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I don't know how some of you get such large collections


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Good grief!!  I feel I need to go back into my images and check all of the keywords and their locations!  

 

And, Allan, I did not know location was no longer searchable. Why have it, then?  It's useless to any photo buyer.  And all it does is confuse the photographer into thinking it is.

 

Bill, I need to hire you (joking) to re-keyword my images.

 

Bummer. But it has to be done. Fortunately, I've always put locations in my keywords. It's a habit I got into a long time ago. Also, I didn't know that the location box was searchable when it was searchable. Ignorance can pay off sometimes.

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Betty, the collection grows with every shooting opportunity.  My monthly goal is to cover 4 newsworthy events per month and about once per quarter, I upload everything else (including model shoots) in one batch.  I spend about 30 minutes every few days looking for what's going on around town and I record it on a calendar so I know what's coming up in the future.  I've got events on a calendar currently going out to November.  Everything from demonstrations to Pagan festivals to community events.  I also have photoshoots scheduled in advance.

 

I know of 9 events with shoot opportunities before next Sunday.  I will not be covering all of them, but the opportunity has been identified and they are there if I would like to take advantage of it - it's all up to however ambitious I feel on the day of the event.

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The location box stopped being searchable some 2 or 3 years ago from memory. I had always put it in the keywords anyway. I still fill in the location box - only takes seconds on a batch change. You never know - it may come back into use some day.

 

dov

 

I still fill it in too -- location, location, as they say in the real estate world.

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Even though it isn't searchable, the info from the location field still appears in its own heading on the images.  I would think this would be useful to the buyer who is trying to quickly establish the location of the image.

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I don't know how some of you with 10,000 and upwards do it. Shoot lots of similars and batch develop them?

 

no...

just do a lot of work

it's my job

km

Same here! Full-time job ................... and a way of life.

Just ready to hop in my little micro campervan for a 3-day trip through Belgium looking for subjects to shoot 12-14 hours/day. Then home on Saturday for a funeral and then off again for a 10-day trip to the Alps or Brittany (depending which region offers the best weather). And then .......... Scotland, Bavarian Forest, Denmark, Normandy, all depending on the weather forecast ^_^

Cheers,

Philippe

Philippe - that's the life

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Shoot lots of similars and batch develop them?

Not many similars, but I shoot jpg for a start, then LR with an import preset and not much done individually at all, the odd burn in or grad on a sky. I suppose I get through a couple of hundred in a morning (that's import, edit, process, export). I might select about one in 5 or 6for Alamy

I haven't used PS for Alamy since getting LR.

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I travel to see and experience and to show my kids the world, the photos are a by-procuct in that regard . . . as far as stock locations go, not a lot of travel destinations aren't someone else's backyard.

 

dd

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I do try to limit 'similars' to two or three, though I have been known to include more if it is a subject with little coverage on Alamy. I have photographed a few politicians, (minor) celebrities and tennis players and discovered that there are no or very few images with Alamy so I send a few more angles and facial expressions that I otherwise would have.

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Well, it's great to know the whys, just hard to figure out how you process so many. I do not have a grasp of how to do that in Lightroom. I can't even figure out how to make presets. I know there is a way, because I hear you all talk about it. For instance, selecting a group for the "vivid" setting or whatever's there are some things I do to all of my images in regards to contrast, clarity, and such, but I have to do each one slowly and painfully.

 

I need to find some videos to watch. I said that before you did. :)

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I never batch process anything, except for adding keywords to multiple similar images. I do each image individually and try to get at least 100 a week done (on average).

With twenty thousand images and ten years with Alamy that's an average of about 40 a week, though I am now full time and not limited to weekends and school holidays.

If you are doing nothing else (like being out taking photos) 20 or 30 a day isn't that many, though it does often feel like a lot more.

(If anyone knows of a job in a school in the Maidstone area. let me know).

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Well, it's great to know the whys, just hard to figure out how you process so many. I do not have a grasp of how to do that in Lightroom. I can't even figure out how to make presets. I know there is a way, because I hear you all talk about it. For instance, selecting a group for the "vivid" setting or whatever's there are some things I do to all of my images in regards to contrast, clarity, and such, but I have to do each one slowly and painfully.

 

I need to find some videos to watch. I said that before you did. :)

I have a preset with clarity and saturation adjusted.

In 'develop', apply the adjustments to one image, click the '+' on the right on the presets column. Tick the settings you want to apply on import in the dialogue box and give the preset a name- mine is just 'importXxxYxx' where x and y are the develop settings I've used. Save it.

Then the import dialogue box will prompt you for the preset name.

All the imports will have the settings from 'importXxxYyy' applied automatically. It saves a good deal of time and you can still adjust individually.

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Thanks, spacecadet.  I do have a few things I do to every single image, like you. I do different things to portraits, so I could set up one for portraits and one for everything else.  I'll give it a go, anyway.  Nice the settings that are applied can be changed or tweaked.

 

Betty

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Well, it's great to know the whys, just hard to figure out how you process so many. I do not have a grasp of how to do that in Lightroom. I can't even figure out how to make presets. I know there is a way, because I hear you all talk about it. For instance, selecting a group for the "vivid" setting or whatever's there are some things I do to all of my images in regards to contrast, clarity, and such, but I have to do each one slowly and painfully.

 

I need to find some videos to watch. I said that before you did. :)

 

Time wise i have a full time job so i fit this in the mornings the nights and on days off. I set myself a weekly target of 50 to upload. Having processed thousands of images using the same workflow and the same software (Capture NX)(no presets used or batch processing) I can process about 10 an hour. As you can see in the 4 years i have been here I have machine gunned over 14k of images of which I am now in the process of re-key wording 4k done 10k to do.

 

 

 

1. I take images on my days off.

2. I process them in the morning from 6am then upload every Wednesday.

3. I keyword in the evenings. (the part i hate the most very time consuming to research and do it properly)

 

 

Regards

Craig

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No one has mentioned internet speeds - mine is dreadful and it could take an hour to upload 5 images, more if my family decide to go online. It really is the limiting factor for me getting more pictures up on Alamy.

 

I was in the media centre of an ATP tennis tournament recently and couldn't believe how quickly my images whizzed off into the ether.

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Travel of course helps.

 

not necessarily...

 

km

 

 

Keith, you live in the UK.

Alamy is based in the UK

I live in Belgium and there are as good as no Alamy publications in the Belgian press. In other words, there's very little demand (by Alamy's customers) for pictures of Belgian traffic wardens, Belgian supermarkets, Belgian courthouses, etc.

So, yes it pays for some foreign contributors to travel in order to make sales at Alamy. Besides, my only costs are diesel and toll (No hotels nor restaurants, I sleep and eat in my little van).

 

Hey, you only live once. I also like to see with my own eyes what's on the other side of the hill. ;)

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

 

Sold a picture of Belgium this morning. Place Royale. Statue : Godfrey of Bouillon. 

Admittedly, not a traffic warden in sight.

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Betty, the people who can do it are press photographers, whether self-taught or not.  With trained eyes, they can spot thousands of things that most will miss and produce presentable images in record time.  They can probably do it without even stepping out of the front door.  If they are doing it right they won't need to bother much with housekeeping.  They will hit the spot so many times that sales will trump anything they can do with keywords, disimilars, pseudo shuffling etc. 

 

Outside of this I fail to understand why anyone bothers with volume production, except for pleasure (if you like that sort of thing).  Location specific photography of the kind you can do in giant quantities now sells worse than just about any other type or genre (researched locations, especially restricted ones or those requiring physical stamina are another thing entirely).  High end generic work can't be done both quickly and properly.   Those who do it on a volume basis mainly sell at Shutterstock and such places.

 

My approach - which works for me - is to concentrate on personal work, but sprinkle my collection with enough potboilers selling in the right places to generate an income.  A good potboiler should sell several times a year.  A really good one weekly.  I haven't achieved that yet (weekly), but I know that there are many at GI and CI, even editorial shots. 

 

Getting closer, though.

 

.

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Total respect for Belgium and the Belgians... Duvel, Margritte, Stromae, Guus Flater, any one of a number of footballers who have strengthened the Ajax linies, Brel, the weather girl with the big eyes, Megamindy, etc enz etc... how could one not?

And Hercule Poirot, he never missed a thing

Col

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"A good potboiler should sell several times a year."

 

yep...good to have a bunch of those in the collection. They form the backbone of my income

 

and yes , you're correct to about being the advantages of being a press photographer . Speed - in seeing, editing, captioning and processing - is one of the key ones.

 

km

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