Torung Posted January 28 Share Posted January 28 Hello everyone, I have a been a low key hobbyist photographer for many years until I dropped all my gears to only use cellphone whilst focusing on career. it has been a little over a year now since I came back into photography, with the intent to make it a source of income, rather than just a hobby. here is my modest collection of images on alamy: Alamy gallery I would like to know what are my strength and weakness on my photos, where I should put my focus for improvement and what type of photography works best for my current style thank you so much for your feedback! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Normspics Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 Alamy has a reputation for being an agency suppling a lot of editorial photographs either for newspapers, magazines or text books. The one thing not to do is saturate a subject with a lot of similar photos, such as your man and woman training photos, six examples would probably have been enough, which would include horizontal and vertical framing, wide, mid and close up. If you do saturate the subject then you will suffer eventually in search results and be slowly pushed to the rear of searches. If you are in an interesting exotic or unusual location in the far east, use it to document life, commerce, food and products....along with pollution and global warming subjects. Another phrase people use on Alamy, is photograph people doing interesting things. Good luck! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve F Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 Hi Torung, +1 to everything above from Normspics. Try photographing more diverse subjects. Keep a look out in newspapers, magazines, books, websites for stock photos - they're everywhere (you can see in the image credits the names of stock agencies). So get an idea of what sells - subject, lighting, composition etc. There's also a ton of advice in the Portfolio Critique section here on the Forum, I would suggest having a look at other people's critiques to get some ideas of how to be successful here. Good luck, Steve 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MDM Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 (edited) You live in Cambodia it seems which is a massive tourist destination nowadays. Get out and about with your camera and take advantage of that would be my advice. In other words, take pictures for the tourism market and make sure you specify locations. Looking again, maybe you live in Thailand. Same thing - tourism. Edited January 30 by MDM 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve F Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 More specifically. For example, image 2WEK1YD doesn't illustrate very well the concept of Taiji instructors doing their training routine. Be more selective about what you upload. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Torung Posted January 30 Author Share Posted January 30 Thanks for the advice, only three inputs but already very valuable advices as I am completely new to this. I guess I need to refocus the type of content I put on this platform. cheers guys! 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve F Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 1 minute ago, Torung said: Thanks for the advice, only three inputs but already very valuable advices as I am completely new to this. I guess I need to refocus the type of content I put on this platform. cheers guys! We all started out as new once! There's also a monthly sold images thread, but be aware that many contributors will not put their best sellers on there: https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/17372-images-licenced-january-2024/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Normspics Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 2 hours ago, Torung said: Thanks for the advice, only three inputs but already very valuable advices as I am completely new to this. I guess I need to refocus the type of content I put on this platform. cheers guys! You have some great targeted advice, good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 (edited) On 28/01/2024 at 02:37, Torung said: ...what are my strength and weakness strength: willingness photographing real people doing real things weakness: willingness to edit results; e.g., you have ~80 taiji images of same couple; you must develop, IMO, ability & confidence to recognize, say, less than 10, maybe 5 best images that make posting the rest unnecessary... (if they are major taiji celebrities, then more, but otherwise...) Edited January 30 by Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Torung Posted February 8 Author Share Posted February 8 Thanks Jeffrey! the large amount of taiji image has also been pointed out before. that is something I need to fine tune, to not flood the topic, as I understand. I thought quantity was a key factor to success with stock images, i guess I understood it the wrong way! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve F Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 1 hour ago, Torung said: Thanks Jeffrey! the large amount of taiji image has also been pointed out before. that is something I need to fine tune, to not flood the topic, as I understand. I thought quantity was a key factor to success with stock images, i guess I understood it the wrong way! Hi Torung, You don't want to saturate the internet with mediocre or unsellable images anyway, because a client is unlikely to buy these. Just upload your best images of a subject. More specifically with Alamy, excessive similars is a QC failure reason. You should be aware of CTR (click through rate). 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 If you flood Alamy with pictures that aren't zoomed, your CTR will plummet. Which means your images won't show as high up in client searches. You don't want your images to get buried in the 360 million images on Alamy. Steve 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg Posted February 9 Share Posted February 9 On 08/02/2024 at 01:07, Torung said: I thought quantity was a key factor to success with stock images... it is one of five factors IMO, in maximizing $$, but... repeat this phrase over & over, it is a stock photography mantra q-q-va-key-sa a reminder that stock photography is a balance of... quantity-quality-variety-keywording-salability 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wiskerke Posted February 10 Share Posted February 10 20 hours ago, Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg said: it is one of five factors IMO, in maximizing $$, but... repeat this phrase over & over, it is a stock photography mantra q-q-va-key-sa a reminder that stock photography is a balance of... quantity-quality-variety-keywording-salability While shooting I found myself humming quality & variety to the tune of Ebony and Ivory. 😁 For q-q-va-key-sa maybe look here for a tune. 🐮😂 I can recommend the finale for when a great image is in the bag. 💃🕺 Oh and location and subject are not unimportant either. But for keywords it's like location for real estate: Keywords! Keyword! Keywords! wim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg Posted February 10 Share Posted February 10 (edited) it was a monotonic Gregorian Chant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-hrBhA4XkM phonetically KEW KEW VAH KEY SAH KEW KEW VAH KEY SAH KEW KEW VAH KEY SAAAAHHHH... repeated over & over it consumed me as I wandered the world a photo nomad until it became ingrained then faded faded faded to silence like the sound of a mirrorless image maker... Edited February 10 by Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg Posted February 10 Share Posted February 10 (edited) Edited February 10 by Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg dupe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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