Some feedback on my "work in progress" portfolio...

[Julian Em]

Hey, would love some feedback here on my portfolio!

I know it`s pretty small at this point in time, and most of those pictures are probably in an absolute oversaturated category!

But still would love some feedback, especially in regards to tags, titles and keywording!

Thanks

[NYCat]

Unfortunately, the link to our images is not working these days. If you have made a "portfolio" you can give us a link.

 

Paulette

[Chris Burrows]

If no portfolio and all your pics are under one name just give the Alamy ref of one picture and they can all be found from that.

[Julian Em]

Oh, of course, here is a link that should work:

 

https://www.alamy.com/search/imageresults.aspx?pl=1&plno=1025679&pn=1&ps=100&plpublic=1&viewaspublic=1#BHM=foo%3Dbar%26st%3D31%26pn%3D1%26ps%3D100%26sortby%3D2%26qt%3D%26qt_raw%3D%26qn%3D%26lic%3D3%26edrf%3D0%26mr%3D0%26pr%3D0%26aoa%3D1%26creative%3D%26videos%3D%26nu%3D%26ccc%3D%26bespoke%3D%26apalib%3D%26ag%3D0%26hc%3D0%26et%3D0x000000000000000000000%26vp%3D0%26loc%3D0%26ot%3D0%26imgt%3D0%26dtfr%3D%26dtto%3D%26size%3D0xFF%26blackwhite%3D%26cutout%3D%26archive%3D1%26name%3D%26groupid%3D%26pseudoid%3D%26userid%3D%26id%3D%26a%3D%26xstx%3D0%26cbstore%3D1%26resultview%3DsortbyPopular%26lightbox%3D%26gname%3D%26gtype%3D%26apalic%3D%26tbar%3D0%26pc%3D%26simid%3D%26cap%3D1%26customgeoip%3DAT%26vd%3D0%26cid%3DVVDMU5AEN6KBDSV8TAPQFSFGGV5BFGNZ3YRXUKDMFFWABPLLDMC64V23YJJAZBUF%26pe%3D%26so%3D%26lb%3D%26pl%3D1%26plno%3D1025679%26fi%3D0%26langcode%3Den%26upl%3D0%26cufr%3D%26cuto%3D%26howler%3D%26cvrem%3D0%26cvtype%3D0%26cvloc%3D0%26cl%3D0%26upfr%3D%26upto%3D%26primcat%3D%26seccat%3D%26cvcategory%3D*%26restriction%3D%26collectiontype%3D%26random%3D%26ispremium%3D1%26flip%3D0%26contributorqt%3D%26plgalleryno%3D%26plpublic%3D1%26viewaspublic%3D1%26isplcurate%3D0%26imageurl%3D%26saveQry%3D%26editorial%3D%26t%3D0%26filters%3D0

[Steve F]

Hi Julian,

CAPTIONS

Not sure if you've seen these, but they are useful:

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

 

Limestone formations in the white desert national park in Egypt - Image ID: 2JC2H4H

Try and use as much of the available caption text as possible. And do some research if you can. Google maps says the desert is also called the Désert blanc and the Al Farafa desert. It also provides the following text which you could use in your caption: "Sand preserve featuring guided tours among unique chalk rock formations caused by sandstorms." You've put sun set (you should put sunset as the correct spelling, but I think it's ok to include some alternative spellings or common misspellings) as a keyword, but not in the caption. Also, include British and American spellings, e.g. color, colour. Captions are searchable.

 

Thistle plant in the rising sun - Image ID: 2JE28GC

Where, which country? What species, what Latin name? It's very generic as a caption and an image - how would you imagine that a client would find this and what can you imagine it being used for? 

 

Gondolas gently dandling in Venetian canals - Image ID: 2JD07G7

Hah! 😆 I was going to correct your spelling, then I found out dandling is actually a word - guess that's my useless fact I learned for the day! It's a bit obscure though, 'bobbing' might be better. You should put Venice and Italy in the Caption.

 

Plant in European forest - Image ID: 2JDHT1A

Caption too short. What species, which country? Also, the image doesn't really illustrate anything, there isn't a good view of the plant in question. I wouldn't imagine that shots like this would sell - try to be a bit more commercial with your shooting. I wouldn't waste time shooting, editing and keywording unsaleable images, we've all got limited time available. I try to be more disciplined these days too....

 

KEYWORDS

You're doing an amount of keyword spamming.

 

Limestone formations in the white desert national park in Egypt - Image ID: 2JC2H4H

'Dry' and 'heat' are a bit questionable. Trip, travelling, adventure, travel, backpacking, exploration, horizon are either too generic or irrelevant to the image in question, e.g. I can't see a backpacker. 

 

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 300 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.

 

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.

 

COMPSITION

I like your Egyptian shots. But images with people in sell well generally. So try shooting a mix of images with no one at tourist sites and also with people in.

 

Hope this helps.

Steve

 

[Julian Em]

Hey Steve,

 

wow, thank you so much! That`s a very in depth analysis of my stuff, really appreciate the time you took there!

 

Yes certainly gonna rework my tags and captions, I kinda had this fixation of getting the discoverability bar into the green zone, and really didn´t spend a lot of thought on the captions.

But good to know I can chill out on the number of keywords and instead concentrate on making them more relevant!

I used words like "backpacking" "travel" "adventure" "journey" etc. in a lot of my shots, just because I thought those pictures probably gonna appeal most to people in the tourism industry. So that is where I was trying to go with that, but never was a fan of these anyway.

 

As for people in my shots, I would absolutely love to do so, but I´m a little confused and overwhelmed with the rules of that, like "model releases" or editorial only and so on. Which is a shame because one of my favourite shots I did is that of the African camel market in Nouakchott with a bunch of locals in it!

 

Anyway, thank you so much again, and your feedback was really helpful!

Julian

[Steve F]

2 hours ago, Julian Em said:

As for people in my shots, I would absolutely love to do so, but I´m a little confused and overwhelmed with the rules of that, like "model releases" or editorial only and so on. Which is a shame because one of my favourite shots I did is that of the African camel market in Nouakchott with a bunch of locals in it!

 

 

You're welcome!

 

You're generally ok taking pictures with people in, just mark the image on the Optional tab in AIM (Alamy Image Manager) as no model release. You can also mark the photo as editorial (last communication from Alamy was that you don't have to if you say no model release available, but a lot of people do I think). 

 

It does vary country by country though:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Country_specific_consent_requirements

https://www.outdoorphotographyguide.com/article/photographing-people-in-other-cultures-how-to-shoot-with-courtesy-and-respect/

 

You can always use friends or family in your shots. My wife has been very patient posing for me over the years!

[wiskerke]

15 hours ago, Steve F said:

 

You're welcome!

 

You're generally ok taking pictures with people in, just mark the image on the Optional tab in AIM (Alamy Image Manager) as no model release. You can also mark the photo as editorial (last communication from Alamy was that you don't have to if you say no model release available, but a lot of people do I think). 

 

It does vary country by country though:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Country_specific_consent_requirements

https://www.outdoorphotographyguide.com/article/photographing-people-in-other-cultures-how-to-shoot-with-courtesy-and-respect/

 

You can always use friends or family in your shots. My wife has been very patient posing for me over the years!

If the images are RF and they have recognizable people, you must tick the editorial only box.

If you have images that are RF somewhere else, they can only be RF here as well.

Recognizable = people are able to recognize themselves.

Roughly the same for property and animals.

 

wim

[Steve F]

8 hours ago, wiskerke said:

If the images are RF and they have recognizable people, you must tick the editorial only box.

If you have images that are RF somewhere else, they can only be RF here as well.

Recognizable = people are able to recognize themselves.

Roughly the same for property and animals.

 

wim

 

Thanks for clarifying Wim. I have RM set as a default so I don't tend to think about RF so much 🤦‍♂️

And of course many licenses are effectively hybrids now anyway.....