This newby needs a jumpstart

[Betty LaRue]

I am the one mentioned above who licensed an image taken inside of a WalMart, 2-page spread for a textbook. $180.00.

A lot of us who have been shooting stock of a few years, have nice cameras, but some of us are also buying something small. If your camera is fairly big, you will go out on shoots with it, but not carry it everywhere you go.

 

The picture taken in WalMart was shot with a Sony RX100. Tiny. Fit in a pocket or a purse, so easy to have with you. It shoots in both JPEG and Raw, and mine is always set to Raw. It does great. Because of the small size, people seldom pay attention when I use it.

I call it my "stealth" or Spy" camera!

The saying around here is the best camera for the job is the one you have with you. No camera, missed opportunity. I shopped one day in WalMart. While standing in the checkout lane, I took the shot and not a single person noticed while I did it.

I second the advice about naming plants and animals including the scientific name. I've had zooms and sales when the only search words were the scientific names.

It is time-consuming and a pain to go to that trouble, but it pays off.

Betty

[Robert Brook]

"The picture taken in WalMart was shot with a Sony RX100. Tiny. Fit in a pocket or a purse, so easy to have with you. It shoots in both JPEG and Raw, and mine is always set to Raw. It does great. Because of the small size, people seldom pay attention when I use it.
I call it my "stealth" or Spy" camera!"

 

One thing I have learned after many chats with the Met, local detectives, Special Branch, night patrol officers, security officers with and without dogs, even though armed with a press card, is that you need a good cover story, and wandering around with a spy camera tends to undermine that.  

 

"The saying around here is the best camera for the job is the one you have with you. No camera, missed opportunity. I shopped one day in WalMart. While standing in the checkout lane, I took the shot and not a single person noticed while I did it."

 

Why not use a smartphone? Everyone does it and it won't raise an eyebrow.  The alternative is to behave like a bumbling photo enthusiast (some of the best journalists do that: behave like bumbling idiots, and the world opens up to them).  I can do it without trying - but that is for other reasons.

[John Morrison]

 

One thing I have learned after many chats with the Met, local detectives, Special Branch, night patrol officers, security officers with and without dogs, even though armed with a press card, is that you need a good cover story, and wandering around with a spy camera tends to undermine that. 

 

Or wear a fluorescent hi-vis tabard; it makes you almost invisible...

[Kelley Stanley]

Welcome to Alamy Kelley,

Nice photos Kelley. Get some more people in as you go forward.

This is good advice.

 

The photos are good but there are 50 million photos on Alamy and you need to get yours seen - the answer is in the keywording in which I would include the captioning.

 

The captioning is important for 2 reasons - mainly because when picture editors are looking for subjects they need to have the full details of place, name, etc right in front of them. Less importantly, the caption field is searchable, ie. the words have value in the keywording of your images.

 

In the keywording itself, which is hugely important - get it wrong and the most wonderful images will not be seen.

 

Examples from your images:

 

E6CFAB: captioned "Fortress in the Greek Islands" - What fortress? which Greek island? - Picture editors will rarely want general images of fortresses in the greek islands - much more likely they will want an image of THAT fortress or an image from THAT island

 

E6CEM3: captioned "A windy day at Qaitbay, in Alexandria, Egypt. What is Qaitbay exactly? You have keyworded it as a fort and a fortress, but actually if you Google it , It is called the Citadel of Qaitbay. Use "All of Alamy" to see what searches have been done in the past year - there have been no searches for "Qaitbay" but one search for "Alexandria Citadel" and your image would not have been seen.

 

You have only just started so I hope you will not feel this is being too critical - hopefully intended to be helpful. With so few images on sale so far you have the opportunity to improve the captions and keywords of images that are already there.

 

BTW be aware that images with people or parts of people in, whatever their size and whether they are recognisable or not, cannot be RF unless you have signed model releases for all people in the image (cf. image

E6H6MT

RF for example), and also images with property taking up most of the image cant be RF unless you have a property release (cf Image

E6CEM3 for example)

 

Good Luck and enjoy Alamy - it is usually good fun

 

Kumar

 

Thank you so much Kumar! This is very helpful and I'm revising my captions/keywording now! 

[Kelley Stanley]

 

A couple of things:

 

1. Always listen to the previous poster.  He generally knows what he is talking about  (except when he disagrees with me )

 

2. I like this one: The path/road ahead, terrible cliche but done properly, will always have universal psychological appeal.  Vertical is good: could be used as a cover.

 

 

Thanks and I love that tip on vertical photos for book covers!

[Kelley Stanley]

I am the one mentioned above who licensed an image taken inside of a WalMart, 2-page spread for a textbook. $180.00.

A lot of us who have been shooting stock of a few years, have nice cameras, but some of us are also buying something small. If your camera is fairly big, you will go out on shoots with it, but not carry it everywhere you go.

 

The picture taken in WalMart was shot with a Sony RX100. Tiny. Fit in a pocket or a purse, so easy to have with you. It shoots in both JPEG and Raw, and mine is always set to Raw. It does great. Because of the small size, people seldom pay attention when I use it.

I call it my "stealth" or Spy" camera!

The saying around here is the best camera for the job is the one you have with you. No camera, missed opportunity. I shopped one day in WalMart. While standing in the checkout lane, I took the shot and not a single person noticed while I did it.

I second the advice about naming plants and animals including the scientific name. I've had zooms and sales when the only search words were the scientific names.

It is time-consuming and a pain to go to that trouble, but it pays off.

Betty

Betty, you helped me make a really important discovery...my Canon S95 DOES shoot in RAW. I had been avoiding it lately because shooting with it in jpeg hasn't produced big enough files for Alamy which is too bad because I've got some (what I think are) great photos that will just sit on my computer now. Going forward, this will be huge! Thanks!

[dustydingo]

One thing I have learned after many chats with the Met, local detectives, Special Branch, night patrol officers, security officers with and without dogs, even though armed with a press card, is that you need a good cover story, and wandering around with a spy camera tends to undermine that.  

 

Robert, an interesting observation, based I know on your particular area of interest.

 

I have always cringed when reading of folk liking this or that body because they can take photos unnoticed . . . if anything reinforces the public perception of photographers negatively it's the image of "sneak" photos being taken, imo. Even if I'm taking photos of someone who may not have noticed I'm photographing them, I always like it to be obvious to any observer that I'm not hiding the fact I'm taking photographs. Just one more reason I like carrying my full DSLR gear.

 

dd

[Kelley Stanley]

All of it is great advice. Except maybe to wait until you have 3000 images on Alamy. If you caption and keyword like this you will have sunk to the bottom by then.

 

So let's take your last image: E6H6MT, captioned The many bicycles of Amsterdam.

I would name the canal Leidsegracht, maybe even corner of Leidsegracht and Lijnbaansgracht, that it's a bridge, and that it's autumn. Try to describe what you see. Maybe elaborate on that in the description field.

Try not to tell something we do not see. Like that it is a sunny day. because it doesn't look all that sunny. Your image comes up on row 4 of the first page for the search Amsterdam sunny day, which is great! Except that yours is the least sunny of the whole page.

 

This one (not yours) of course is what a sunny day looks like.

However it says it's The Skinny Bridge, which it isn't. That's the bridge to the right, not visible in this image.

So accuracy is important. Not just for you but for all of us, because we will all look like a fool when this one ends up on the cover of a major travel guide, captioned Skinny Bridge.

 

In the keywords I would include canals autumn bikes parked and I would strike the words road transport transportation photography location.

 

Have a good look at the All of Alamy; real searches that you can look at when you press the All of Alamy button on your Dashboard. Put %amsterdam% in the search box and set the date as far back as possible, which at the moment is September 1st, 2013.

Include keywords that seem appropriate. But try to be as accurate as possible, so think hard before you include something like cycling, because yes it is about bicycles, but as far as I can see, there's no one cycling.

Which brings me to something strange: there are people visible in the image, but it's RF. That should not be possible. My guess is, you have not declared the amount of people in the image.

 

From All of Alamy you can also learn if words like travel destination and places (or any of the other words) are really being used. They may be necessary for some other agencies though.

You have a good set of images, if you keep editing this tightly -maybe throw in some more people- you will certainly make sales here.

 

wim

 

edit: typo

Thanks a lot for this! Could you point me to where "All of Alamy" is? another poster mentioned it but I can't find it for the life of me! 

[spacecadet]

My Alamy>Alamy measures>All of Alamy

[Guest]

 

I am the one mentioned above who licensed an image taken inside of a WalMart, 2-page spread for a textbook. $180.00.

A lot of us who have been shooting stock of a few years, have nice cameras, but some of us are also buying something small. If your camera is fairly big, you will go out on shoots with it, but not carry it everywhere you go.

 

The picture taken in WalMart was shot with a Sony RX100. Tiny. Fit in a pocket or a purse, so easy to have with you. It shoots in both JPEG and Raw, and mine is always set to Raw. It does great. Because of the small size, people seldom pay attention when I use it.

I call it my "stealth" or Spy" camera!

The saying around here is the best camera for the job is the one you have with you. No camera, missed opportunity. I shopped one day in WalMart. While standing in the checkout lane, I took the shot and not a single person noticed while I did it.

I second the advice about naming plants and animals including the scientific name. I've had zooms and sales when the only search words were the scientific names.

It is time-consuming and a pain to go to that trouble, but it pays off.

Betty

Betty, you helped me make a really important discovery...my Canon S95 DOES shoot in RAW. I had been avoiding it lately because shooting with it in jpeg hasn't produced big enough files for Alamy which is too bad because I've got some (what I think are) great photos that will just sit on my computer now. Going forward, this will be huge! Thanks!

 

 

FYI, Canon Powershot S95 is on the unsuitable camera list - http://www.alamy.com/contributor/help/unsuitable-camera-list.asp?cname=Canon

[Robert Brook]

 

One thing I have learned after many chats with the Met, local detectives, Special Branch, night patrol officers, security officers with and without dogs, even though armed with a press card, is that you need a good cover story, and wandering around with a spy camera tends to undermine that.  

 

Robert, an interesting observation, based I know on your particular area of interest.

 

I have always cringed when reading of folk liking this or that body because they can take photos unnoticed . . . if anything reinforces the public perception of photographers negatively it's the image of "sneak" photos being taken, imo. Even if I'm taking photos of someone who may not have noticed I'm photographing them, I always like it to be obvious to any observer that I'm not hiding the fact I'm taking photographs. Just one more reason I like carrying my full DSLR gear.

 

dd

 

 

I tend to agree.  The smallest camera I carry about with me is a D800 with a prime lens.  A long time ago I did a bit of sneak photography with a compact.  Aside from any ethical issues, I gave it up because the pictures were generally not that good.

[wiskerke]

Have you found your Dashboard yet?

After you have logged in it's at https://secure.alamy.com/MyAlamy.aspx

 

At the bottom there are 4 fly out buttons:

 

Additional Revenue Options

 

Link to your images on Alamy

 

Alamy Measures

 

Help

 

Click on Alamy Measures.

You'll see a chart of your current Click Trough Rate (CRT)

Underneath are two more buttons:

Your images ›  and All of Alamy ›

Click All of Alamy

(Here sometimes referred to as AoA)

 

wim

[Kelley Stanley]

My Alamy>Alamy measures>All of Alamy

Thank you!

[Kelley Stanley]

Have you found your Dashboard yet?

After you have logged in it's at https://secure.alamy.com/MyAlamy.aspx

 

At the bottom there are 4 fly out buttons:

 

Additional Revenue Options

 

Link to your images on Alamy

 

Alamy Measures

 

Help

 

Click on Alamy Measures.

You'll see a chart of your current Click Trough Rate (CRT)

Underneath are two more buttons:

Your images ›  and All of Alamy ›

Click All of Alamy

(Here sometimes referred to as AoA)

 

wim

Thank you, yes I have found it. What a useful tool that I didn't realize was there for me!

[Jools Elliott]

Hello Kelley

 

I would echo what the others say in that as a starter for ten you have a good variety. 

 

Many of the previous posters have picked up on things such as keywording and descriptions. However, on closer inspection I would be very careful that before you upload images to make sure that if there is an obvious horizon that it is level.

 

Now, I know that in some cases us photographers do have some kind of creative freedom but with the following image I would suggest that it's more a case of an unleveled horizon.

 

 

I can't personally comment too much on sales here on Alamy as they seem to evade me. 

[Kelley Stanley]

Hello Kelley

 

I would echo what the others say in that as a starter for ten you have a good variety. 

 

Many of the previous posters have picked up on things such as keywording and descriptions. However, on closer inspection I would be very careful that before you upload images to make sure that if there is an obvious horizon that it is level.

 

Now, I know that in some cases us photographers do have some kind of creative freedom but with the following image I would suggest that it's more a case of an unleveled horizon.

 

 

I can't personally comment too much on sales here on Alamy as they seem to evade me. 

Thanks Jools, you're right. Definitely something I need to be mindful of as I snap away. 

[Jools Elliott]

It is one reason that a lot of what I do is done on a tripod. It makes me stop; think and then take. Yes, it can be cumbersome but it can avoid things such as the above.

 

With that particular image you will have the problem that when you straighten the horizon you are going to lose part of the lamppost on the right.

[Martin P Wilson]

This oldie needs a jumpstart - I have been with Alamy for 12.5 years but in last couple of years my sales have collapsed after several years of neglect and I should say thoughtless work. So I have started afresh - I put all my old images in one pseudonym and created a new one for my new stuff.

 

I have paid attention to the advice of those who are successful here, Keith Morris (RedSnapper), David Kilpatrick and others. I also look at the pictures that have been used. My aim is not to copy them but to try and understand why they were taken and why they have been used; then to use that understanding to adopt similar approach to my own image making and subjects. It seems to come down to thought, effort and commitement, much of it without camera in hand, on the phone, at the computer and networking generally. I am now treating my photography as a full time job again - for the first time in nearly 40 years. Making money from photography (or writing, painting or whatever) requires commitment to the business component as well as the "art".