Portfolio help

[Yasomania]

Hello everyone, can you help me to improve my portfolio, thanks in advance for any advice and tips.

[zxzoomy]

If it was my portfolio I would look to increase the contrast on some shots in the future to give them more zing. As I like selling more,  I would reduce the number of flowers in the future as I'm told they are difficult to sell. Others can comment better than I can on that. And, like I bet I should too, I would check my tags. 'Surgical mask', 'flu', 'mask' in an empty beach shot at  2HAT6TJ ?

[Steve F]

Hi Yasin,

You could work on your captions.

https://www.alamy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Captions-and-Tags-checklist.pdf

https://www.alamy.com/blog/tips-for-your-captions-from-the-sales-team

https://www.alamy.com/blog/captions-and-tags

 

...you should end up with a caption like this: “Young boy at the
Tour de France in 1997 in Plumelec, France.”. Remember who, what, where, when.

 

"Your caption should describe the image for any potential customer – the caption is the first piece of information they’ll read about the image and needs to be as informative as possible. It should always detail who or what is in the image and what is happening."

 

"Accuracy is vital when adding captions as incorrect names of people, places or animals can cause potential issues. There have been occasions where customers have licensed images for articles or educational texts based on the caption provided by the contributor, only to find this has been incorrect."

 

 

 

Your captions are searchable, so better captions will help your photos be found.

 

A single mussel shell on the sand by the sea. Ideal photo for advertising or holiday brochure. - Image ID: 2HAT7DM

Accuracy - this is not a mussel shell.

 

multicolored granulated sugars used to decorate cakes and ice cream in a steel container. Selective Focus. - Image ID: 2HAT55G

I know English is not your first language, but these are called either 'hundreds and thousands' or 'sprinkles'.

 

wooden pier view in the middle of the sea in antalya side. Selective Focus. - Image ID: 2HAT762

which sea?

which country?

which season / month?

Antalya 'side' - this doesn't mean anything. Antalya shore? Antalya coast?

 

 

Try looking at similar subjects by other contributors and see how they have been captioned in English.

 

A field on the way to Antalya Side. Selective Focus - Image ID: 2HAT93J

 

 

 

Try to be a bit more selective with what you shoot. We've all got limited time. There's no species of plant given and the subject and image is pretty boring. It's technically not impossible that this would sell, but what can you imagine a buyer using this image for?

 

leadwort Flower. Plumbago Auriculata. Selective Focus. Space for Copy - Image ID: 2HAT6W6

 

 

 

Which month is it flowering in and what location (country)? I wouldn't bother with the term 'selective focus', it's extremely common in photography, you might as well just be putting 'sky' in every caption. Now this photo is extremely unlikely to sell for advertising purposes, but rather for editorial purposes. So I would perhaps shoot a copy space image, but more importantly a more zoomed in image that has a better composition and is more likely to be noticed by a potential buyer when they are looking at thumbnails on Alamy.

 

Hope this helps,

Steve

[meanderingemu]

1 hour ago, Steve F said:

 

 

leadwort Flower. Plumbago Auriculata. Selective Focus. Space for Copy - Image ID: 2HAT6W6

 

 

Which month is it flowering in and what location (country)? I wouldn't bother with the term 'selective focus', it's extremely common in photography, you might as well just be putting 'sky' in every caption. Now this photo is extremely unlikely to sell for advertising purposes, but rather for editorial purposes. So I would perhaps shoot a copy space image, but more importantly a more zoomed in image that has a better composition and is more likely to be noticed by a potential buyer when they are looking at thumbnails on Alamy.

 

Hope this helps,

Steve

 

 

if i remember when i started, "Selective Focus" was recommended adding on some MS to increase chance it would not be rejected as out of focus. of course since Caption is not part of Alamy QC, this seems odd.  

 

Of course with AI image review this is probably moot now. 

[Steve F]

4 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

Of course with AI image review this is probably moot now. 

 

I didn't know Alamy did AI reviews now. Does that mean they don't spot check, but do the whole submission now?

Edited May 8, 2022 by Steve F

[meanderingemu]

37 minutes ago, Steve F said:

 

I didn't know Alamy did AI reviews now. Does that mean they don't spot check, but do the whole submission now?

 

this was meant for the premise why people add "selective focus", at Alamy caption is not part of QC so that makes no difference in submission AI or No-AI. 

[Chris Burrows]

Good flower pictures do sell on Alamy they appear in most gardening magazines, many gardening books and gardening columns in many general interest magazines and newspapers.  To sell though they need to be at least of a reasonable quality and preferably correctly captioned, though if you look through Alamy you will see that this is not always the case.  But despite this the buyers still come to Alamy, one magazine has the credit on many of its pages "All Alamy unless otherwise credited" The captioning and keywords do require some knowledge of the subject though. 

I would suggest a sort of standard format for flowers  Species name  cultivar name  common name(s) Anything of interest in the picture eg. Some flowers starting to set seed  Month taken.

Along the lines of Image 2FK76E1 Iris unguicularis 'Mary Barnard' . Beautiful Purple Flower in Turkey.

Unfortunately this iris is obviously a bearded iris and unguicularis are unbearded so not unguicularis or 'Mary Barnard'

I would also suggest that if you had taken this picture vertically and from slightly higher you would have avoided that distracting highlight and orange bit (wheely bin?) on the right and the line of bricks across the top. Also wrongly keyworded as Iris lazica for some reason.

There are a few with questionable captions and keywords

For example

2HAT950 captioned as Glaucium Corniculatum looks like Papaver to me especially those seed heads and you have tulips in the keywords

2F4K2HD Primula vulgaris, common primrose  This is a primula but not vulgaris it is the sort of plant commonly sold as primrose often in mixed colours.

This flower is in a terrible state, unless you are looking to illustrate some disease or damage  look for flowers in good condition, and if necessary clear away any dead leaves etc around it. 

Strange keywords for a yellow poor quality flower beautiful pink purple red rose

2E59NE5 Madonna Lilly Looks to me to be some sort of Ornithogalum definitely not a lilium.  Dead grass and weeds not very attractive a much closer shot would have been better.

Keywords  narcissus snowdrop It does no good having extra guesses in the keywords you need to find out what the flower is.

2FYEMW6 A wonderful white rose  Not a very good specimen not very white apart from bottom left which looks rather burnt out and with the dark background looks a bit like flash was used.  As with many of your pictures would be better if flower was in better condition was bigger and less background not as dark.  

2G4E283 Lonicera fragrantissima  The caption you copied from Wikipedia says "known by the common names winter-flowering honeysuck"  (it got cut off a bit I presume) However it is called "winter flowering" and you took the picture in June. I would guess Lonicera japonica 'Halliana'

 

Had a quick look at your other non-flower pics.  Exposure and composition are much better in these, at least to my untrained eye, almost as if someone else took the plant pictures.  Perhaps plants/flowers are not for you.  I loved seeing the family pictures, hope you succeed in selling some. 

[Cal]

It looks like a lot of your images are RF. This isn't necessarily a problem, but when using RF I would say it is especially important to restrict their usage to editorial where appropriate. This one doesn't have such a restriction, and you have even captioned it "no people" which is not true: 2HAT8DN

Edited May 29, 2022 by Cal
the link was gargantuan. posted the image ID instead