new to alamy and struggling to get my photos past quality control

[COLIN MAYES]

Hi I am getting frustrated when trying to upload my wildlife shots I shoot with a canon R5 and a canon 5D mk 4 so a full frame 45 million pixel cameras and shooting with long lenses I am finding it hard to meet the alamy criteria I have 20 years experience but I do tend to crop quite tight into my images as i like to show the feather detail on birds etc, But I guess doing this makes the file too small I have won quite a few competions and made the country file calendar 3 times so I know that there is not too much wrong with my photography but most of my best shots have been rejected i even bought topaz gigapixel to make the files bigger but that has not worked for me either so I was wondering if anyone has any ideas to help me build a platform

thanks Colin

[Inchiquin]

It would help if you told us the reason that was given for rejection. You say you "guess" the files are too small - well is that what they failed on or not?

 

Alan

 

[NYCat]

I took a look at your passed images. Very nice. Your captions sound like you wrote them for an article for photographers so are not quite appropriate for stock. Here are tips from Alamy.. https://www.alamy.com/blog/captions-and-tags It's important to include scientific name of animals and plants. 

 

Paulette

[Michael Ventura]

Your second image, seen here,  is of a puffin, not a barn owl.  As Paulette said, your caption should not be about how you took the photo but what exactly is in your photo!

[CAROL SAUNDERS]

Agree with what has been said above, also I'm not sure it's appropriate to put keywords in as to what camera and lens you are using.  It sounds like a resizing problem but as suggested, maybe you could elaborate as to why they are being rejected ?  The amount of megapixels your camera has shouldn't make a difference unless you crop to a postage stamp size.  I've taken wildlife images with a 12 mega pixel camera previously and they have been more than adequate.  The minimum MB for uploading is I think 17MB.

 

Carol

[sb photos]

As Carol states above. The description and tags should only relate to the image. By mentioning your make and model of camera, tripod, your name etc, this would only generate false positives and lower your ranking. These issues do not cause images to be rejected though, but can effect potential sales. Take note of the reasons for rejection Alamy give. If you are cropping to an open file size of less than 17mp your image will immediately be rejected by the system, along with any other images in the same batch. Preparing an image for an Alamy upload that passes QC will soon become second nature.

Edited August 17, 2022 by sb photos

[Brian Yarvin]

Please share the reasons Alamy gave you! It could be one of many things but we have no way of knowing which. In my own experience, winning contests or having images selected by other clients (or even agencies) has nothing to do with Alamy criteria. None of these are better than another - just different. Learning what each buyer or vendor expects and how to meet those expectations is part of the business of photography.

 

[John Mitchell]

Size shouldn't matter. As long as your uncompressed images are 17 MB (3000 pixels on the long side), they won't be rejected by Alamy's system. Is "soft and lacking definition" being given as one of the reasons for failure? If so, it's fairly common and might be caused by excessive cropping and/or upsizing.

 

P.S. Lovely images BTW.

Edited August 17, 2022 by John Mitchell

[M.Chapman]

Shooting with a 45MP full frame camera and then cropping significantly before submission means the lens quality and focusing and camera stability will need to be top notch to meet Alamy QC criteria. ie. sharp when pixel peeping at 100%, (or 200% if using a Retina display).

 

If the reason for failure is SoLD (soft or Lacking Definition) that maybe where the problem originates.

 

Mark

Edited August 17, 2022 by M.Chapman

[Bryan]

In addition to the good advice above, noise might be an issue.

 

If so, you might try applying noise reduction to the backgrounds of your shots.  I regularly take the noise out of skies, while leaving the subject untouched and sharp. Layers in PS is possibly the most accurate and easiest way, maybe in conjunction with noise control in LR.

[Gorilla Dave]

Looking at the shot of the Little Owl… 
I would include Latin name in the caption and in the keywords.
In ‘more information’ you might want to include a kind of brief ‘overview’ as you might see in a birding book or Wikipedia, regarding the bird’s range, normal habitat and endangered status; also a brief description of the specific locale where it was pictured.

Keywords – I don’t think you need ‘Alamy’ as a keyword.  Also, several of your tags involve two or more words strung together such as … britishowls, eastanglia, greatbritain, hardtospot, yelloweyes…  I think multi-word tags are really useful, but the words should be separated by spaces such that… ‘bird with yellow eyes’ is a valid tag, but ‘birdwithyelloweyes’ is unlikely to help.
Spelling mistakes  – you have ‘bitrdofprey’ as a keyword. 
Also consider keywords such as ‘unusual’ and ‘unexpected’.
GD