John a N Posted December 29, 2023 Share Posted December 29, 2023 (edited) I come from the fancy colorful and "fake" world of instagram, but have tried to post photos that are more "stock-photo" friendly. Certainly there are errors to be corrected tho. Portfolio link Thanks in advance! Edit: I now realised some of my captions are far too short, I put more effort into my tags. Will have to work through that... /John Edited December 29, 2023 by John a N adding information. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
geogphotos Posted December 29, 2023 Share Posted December 29, 2023 (edited) Welcome John. Before the task becomes bigger you should work through and add Latin names for plants and animals. I enjoyed viewing the Norway and southern Africa pics 😃 Edited December 29, 2023 by geogphotos 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sally Robertson Posted December 29, 2023 Share Posted December 29, 2023 Hi and welcome John, I really like your images of Scandinavia and other parts of the world (would love to travel to all those places!). I think your portfolio is very good but the main thing I notice is quite a few images look a little underexposed. You will want your images to stand out relative to others. One thing you could do is take one of your subject matter, such as Lofoten Norway, and look at other people's images of the same subject on Alamy. See which ones your eyes are drawn to and stand out relative to others. This may help you to brighten your own images a bit to show up well in searches. Actually, I just did a search for Lofoten Norway and got over 89,000 images! I know it's one of those very popular landscape photography locations. So you will definitely want to look at optimising your images as much as possible to compete with existing images. I looked at a few examples of your keywording and they seem pretty good in the ones I looked at. But, yes, good to add Latin names as Ian suggests. And, yes, you can increase your captions with some more description as it is searchable too and will increase the chances of images being seen. Best of luck! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John a N Posted December 29, 2023 Author Share Posted December 29, 2023 Thanks for those comments! The underexposed images could you show me some examples? I think I know which one you might mean but better to be sure! I think it's a flaw from the instagram habit of making some images look "moody" and "mysterious"... Can you "replace" an image in Alamy with the same but edited brighter? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sally Robertson Posted December 29, 2023 Share Posted December 29, 2023 Hi John, There's a few that look a bit underexposed to me. Even the first one there of the woman overlooking Monument Valley 2T5NGA8 The land, rock formations and sky are all a bit dull here and could definitely be brightened up. I would have a look at your histogram both in-camera when you are taking images and in post-processing. Another would be the winding road and village in a high valley in Norway 2T5NGHP This is a great image with wonderful composition and leading lines. However it is darkish and again you could lift the exposure. With the valley already in shadow it is not showing up too well and even the sky looks a bit darker than it should be. If lifting the exposure starts to make those small areas of sunlight a bit too bright you can bring the highlights down just a little. Another is the ostrich gazing over the Etosha plain 2T65FF2 This is definitely duller than it should be. You can lift the exposure and then maybe add a bit of saturation to bring it to life. It's a great image so you want to make it stand out. The horizon looks a bit on an angle and it would be good to straighten it. Those are just a few examples. You can delete images in Alamy Image Manager after upload. If they are not yet keyworded, captioned and on sale they will disappear straight away. However, if they are on sale as yours are they take 3 months to disappear from the system. So you can do some re-edits and upload them but you would probably want to wait until the current ones have disappeared. I had one I hoped to replace recently because I found a dust sensor spot on it and asked Alamy if I could swap it over with the non-blemished one I'd just fixed, but they said the one already on sale would have to stay there for the 3 months if I delete it. So I deleted it and it will disappear eventually. I hope that helps! Just start experimenting with lifting the exposure more and playing a bit with things like saturation, a bit of contrast here and there, basically edits that will make the images pop. They do have that moody and mysterious look that you mention, but that is probably going to be a bit of a disadvantage for your images competing against brighter ones. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John a N Posted December 29, 2023 Author Share Posted December 29, 2023 Thanks again for the comment. I see what you mean on those pics. Oh well no point in re-uploading those images if it takes such long time, I will just have to have it in mind on the newer images I post. 🙂 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve F Posted December 29, 2023 Share Posted December 29, 2023 1 hour ago, John a N said: Oh well no point in re-uploading those images if it takes such long time Hi John. Stock is a long haul game, if you keep up your interest and the market continues, you'll be doing this for years. May as well re-edit if you think they're decent images, helps their chances of licensing. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ole999 Posted December 29, 2023 Share Posted December 29, 2023 John - most of your images are way too dark/underexposed ..! I would delete them and processs them - if you have the tools. Lots of great information on photography at Youtube. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John a N Posted December 29, 2023 Author Share Posted December 29, 2023 I see, I didnt expect that most were underexposed, I usually check my histogram though, but perhaps my screen is set on too bright. I will look into the darker ones and re-process them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sally Robertson Posted December 29, 2023 Share Posted December 29, 2023 Hi John, If you have a look at the two images of yours below, can you see how much brighter the top one is? You have good subjects so I feel it would be really worthwhile optimising them. You really want things to be up against the right hand side of the histogram while obviously not overexposing or blowing out highlights. If you imagine someone like a travel magazine editor looking for images, they are going to go for brighter images. Try not to be discouraged as it's a really good learning curve. I uploaded an image the other day that I can see I overcooked/over-processed. There was a lot of contrast and I was bringing up shadows which has made the sky unnatural. I need to work at naturalising the sky and handling those kinds of images better. So I find it's a never-ending learning curve with every aspect of photography. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John a N Posted December 30, 2023 Author Share Posted December 30, 2023 Thanks! Funny thing is that both images has sold (on a concurring stock photo site). But I do have sold more of the brighter sort of images I agree. I will go through my images and re-touch the ones that are all too dark. I guess on a screen many work well but as you say in print they tend to need to be brighter as a printed image doesn't have the screen's backlight. How would you proceed though? Delete the underexposed images while at the same time uploading the newer version or let them both co-exist? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve F Posted December 30, 2023 Share Posted December 30, 2023 (edited) 23 minutes ago, John a N said: Thanks! Funny thing is that both images has sold (on a concurring stock photo site). But I do have sold more of the brighter sort of images I agree. I will go through my images and re-touch the ones that are all too dark. I guess on a screen many work well but as you say in print they tend to need to be brighter as a printed image doesn't have the screen's backlight. How would you proceed though? Delete the underexposed images while at the same time uploading the newer version or let them both co-exist? Upload the re-edited images. Copy the captions and keywords from the equivalent darker image already uploaded (assuming they're good enough). Delete the darker images. They will co-exist for 3 months in any case as Sally said. Edited December 30, 2023 by Steve F Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg Posted December 30, 2023 Share Posted December 30, 2023 (edited) 5 hours ago, Steve F said: Copy the captions and keywords... or simply upload replacement images, keeping your same file names, after they pass QC & have OLxxxxxx number, (number assigned to batch of images passing QC) email im@alamy.com & ask them to transfer all fields-data from old images to new images & that they should then delete old images... this is the way I do it... old images gone immediately seamlessly replaced by new images... Edited December 30, 2023 by Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John a N Posted December 30, 2023 Author Share Posted December 30, 2023 Thanks for the tip! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ColdCoffee Posted December 31, 2023 Share Posted December 31, 2023 I like your Stockholm night photos, but if you brighten the buildings they would be even better. A bit too dark for me, and I think they would be more useful if you can see more of the buildings. Still keep them dark enough for the effect of the lights. Don't brighten the sky too much. It's difficult to photograph night/dusk pictures because many times you need a different exposure for the buildings versus the sky. With a tripod, you can take several shots with different exposure and then combine them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sally Robertson Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 On 30/12/2023 at 23:08, Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg said: or simply upload replacement images, keeping your same file names, after they pass QC & have OLxxxxxx number, (number assigned to batch of images passing QC) email im@alamy.com & ask them to transfer all fields-data from old images to new images & that they should then delete old images... this is the way I do it... old images gone immediately seamlessly replaced by new images... Thanks for this tip Jeff. I emailed contributor relations hoping to do this with just a single image but they said they couldn't, but it looks like im@alamy.com may be the go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Nacke Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 (edited) On 29/12/2023 at 02:37, John a N said: I come from the fancy colorful and "fake" world of instagram, but have tried to post photos that are more "stock-photo" friendly. Certainly there are errors to be corrected tho. Portfolio link Thanks in advance! Edit: I now realised some of my captions are far too short, I put more effort into my tags. Will have to work through that... /John John, Very nice images and they mostly look fine on my screen, but I do like darker images. My main suggestion is to add more LOCATION information. I often take a cell phone photo at the same time, just to get the GPS data. I often research the date of construction and important details of buildings and highways to my longer caption information. As per reloading images. I mostly upload a single image at a time, there can be a real change going from my original 16bit aRGB TIFF to a 8bit JPEG and then the way it displays on the Alamy site, I do check and try to compensate for those shifts. Welcome and happy New Year, Chuck Edited January 2 by Chuck Nacke addition Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John a N Posted January 3 Author Share Posted January 3 (edited) Thank you all for the tips and the kind words. I have gone through some of my pics, re-edited them and in the process of uploading them. For my Stockholm pictures I (unfortunately for stock photo of the editorial kind) tend to go out at dawn/dusk which adds those darker tones, and on occasion I use a tripod for photo stacking, but mostly use layers in LR for editting. Anyway I have added quite a few new pictures and I hope that these are more in style of stock photos. Edited January 3 by John a N added text 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sally Robertson Posted January 3 Share Posted January 3 John, some great images there. I especially love the aerial ones of the old town of Stockholm. The ones of Dubai I find amazing too, such an unusual metropolis with the very tall skyscrapers. I think stock photos can be many things and Alamy is probably one of the most diverse out there when it comes to subject matter. I think you definitely have good subjects. All the best! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 11 hours ago, Sally Robertson said: ...stock photos can be many things they can be ANYTHING including... (get ready for oxymoron) well planned mistakes !! as evidenced by these customer searches: Search Term out of focus pizza woman out of focus mirror out of focus london abstract out of focus background palm tree out of focus out of focus OUT OF FOCUS OFFICE PEOPLE WORKING people out of focus motorway out of focus out of focus city OUT OF FOCUS COWORKERS out of focus transport out of focus book page large flower out of focus crowded street out of focus out of focus park out of focus campfire group of people out of focus people out of focus facing camera out of focus movie roads out of focus ground out of focus OUT OF FOCUS BLURRY FIGURE out of focus train out of focus gallery blurry out of focus green leaf closeup abstract out of focus hospital room out of focus presentation meeting out of focus woman bath out of focus OUT OF FOCUS COWORKERS MEETING sexy photo out of focus porn out of focus group of people out of focus facing camera large red flower petals out of focus palmtree out of focus OUT OF FOCUS COWORKERS COLLABORATING geisha out of focus palmwedel out of focus senior woman worried out of focus out of focus subway tile backsplash 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYCat Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 I tried a few and there are no images available. We need to get out there and shoot out of focus.... but.. but... will they pass QC??? Paulette Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 3 hours ago, NYCat said: I tried a few and there are no images available. Precious Paulette, Lover of Felines these links, for some reason, add "+" between words if one removes all + one gets images whether or not they are what searcher wanted... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Rooney Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 You have a good eye, John. And that's the main thing. Do you have Adobe PhotoShop? If so there's a tool under Image called Adjustments. At the top of that, there's Brightness and Contrast. I use these to give my images the final look I'm after. It does a better job than the tools I could use earlier. Most Alamy stock is bought as a single illustration for something. I feel that should have brightness and punch. Welcome to Alamy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John a N Posted January 4 Author Share Posted January 4 Thank you Ed Rooney for your comment. Yes I was before more concerned over the "feel" of the image on social media, but for stock photo it needs to pop more. I use both LR and PS, and other software for my stock videos (that do pop more than my pics, due to the natural constraint of a drone's lens) I am re-editing some photos of the darker nature and hopefully these will be more prone to be sold in the future 🙂 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marianne Posted January 5 Share Posted January 5 Beautiful portfolio John - especially enjoyed the views of Stockholm - visited there over a decade ago and hope to get back some day. With the newer masking tools in LR and PS, it is easier than ever to lift the shadows in a dusk or evening foreground without affecting the sky at all. I am assuming that you are shooting in RAW. If not, lifting shadows can be much tougher, even with the latest tools. Beautiful composition and I'm sure your evening images will pop when you get a chance to re-process them. Also, assuming you process your RAW files in a larger color space such as ProPhoto or AdobeRGB (a good idea, IMHO), when you save them as final jpeg, you will want to convert them to sRGB - if not, when Alamy converts a AdobeRGB file to sRGB, the file will look darker and duller. I don't know why they no longer want the larger AdobeRGB files (which magazines and other print media generally prefer), but I've found that the files I convert to sRGB before uploading look much brighter, and it is the format that Alamy seems to prefer. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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