No Alamy Sales

[John Mitchell]

22 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

Addressing flower pictures. 99% of flower/plants I sell or have zoomed, the search term is the scientific name. To all who think it’s not necessary, that’s ok. Here’s the reason:

When searched by scientific name, that means mine have less competition in the field. Win-win for me. One particular blooming plant, I have closeups, single bloom, multiple bloom ( cluster) & the whole plant. The whole plant is the one sold most.

So if you want to shoot flowers, get the closeup AND the whole plant.

Signed, 

Hobbyist (but a serious one)

 

I've had some very good plant/flower sales (including some for $$$), but so far this year I'm batting zero. Have you noticed a decline in these types of sales recently? 

[Allan Bell]

18 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

I've had some very good plant/flower sales (including some for $$$), but so far this year I'm batting zero. Have you noticed a decline in these types of sales recently? 

 

Keep taking them, the way the planet is going they will soon be extinct species.

 

Allan

 

[Rebecca Ore]

15 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

I've had some very good plant/flower sales (including some for $$$), but so far this year I'm batting zero. Have you noticed a decline in these types of sales recently? 

 

Some of this will be people putting together books or articles.  If a major book came out in one year, sales may be depressed for a while until Kew Gardens or some other authority rearranges the genus names.

 

Good photos of charismatic polar or tropical animals doing something seem to be repeat licenses for some of us. 

[John Mitchell]

2 hours ago, Allan Bell said:

 

Keep taking them, the way the planet is going they will soon be extinct species.

 

Allan

 

 

... and hence us as well, so it might be moot. 😱

 

 

Edited June 19, 2023 by John Mitchell

[John Mitchell]

2 hours ago, Rebecca Ore said:

 

Some of this will be people putting together books or articles.  If a major book came out in one year, sales may be depressed for a while until Kew Gardens or some other authority rearranges the genus names.

 

Good photos of charismatic polar or tropical animals doing something seem to be repeat licenses for some of us. 

 

My last flower sale was actually TV use -- closeup of a white daisy, mid $$. UK gardening magazines and websites license a lot of flower/plant images from Alamy, but for low fees. Haven't seen any of those for a long time. Given the zillions of flower images floating around out there, I'm amazed every time one licenses. Someone zoomed some poppies not long ago, so hope springs anew. 🌻

 

 

 

 

Edited June 19, 2023 by John Mitchell

[Betty LaRue]

2 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

I've had some very good plant/flower sales (including some for $$$), but so far this year I'm batting zero. Have you noticed a decline in these types of sales recently? 

No decline. I’ve sold 18 plant pictures in the last year, not all flowers. A fair amount of blooming shrubs/trees. Sometimes, half of my zooms for the rolling month are of plants.  They are worth shooting for me. 6 sales of plants in 2023.

Edited June 19, 2023 by Betty LaRue

[John Mitchell]

43 minutes ago, Betty LaRue said:

No decline. I’ve sold 18 plant pictures in the last year, not all flowers. A fair amount of blooming shrubs/trees. Sometimes, half of my zooms for the rolling month are of plants.  They are worth shooting for me. 6 sales of plants in 2023.

 

That's encouraging to hear. You've got lots of very nice flower/plant images in your collection. There are a few possible candidates blooming in our yard at the moment. Guess I need to get snapping...

[sooth]

3 hours ago, Allan Bell said:

 

Keep taking them, the way the planet is going they will soon be extinct species.

 

Allan

 

 

my portfolio has few flower/plant images, but i've had a 4 sales this year of invasive species of plants, which would survive and thrive under new conditions.

 

Edited June 19, 2023 by sooth

[geogphotos]

On 18/06/2023 at 11:50, Gervais Montacute said:

 

My main pastime when it comes to commission generated work (which I regard as a hobby btw) is writing music tracks for Tv and film. I can tell you that just one single track in a month (certainly in my case anyway and no big deal) will generate 2 to 3 times what someone here with 150,000 plus images gets from Alamy. And that's just on one track. I don't do 40% commission. It's actually illegal at say the PRS for any publisher to take more that 50% for example.

 

 

I am not trying to contradict you as I know nothing about way music works but I did happen to come across this today:

 

" In the case of Spotify, the amount you can expect to receive lies between $0.003 to $0.005 per stream. That’s roughly equivalent to a 70/30 split between the rights holders with 70% and the platform with 30%."

 

 

[ROC]

I just thought I’d add a comment about plant image sales. 26 of my sales in the last 12 months have been of plants/flowers. One getting a three figure fee. (I’m not quite sure why a German Calendar would want a photo of lupins, and it definitely wasn’t the best flower bed I’ve photographed. But I’m not complaining!). 

[Betty LaRue]

This month four out of nine sales (so far) are of plants. Yet plants aren’t anywhere near 40-50% of my portfolio.

[zxzoomy]

Re flowers and plants what do people think about using direct flash on them, especially if light is lowish?

[Betty LaRue]

3 hours ago, zxzoomy said:

Re flowers and plants what do people think about using direct flash on them, especially if light is lowish?

I wouldn’t. Did it years ago & it created unnatural shadows on the wrong plane and the image didn’t look right to me. I haven’t used a flash for at least 10 years, probably longer. I suppose one could bounce it & make it work, though.

I find the best flower-shooting condition is in shade on a bright day, or on a bright but cloudy day….the softbox effect. I have taken many in direct sunlight but prefer the softbox effect.

This one was taken in the shade. Sometimes, if I can & it works, I stand blocking the sun to get the shot. Direct light can often give blown highlights if one isn’t careful.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Betty LaRue

[Steve F]

32 minutes ago, Betty LaRue said:

I wouldn’t. Did it years ago & it created unnatural shadows on the wrong plane and the image didn’t look right to me. I haven’t used a flash for at least 10 years, probably longer. I suppose one could bounce it & make it work, though.

I find the best flower-shooting condition is in shade on a bright day, or on a bright but cloudy day….the softbox effect. I have taken many in direct sunlight but prefer the softbox effect.

This one was taken in the shade. Sometimes, if I can & it works, I stand blocking the sun to get the shot. Direct light can often give blown highlights if one isn’t careful.

 

agreed. I'm wondering whether I should get rid of my flash, or just keep it for macro photography. Never use it otherwise

[Betty LaRue]

24 minutes ago, Steve F said:

 

agreed. I'm wondering whether I should get rid of my flash, or just keep it for macro photography. Never use it otherwise

Yes I have used my flash in the past, bounced, for isolated against white product shooting. Now I have two stand softboxes set up & no longer use flash. I should sell mine, too, but there might be an occasional bounce use. Seems when one gets rid of something, an occasion arises that you wish you had it.

[antonsrkn]

4 hours ago, zxzoomy said:

Re flowers and plants what do people think about using direct flash on them, especially if light is lowish?

 

Why wouldn't you?  Yes, if light is already ideal or you use a tripod you might not necessarily need a flash although careful use of fill flash could still probably improve the final image in most cases. 

[Jacek]

What is Your experiance and last sale  about birds or animals pictures ? I am  newbie on Alamy and dont have much pictures ( most of them same pictures croped in different way ) . My worry is only few  visitors from beggining till now and no sales of course. 

For example on Adobe where i upload pictures which are let say  " nothing special " for few uploaded in short time  i sale something for one $ .

[antonsrkn]

12 minutes ago, Jacek said:

What is Your experiance and last sale  about birds or animals pictures ? I am  newbie on Alamy and dont have much pictures ( most of them same pictures croped in different way ) . My worry is only few  visitors from beggining till now and no sales of course. 

For example on Adobe where i upload pictures which are let say  " nothing special " for few uploaded in short time  i sale something for one $ .

 

They sell. But I don't think you're doing yourself any favors by having a bunch of redundant images.  I'd limit yourself to just a few photos of any one subject from a shoot.  Also it takes a while to build a portfolio of wildlife images to the point that they are regularly licensing - with just 200 images you're not going to get significant returns.  On the bright side, I'm of the opinion that wildlife tends to sell for higher $ than many other genres of images on here. On the downside, wildlife photography is often an expensive endeavor requiring time, specialized equipment, travel, etc... you're likely to spend more $$ obtaining the images than you make on stock photos.  

[Allan Bell]

My recent last sale was for a plant/flower image it only made high $ but a sale is a sale. The photo was taken a few years ago so hang on in there.

 

Allan

 

[NYCat]

31 minutes ago, Jacek said:

What is Your experiance and last sale  about birds or animals pictures ? I am  newbie on Alamy and dont have much pictures ( most of them same pictures croped in different way ) . My worry is only few  visitors from beggining till now and no sales of course. 

For example on Adobe where i upload pictures which are let say  " nothing special " for few uploaded in short time  i sale something for one $ .

 

You have wonderful images but I think you can spend more time and effort on captioning and keywording so your images are more likely to be seen. My experiments have shown me that putting a word both in the caption and as a supertag is helpful. You can do a lot more with your captions. Include the common and latin names and the place. I don't think English is your first language and I think you would be helped a lot by looking at the captions and keywords of images of your subject that show up on the first page of a search. I think that beautiful images of wildlife are less likely to sell on Alamy than images of the animal behavior. Our buyers are usually writing a book or article that will be informative. It also helps if your animal is in the news. My polar bears sell better than anything else. And the ones that look like the ice is melting sell the best. When you are shooting think about what an article might be about and show the typical behavior of that animal. Then be sure to put "behavior" and the description of the behavior in captions and keywords.

 

Paulette

[Betty LaRue]

36 minutes ago, Jacek said:

What is Your experiance and last sale  about birds or animals pictures ? I am  newbie on Alamy and dont have much pictures ( most of them same pictures croped in different way ) . My worry is only few  visitors from beggining till now and no sales of course. 

For example on Adobe where i upload pictures which are let say  " nothing special " for few uploaded in short time  i sale something for one $ .

I have a lot of bird images. Back when I first joined then started making some sales (around 500 images) I sold some birds. I think my first ever sale was of a hummingbird. But these last years, they aren’t selling at all. It’s an over saturated genre against some stellar competition.

Shooting birds and butterflies was my passion when I joined Alamy, but soon learned other subjects sold much better. You can shoot what makes you happy, but the $$ often is in shooting things that is rather Ho-hum to you.

[IKuzmin]

10 hours ago, zxzoomy said:

flowers and plants what do people think about using direct flash on them, especially if light is lowish

I certainly would if light is not ideal. I am not a plant photographer but assume this is something similar to small objects/semi macro, and in a few cases where I photographed plants, I did use flashes. Not a direct flash though (except it is a filling light which also does work!), at least two flashes around (using a hand-held rack is easier than a stand). If something small, can use w/o a diffuser otherwise diffusers help. Below is a recent image of fungus (each "bird nest" is ~3-4 mm in diameter) which I would not be able to make w/o flashes. Yet' this is a very simplistic/documentary image, nothing artistic/special of course (which I would probably try to do if this is an animal).

And, certainly, I am not "going to sell" flashes. I permanently have 3 in my photo backpack along with 2 portable diffusers, transponders, and a rack for their mount.

 

 

Edited June 28, 2023 by IKuzmin

[IKuzmin]

4 hours ago, Jacek said:

What is Your experiance and last sale  about birds or animals pictures

Birds are hard, too much of competition. I still have ~15% of sales from birds but they constitute >99% of my port. Other critters sell better particularly if you have a good CTR so that they are shown in searches on the 1st page, and then selected for zooms by customers. Cutouts also sell better than regular images (i.e. they are ~5% of my port but ~10% of sales). However, purchasing prices for my cutouts have been to date low $$, therefore I do not think I'm going to spend time making them in the future. In general, this year is substantially worse than previous for me. Not only on Alamy.

Edited June 28, 2023 by IKuzmin

[IKuzmin]

6 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

You can shoot what makes you happy, but the $$ often is in shooting things that is rather Ho-hum to you

So why do you (or would you) photograph that Ho-hum? Please, just do not tell me that you make any substantial income from your stock sales, I'm not going to trust that.

[Michael Ventura]

45 minutes ago, IKuzmin said:

So why do you (or would you) photograph that Ho-hum? Please, just do not tell me that you make any substantial income from your stock sales, I'm not going to trust that.

 

I get what Betty is saying.  My real photography love has always been travel but it is not practical as much as it used to be.  I still travel and take photos but I used to travel for the sake of stock, not much anymore.  But just to keep the trigger and mind working, outside of my assignment work, I too take ho-hum photos of just everyday normal boring stuff.  I had a sale this month of store front that was just a snap, I may have taken two steps from my car (near zero effort) but glad I did.  Maybe it is a bit like a singer singing the scales between the important performances...keeps you photographically agile.