Brand new! Critique would be welcomed

[denisew428]

Brand new just getting started, would love critique on my small portfolio!

Edited May 26, 2021 by denisew428
misspelled

[zxzoomy]

I think some would sell. Ferocious competition on here re flowers so, pretty as they are, I would limit the number of those. Signs and business frontages sell, especially big names.

[Steve F]

Hi Denise,

Welcome!

 

I think your captions are too short, you need to be more specific about what's in each picture.

https://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/captions-and-keywords-for-images/?section=8

 

"Before you start, think about the potential use of the image and what it’s likely to be sold for, the more accurately you describe your image, the more visibility it will have in customer searches, which will significantly increase your chance of making a sale."

 

Some flower picture suggestions: do a mix of direct and indirect sunlight shots - be aware that some publications don't accept flower shots in direct sunlight. Perhaps consider some shots with a lower F number to throw the background a bit more out of focus (if you have a lens capable of this). Make sure you include the latin name (clients will search this) in the caption and the country / continent (North America, Europe...), as well as the season.

 

Converging verticals:

You have a couple of pictures with fairly obvious converging verticals. This is an easy fix in Lightroom (Transform then Auto will generally fix it), or other photo software. If you're not using software to edit your pics, then be aware of the problem, and try to avoid pointing your camera higher than you have to unless you're deliberately trying to do the effect.

 

Choice of subject:

A lot of stock photos try to illustrate a concept. I can see what you're trying to do here, but ask yourself before you take a picture, can you imagine seeing these in print anywhere? You never know what will sell, but these shots are very generic and boring, I can't imagine they will sell. If you have too many pictures that are viewed during client searches, but not zoomed, this will hurt your CTR rank, which affects how high up your pictures appear in searches.

 

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

 

Finally, keep a look out in magazines, books, newspapers, websites etc. for stock photos and inspiration (if you have an online newspaper on your smartphone, or go on the newspaper website, every article has a photo at the head, normally a stock picture). The image credits will say if the photo is from a stock agency. These are the ones that sell. Compare with the pictures that you are producing.

 

I hope this helps,, good luck!

Stephen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 30, 2021 by Steve F