David Rosenthal

[David hot weather]

Please could you critque my portfolio

[Mr Standfast]

Hello David.

 

Good to see you found a tool to check your images at 100%.

For us to help, can you let us know what you expect to get from running a portfolio on alamy?

 

All the best,

 

James

[David hot weather]

19 hours ago, David hot weather said:

Please could you critque my portfolio

Many thanks James.

 

I want just 1 thing from my portfolio with Alamy......to display my images to a hopefully appreciative audience and to enjoy their responses via sales and/or positive feedback if that's possible.

I'm still new to Alamy and feeling my way.

 

With grateful thanks,

David

 

P.S. I haven't found a tool to check iimages at 100% (misunderstanding)

[Steve F]

6 minutes ago, David hot weather said:

I want just 1 thing from my portfolio with Alamy......to display my images to a hopefully appreciative audience and to enjoy their responses via sales and/or positive feedback if that's possible.

 

Hi David,

Welcome to Alamy. I was going to critique your portfolio, but I'm not sure that's what you actually want. Alamy is not the place for positive feedback; you want a camera club or something like Instagram for that.

 

In any case, in relation to sales and portfolio critique, I wrote a fairly comprehensive post recently and I hope you can make use of it:

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/16969-ill-jump-in-no-matter-what-it-does-to-my-confidence/?do=findComment&comment=344671

 

Steve

[gvallee]

1 hour ago, David hot weather said:

Many thanks James.

 

I want just 1 thing from my portfolio with Alamy......to display my images to a hopefully appreciative audience and to enjoy their responses via sales and/or positive feedback if that's possible.

I'm still new to Alamy and feeling my way.

 

With grateful thanks,

David

 

P.S. I haven't found a tool to check iimages at 100% (misunderstanding)

 

You are not asking for a critique then.

Also, if you don't check your images at 100% prior to upload, it's a non-starter.

You seem to want to run before you can walk.

 

By any chance, are you starting again from scratch? I seem to remember that mirror shot. I could be wrong.

 

Sorry.

 

[Mr Standfast]

 

Hello David,

 

I agree with the comments above. Essentially running an Alamy portfolio is running a micro business,  "to display my images to a hopefully appreciative audience and to enjoy their responses via sales and/or positive feedback" does not really fit. There's no audience and sales are difficult.

 

Don't be mistake by the friendly banter on the forum, we're all here for $$ not appreciation, that said feel free to stick around if you want to follow our gardening, cooking and general disasters.

 

Here are some examples of the level of work you would be competing with. 

https://www.alamy.com/category/uk.html

The bar is very high.

 

To stand out from this crowd your images need to "pop", a bit of post processing is needed. A Product like Adobe elements might help. You don't have many commercial images yet.

Inspecting your imges at 100% is a must, other wise QC will start rejecting submissions.

This will help:

https://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/guidelines-for-submitting-images/?section=3

https://www.alamy.com/blog/common-qc-failure-reasons-and-how-to-avoid-them

 

Captions must be specific to the image, who, what, why & how are your friends. For instance a picture of a Pub should include the name of pub, the town and maybe the brewer. These are the tags an editorial buyer looks for.

https://ablog.wpengine.com/captions-and-tags

 

As for expectations?

   A sale per month for every one or two thousand images is pragmatic.

   $20 gross per sale, $8 net, maybe more maybe less.

   If you can put up 1000 commercial images, after a year, you could be getting 6 or 12 sales a year. The higher figure being gross earning of just under $240 Which is under the threshold of the Alamy Gold contract which means you drop to the Alamy Silver contract which nets 20% not 40%.

Contract 12.12

 

 

If it all seems a bit harsh, well it is. I would not like to see frustrations of running a micro business put you off photography, that would not do.

 

Good luck

 

🦔

 

 

[Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg]

10 hours ago, David hot weather said:

...to enjoy their responses via sales

well, he did include via sales, didn't he, yes he did...

 

he has (123) images on PAlamy;

IMO, if he had (12300) images of varied subjects as salable as this image

(minus the head tops) he would experience semi-weekly: sales...
the cluster of red buses at shopping centre is another salable shot IMO;

to be clear, 12300 varied subjects, not just bloody red buses...
https://www.alamy.com/a-red-london-bus-entering-king-william-st-in-central-london-with-the-walkie-talkie-looming-in-the-background-image535844689.html

[wiskerke]

1 hour ago, Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg said:

well, he did include via sales, didn't he, yes he did...

 

he has (123) images on PAlamy;

IMO, if he had (12300) images of varied subjects as salable as this image

(minus the head tops) he would experience semi-weekly: sales...
the cluster of red buses at shopping centre is another salable shot IMO;

to be clear, 12300 varied subjects, not just bloody red buses...
https://www.alamy.com/a-red-london-bus-entering-king-william-st-in-central-london-with-the-walkie-talkie-looming-in-the-background-image535844689.html

Which has very funny keywords. However clients don't use funny search terms to look for images. Just walkie talkie building London is fine. Four whole searches for the rolling year btw. A couple more for it's real name: 20 Fenchurch Street. Most clients seem to want the garden. No searches for the Carbuncle Cup it won in 2015.

I quite like the sticking out like a sore thumb aka elephant on a garden party esthetic / aestethics of David's image. It could quite well work. The red bus passing by is a good prop. Lots of different views on the first pages here on Alamy for Walkie talkie building London, even from the same viewpoint but no casual ones like this. Maybe deeper down in the results. So everything will depend on it's rank.

 

wim

 

[Cryptoprocta]

You certainly have some quirky keywords, yet not the ones which are needed.

You haven't identified the tree in #2R4W4YW,  just said it's a "blue blossoming tree". It might be a variety of Ceanothus, but I'm sure someone on here can ID it better. You need to identify them in vernacular English and scientific Latin.

You have the keyword "well red and well blued". I have no idea what that means. I don't see much, if anything red in your photo (there's a little bit of a crimson rhododendron/azalea in the background). To be picky, I'd say the tree was purple rather than blue, at least on my screen.

"painting the town blue" - huh?

Check Alamy Measures to see how often potential buyers have searched on "urban setting with blue blossoming tree" in the past year. Or "well red and well blued" or many of your other keywords.

Also, you need to straighten your verticals. At the moment, the photo is 'well squint'.

 

Edited August 26, 2023 by Cryptoprocta