since January - of flowers and plants.  One sale!  I know, need patience but not a huge amount of views either.  Latin names, relevant keywords, good composition all included.  I'm doing a year of plants in the UK so uploading almost every day.  Aware that flowers are a popular subject too!

 

Also, is there a way of putting photos in sets?  ie tulips, snowdrops etc. 

[Steve F]

Hi Gabrielle,

Nice pseudonym 🙃

Sales can take 3-4 months to be reported on Alamy so they should start coming through now.

 

Guess you're enjoying the great outdoors a lot with your goal there! Some advice that might help:

 

You haven't put the location in the captions. Some of your pictures look quite underexposed.

 

I think sometimes where you've concentrated on a single flower, it could be bigger in the frame. I know it's good to show some surrounding foliage, but I feel there's too much shown here:

 

Which flower were you picking as the main subject here? If you were trying to show a grouping, there's a big patch of boring green right in the middle of the frame. Could you perhaps have picked a flower looking straight on inside it, with some also in the shot looking side on?

 

re. your last question, yes, there is a Portfolio where you can do this (see 'Your Alamy Portfolio' page on the Alamy Dashboard). But clients can't search this within Alamy that I'm aware of, it's more for you to share your portfolio with your clients. Otherwise no, you can't do groupings - when a client searches on Alamy for certain keywords, your images will appear together with everyone else's.

 

Good luck!

Steve

 

p.s. You also appear to be spamming keywords:

 

Your pictures will appear at a certain level (e.g. first page, 10th page... etc.) in searches by clients, depending on various factors. CTR and Sales are the only factors we know about for sure in the secret formula Alamy uses to set our search ranking. Your CTR rank (on your Dashboard) is a function of the number of times a client zooms (clicks on) one of your images versus the number of times your images appear in a client search, but are not zoomed.

CTR=Zooms/Views * 100

This is basically a long way of me saying, don't spam keywords. E.g. don't put sky, blue, clouds for every single outdoors picture you shoot. There is a tendency to try to put lots of keywords for your images to try to get them seen by clients. So they may well appear in searches, but if they're not zoomed by a client, your CTR rank will drop. Which means your images won't show as high up in client searches. You don't want your images to get buried in the 255 million images on Alamy. By all means, put a lot of keywords in for certain pictures if they're relevant. Captions and keywords are almost more important than the image itself because you can have the most amazing images ever, but if they're keyworded wrong, no one will ever see them.

 

Include variant spellings, in particular British and American spellings. Also include singular and plurals  of words if appropriate. Don't worry about moving the line to optimised (green) - we have collectively decided that this is not a good idea unless you really need that many keywords.

 

Edited May 6, 2021 by Steve F

[Radim]

I think you're on the right track, sales will come in time. You just have to persevere. Good luck

[Colblimp]

Under the search term 'flowers', there's almost 5 1/2 million results, 'plants' yields 3.25 million pics.  I think you can see what you're competing with.  Consider broadening your horizons in terms of what you shoot.  Good luck.

[NYCat]

3 hours ago, Steve F said:

Hi Gabrielle,

Nice pseudonym 🙃

Sales can take 3-4 months to be reported on Alamy so they should start coming through now.

 

Guess you're enjoying the great outdoors a lot with your goal there! Some advice that might help:

 

You haven't put the location in the captions. Some of your pictures look quite underexposed.

 

I think sometimes where you've concentrated on a single flower, it could be bigger in the frame. I know it's good to show some surrounding foliage, but I feel there's too much shown here:

 

Which flower were you picking as the main subject here? If you were trying to show a grouping, there's a big patch of boring green right in the middle of the frame. Could you perhaps have picked a flower looking straight on inside it, with some also in the shot looking side on?

 

re. your last question, yes, there is a Portfolio where you can do this (see 'Your Alamy Portfolio' page on the Alamy Dashboard). But clients can't search this within Alamy that I'm aware of, it's more for you to share your portfolio with your clients. Otherwise no, you can't do groupings - when a client searches on Alamy for certain keywords, your images will appear together with everyone else's.

 

Good luck!

Steve

 

p.s. You also appear to be spamming keywords:

 

Your pictures will appear at a certain level (e.g. first page, 10th page... etc.) in searches by clients, depending on various factors. CTR and Sales are the only factors we know about for sure in the secret formula Alamy uses to set our search ranking. Your CTR rank (on your Dashboard) is a function of the number of times a client zooms (clicks on) one of your images versus the number of times your images appear in a client search, but are not zoomed.

CTR=Zooms/Views * 100

This is basically a long way of me saying, don't spam keywords. E.g. don't put sky, blue, clouds for every single outdoors picture you shoot. There is a tendency to try to put lots of keywords for your images to try to get them seen by clients. So they may well appear in searches, but if they're not zoomed by a client, your CTR rank will drop. Which means your images won't show as high up in client searches. You don't want your images to get buried in the 255 million images on Alamy. By all means, put a lot of keywords in for certain pictures if they're relevant. Captions and keywords are almost more important than the image itself because you can have the most amazing images ever, but if they're keyworded wrong, no one will ever see them.

 

Include variant spellings, in particular British and American spellings. Also include singular and plurals  of words if appropriate. Don't worry about moving the line to optimised (green) - we have collectively decided that this is not a good idea unless you really need that many keywords.

 

 

Steve, I really admire you for the time and trouble you take to help on the Forum. I just want to say I sometimes disagree with your comments on composition. Personally, I've always liked off-center subjects... even ones on the edge of the frame but, also, I think on Alamy consideration of copy space is important. Those "blank" spaces can be useful for someone using the image with text. I just wanted to mention that for consideration. Choices to be made.

 

Paulette

[Steve F]

33 minutes ago, NYCat said:

 

Steve, I really admire you for the time and trouble you take to help on the Forum. I just want to say I sometimes disagree with your comments on composition. Personally, I've always liked off-center subjects... even ones on the edge of the frame but, also, I think on Alamy consideration of copy space is important. Those "blank" spaces can be useful for someone using the image with text. I just wanted to mention that for consideration. Choices to be made.

 

Paulette

 

Thanks Paulette!

 

I agree, I often don't leave enough space myself in images for copy. In that case I would shoot one image zoomed in and one for copy space. Generally, I don't think it's a big help if a client is searching through image thumbnails and the main subject is tiny, but you're right, there are lots of exceptions. I'm also not sure it's a benefit to poorly compose your subject in the hope that a client will crop tightly on what they need, other than just providing some extra space around an image edge than I otherwise would.

 

Not surprised that people don't always agree with the composition comments, it is very subjective... Off centre subjects, sure. Negative space is a thing. Some things work and some don't; there are objectively better and worse positions in a picture to place the main subject (in my opinion) Sometimes I put the main subject on the edge... 🙃:

 

 

Edited May 6, 2021 by Steve F

[thrillerfillerspiller]

Thank you all for your very generous time critiquing my portfolio.  All these points I'll 'take on board'!  Keyword spamming I seemed to be doing in hot pursuit of the 50 keywords.  I put London in the keywords but perhaps should be in the caption as well.  Composition - I often take a few shots at different angles and generally allow for copyspace.

 

This has been really helpful and will continue to upload along with pertinent keywords only.

[Steve F]

41 minutes ago, thrillerfillerspiller said:

Thank you all for your very generous time critiquing my portfolio.  All these points I'll 'take on board'!  Keyword spamming I seemed to be doing in hot pursuit of the 50 keywords.  I put London in the keywords but perhaps should be in the caption as well.  Composition - I often take a few shots at different angles and generally allow for copyspace.

 

This has been really helpful and will continue to upload along with pertinent keywords only.

 

Maybe put England or UK rather than London in the caption.

 

Buyers might be interested in the country the flowers are flowering in and the season/month as well possibly, so it might help to put these in the caption. I don't specialise at all in flowers though, maybe you can ask some other contributors.

[John Richmond]

Hello competitor 😀

 

Just to reassure you, there is a good market for well shot images of correctly labelled botanical and horticultural subjects.  Mine sell to a wide variety of garden magazines = both UK and worldwide, gardening sections of newspapers, nurseries, for calendars, for packaging, for websites, for books.  However, the market can be seasonal.  For example spring bulb shots tend to sell in spring when the subjects are coming up to flower and again in late summer / early autumn when they are on sale.  You'll often have a wait of a year or even more before there is interest in particular shots simply because they are not in season.

 

You are wise to include a wide range of more obscure plants.  A good number of my zooms and sales come from subjects where there are only a few images - sometimes only mine = on Alamy.  Great for increasing your Alamy ranking and hence visibility of your images.  Others have commented on your slightly excessive keywording and I'll agree with that.  I have no images that have optimised discovery according to Alamy - and it doesn't seem to hinder me in any way.  I'd also be tempted to write more descriptive captions - the sort of description that could be used directly as the copy going with your photo - and then use the keywords or phrases in those captions as supertags.  

 

It will take a while for sales to start coming in.  There are often 2 or more months delay between usage and reporting the sale so it is fairly early days for you.  But you've plenty of usable images there and sales will come.

 

John

[thrillerfillerspiller]

Thank you John for your informative reply.  As I'm just starting out going through the year, I realise there will be a wait of one year for garden magazines to start looking for appropriate photos.  I completely toned down the keywording tonight and it does seem to make sense dramatically reducing the amount of unnecessary fluff.  I had strange imaginings of someone searching for an image - spring flower four petals burgundy plant - madness!  I imagine those who are looking for plants know exactly what they're looking for and not a random searching for a 'pretty tulip'.

 

If you go to Kew for example, are there copyright issues?  Are you allowed to take photos there and sell online?

[John Richmond]

5 hours ago, thrillerfillerspiller said:

If you go to Kew for example, are there copyright issues?  Are you allowed to take photos there and sell online?

I've never been to Kew so I'm not aware of their terms and conditions for entry.  Does their website give any information?  A lot of gardens with paid entry do set conditions on any commercial photography and do chase agencies and photographers to take down images.  The National Trust is notorious for this.  Although Alamy have plenty of photos taken at Kew I personally wouldn't advertise the fact that individual flower or plant portraits were taken there or in any paid entry garden.  They could, after all, be taken anywhere.  In my own case the vast majority of my own images have been taken in my own garden, at The Garden House in Devon where I'm a volunteer, in other local gardens and nurseries where I've traded access for images for promotional work or personal use, or in public spaces with no restrictions on access for photography.

[meanderingemu]

On 07/05/2021 at 05:51, Steve F said:

 

Maybe put England or UK rather than London in the caption.

 

Buyers might be interested in the country the flowers are flowering in and the season/month as well possibly, so it might help to put these in the caption. I don't specialise at all in flowers though, maybe you can ask some other contributors.

 

agree with Steve (yet again).  Have a look at search for your specific subjects in AoA and see what people used as other KW in searches related to location.  

 

When i looked at some of mine in Canada, i found the use of the Country, but also wider and derivatives ie. Canadian, North America and North American, things i hadn't thought of.  Never saw city specific. 

[MizBrown]

55 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

Buyers might be interested in the country the flowers are flowering in and the season/month as well possibly, so it might help to put these in the caption. I don't specialise at all in flowers though, maybe you can ask some other contributors.

 

IDing a photo of a flower can depend on the bloom season.  Also, people do searches for landscapes based on time of the year. 

[thrillerfillerspiller]

Thank you John Richmond, meanderingemu and Miz Brown

 

Points taken!  Caption space is obviously much more important than just the name of the flower.

 

meanderingemu - what is AoA?  Took 5 mins to realise kw was keywords!!

[Mr Standfast]

AofA is the part of Alamy measures that records the whole Alamy database.

 

Good luck

[wiskerke]

AoA (you have to be logged in).

Lots of discussion and instructions on this forum.

Here are some previous bits of advice to get you started:

link 1

link 2

link 3

link 4

(Sorry, these are all mine, because for me they're easy to find.)

 

wim

[thrillerfillerspiller]

wiskerke

Superb!  I'll be reading these asap.  Thank you so much

[meanderingemu]

21 hours ago, thrillerfillerspiller said:

Thank you John Richmond, meanderingemu and Miz Brown

 

Points taken!  Caption space is obviously much more important than just the name of the flower.

 

meanderingemu - what is AoA?  Took 5 mins to realise kw was keywords!!

 

 

sorry for using acronyms,  it was a mistake to assume long time contributor would be familiar with Alamy, but i should have looked at number of posts.  

 

As @wiskerkehighlighted All of Alamy is one of useful tool that Contributor have for them to see what and how clients search for our images, and highlight potential gaps in our keywording and captioning.    

 

 

[thrillerfillerspiller]

meanderingemu  Long time contributor - yes, from 2006 - 08 then a 12 year gap!  I didn't ever look at the forums and I started just now to 'be honest with myself'!

 

People on the forum are incredibly generous and cannot believe how much valuable information is given.  I'll be keeping an eye out from now on ...  I hope I can help someone out in the future like you all have helped me.

[GeoffK]

On 08/05/2021 at 14:31, thrillerfillerspiller said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 17, 2021 by GeoffK
leaving Alamy

[Steve F]

9 hours ago, GeoffK said:

 

Main thing for the plants is that you are often taking close-up plant portraits with too wide a camera focal length.  It leads to messy backgrounds which make the images fairly unusable. Sorry but I just don't see that being used, certainly by the horticultural industry, as it's far too distracting a background. The copyspace is useless.

 

Shoot that with a 90mm or better still a 150/180mm macro and you will end up with a far better image.  Don't be too worried about a large depth of field - although not as trendy as a number of years ago, for covers shallow works as it's nice and easy to run copy across the top and bottom of images like this one (was used for a cover in the days when they paid well).

 

 

You don't need copyspace for mid or whole shots of plants i.e. a full shrub in flower (make sure it's a great example), there are clients who reqiure that for specific industry uses. So a mix of portraits and mid/whole/border shots are needed.

 

This shot (mine) sells and has so for a couple of decades mainly to the horticultural industry IMO because it shows a good example of the plant including it's habit (low spreading groundcover) and has plenty of flowers in decent condition when the photo was taken - it's on 120 Velvia. I also shot a closer one (sells a little more especially for labels) without showing the habit (almost like a crop of this one - cropping in those days was moving the tripod closer!!).

 

Although horticultural stock is very different from when I started (Thriller was a recent album!!) there are still lots of sales to be had (more so elsewhere) for the right work.  The level of compettion has been raised and people need to shoot accordingly.  It's all about the images plus a proper caption with latin name/genus/species/cultivar......anything after that is a bonus but it doesn't matter as much as for other genres. The real work is needed in the way the images are taken.

 

HTH

 

 

 

Geoff,

Great advice, thanks for sharing your experience.

Steve

[Betty LaRue]

10 hours ago, GeoffK said:

 

Main thing for the plants is that you are often taking close-up plant portraits with too wide a camera focal length.  It leads to messy backgrounds which make the images fairly unusable. Sorry but I just don't see that being used, certainly by the horticultural industry, as it's far too distracting a background. The copyspace is useless.

 

Shoot that with a 90mm or better still a 150/180mm macro and you will end up with a far better image.  Don't be too worried about a large depth of field - although not as trendy as a number of years ago, for covers shallow works as it's nice and easy to run copy across the top and bottom of images like this one (was used for a cover in the days when they paid well).

 

 

You don't need copyspace for mid or whole shots of plants i.e. a full shrub in flower (make sure it's a great example), there are clients who reqiure that for specific industry uses. So a mix of portraits and mid/whole/border shots are needed.

 

This shot (mine) sells and has so for a couple of decades mainly to the horticultural industry IMO because it shows a good example of the plant including it's habit (low spreading groundcover) and has plenty of flowers in decent condition when the photo was taken - it's on 120 Velvia. I also shot a closer one (sells a little more especially for labels) without showing the habit (almost like a crop of this one - cropping in those days was moving the tripod closer!!).

 

Although horticultural stock is very different from when I started (Thriller was a recent album!!) there are still lots of sales to be had (more so elsewhere) for the right work.  The level of compettion has been raised and people need to shoot accordingly.  It's all about the images plus a proper caption with latin name/genus/species/cultivar......anything after that is a bonus but it doesn't matter as much as for other genres. The real work is needed in the way the images are taken.

 

HTH

 

 

I’m so glad you are active on the forum again. You have always been generous with your help and advice. And yes, I have many images of closeups of these trumpet flowers. Yet it is the two I have of the whole vine that repeatedly sells.

 

This is a repeat seller, also.

 

Edited May 11, 2021 by Betty LaRue
Add image

[thrillerfillerspiller]

GeoffK and Betty LaRue

Thanks so much for your advice.  Very carefully looking into it.  Spending most of my time identifying plants I see everywhere but also trying to get a portfolio of the full range of plants and their colours.

 

The aquilegia you picked out was due to a need to see as many aquilegia colours (and  withall flowers) as possible - sometimes the background isn't 'convenient'!  It can seem like a documentary, reference shots portfolio and I do need to concentrate more on the quality of the image.

 

Thank you again!

[GeoffK]

On 11/05/2021 at 18:36, Betty LaRue said:

I’m so glad you are active on the forum again. You have always been generous with your help and advice.......

Sorry Betty but I am leaving (again). Terminating account for good. Last time I made mistake of leaving kws and captions in images, this time, thanks to AIM, I've got rid of them and no way on earth would I waste time on re-annotating the images. More insidious changes that are just a little too much to put up with.

 

Regards 

 

Geoff