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I would add to what the others have said, that there are many other photo opportunities in the places you have visited.  Go ahead and take the cliche photos but also get some of the peripheral sights that may be of interest.  I believe Alamy has expressed and interest in photos with people in them.   Don't waste your opportunities.  Also this is learning journey and the way you think of Alamy now and how you think of it in the future will be radically different.  Try searching on Alamy some of the subjects you have covered and see what comes up and check out the keywords. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Sage advice from Robert as always, but easier said than done. I'm fortunate enough to have a niche or two that continue to function well on Alamy (touch wood). However, looking back over the past couple of years, I see that most of my "non-niche" (i.e. more general subjects) sales have come about from keeping a close eye on Alamy Measures / All of Alamy plus from picture needs posted by Alamy. Consequently, I would recommend checking those regularly. General stock photography has become a really tough sell, and just uploading "more of the same" tends not to go anywhere, even though most of us (including me) still do it just in case a lucky lease comes along. Good luck.

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I would have to agree with John, that using Alamy Measures provides guidance as to what is wanted and will sell.

 

I was going nowhere at speed until I started to research the marketplace, and now have a series of "pot boilers" that sell reasonably regularly, albeit often for peanuts. However the real benefit is that this has lifted my ranking to the extent that I also occasionally sell shots of standard landmarks/objects at much better rates. 

 

Stock isn't going to make you rich, and I can think of much quicker and easier legal ways of making money, but none that are quite so pleasantly absorbing!

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On the 'big green snake', you seem to be implying it's a pit viper. Looks more like an Emerald Tree Boa to me.....

Looks like one, but the keywords show Asian countries. The emerald tree boa is a South American species. So, if the picture has indeed been taken in the wild in Asia, it would probably be a green tree python (Morelia viridis). If it's taken in a zoo, better take a picture of the info board as well.

Certainly ain't a pit viper!

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

 

You are right! 

 

I have taken the photo in Asian country - China. But the snake was in zoo. Usually when I take photos in zoo or botanical gardens, I always take photo of the animal, or plant at first, and then I take a photo of the info board, in order later I know what it was. But unfortunately that was not the case for the snake. So I also don't know exact species of the snake. That's why it is "big green snake" :).

 

 

It's almost certainly a green tree python, Morelia viridis, which comes from Papua New Guinea, some surrounding island groups and extreme northern Australia.  The location of the pits are the key but this is not totally clear from the photo.  The coloration suggests the python rather than the boa.  

 

Unfortunately, you have compounded your identification error by listing more spurious keywords: "Borneo" "Indonesia" etc are locations for green pit vipers but the the green tree python does not occur in either of these locations.  And then you have "danger", "dangerous" "venomous" etc. which are all incorrect.   If you can't be 100% sure of the identification you should generalise.  Alamy loses credibility when images are incorrectly captioned.  Having said that, you are not the only offender - some pages contain up to 25% of wrongly captioned wildlife, especially reptiles and amphibians.  It's a serious problem.

 

I'll get down off my soapbox now.

 

Chris

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On the 'big green snake', you seem to be implying it's a pit viper. Looks more like an Emerald Tree Boa to me.....

Looks like one, but the keywords show Asian countries. The emerald tree boa is a South American species. So, if the picture has indeed been taken in the wild in Asia, it would probably be a green tree python (Morelia viridis). If it's taken in a zoo, better take a picture of the info board as well.

Certainly ain't a pit viper!

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

 

You are right! 

 

I have taken the photo in Asian country - China. But the snake was in zoo. Usually when I take photos in zoo or botanical gardens, I always take photo of the animal, or plant at first, and then I take a photo of the info board, in order later I know what it was. But unfortunately that was not the case for the snake. So I also don't know exact species of the snake. That's why it is "big green snake" :).

 

 

It's almost certainly a green tree python, Morelia viridis, which comes from Papua New Guinea, some surrounding island groups and extreme northern Australia.  The location of the pits are the key but this is not totally clear from the photo.  The coloration suggests the python rather than the boa.  

 

Unfortunately, you have compounded your identification error by listing more spurious keywords: "Borneo" "Indonesia" etc are locations for green pit vipers but the the green tree python does not occur in either of these locations.  And then you have "danger", "dangerous" "venomous" etc. which are all incorrect.   If you can't be 100% sure of the identification you should generalise.  Alamy loses credibility when images are incorrectly captioned.  Having said that, you are not the only offender - some pages contain up to 25% of wrongly captioned wildlife, especially reptiles and amphibians.  It's a serious problem.

 

I'll get down off my soapbox now.

 

Chris

 

 

Proper ID is so essential. Assuming something can be such an error.

 

I attended the Cannington Sled Dog Races yesterday (although the races themselves had to be cancelled due to icy trails conditions) and they had a fantastic Aboriginal display with dancers and storytellers.

 

I was keywording some of my photos and "assumed" the Mètis were part of the First Nations so included that in my keywords. When doing some research on the flags, I discovered the Metis are not part of the First Nations group of Aboriginal tribes, unlike the Ojibwe, Huron, Iroquois, etc. So for all the photos where I was not sure which tribe the dancers belonged to, I had to remove the First Nations reference from my keywords. I was lucky to know the storyteller was Ojibwe, so I did include "First Nations" in my keywords for those images. It was a wonderful display and I learned a lot as well. 

 

Jill

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As others have mentioned, I think you're missing out of sales because of keywords.

 

You have a picture of a green tree in a park. You need to say what tree it is including the Latin name and tell us which park you took the picture in. Names are very important. Tomorrow, someone might be murdered in that park (which I hope won't happen), and then you have a picture of it on Alamy ready to go. Someone might be looking for pictures of parks of the town it was taken in. The real problem is also, if you don't keyword it immediately, you'll forget about where it was taken. 

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I haven't sold very many and I've been here for a few year, and have about 2000 photos up. My earlier ones weren't so good but the later ones are far better, but I'm still frustrated at my lack of sales. Anyway I won't ask about me, I'll just give you some tips if that's ok.

 

I would agree with others about keywords. Describe what the photo is of in detail, but be careful not to use generalised words. Let's say you have a photo of a tractor - Don't just put "tractor" as a keyword. Many people looking for such an item will state the model they are looking for, so you should research the make and model and use those in your keywords. When taking such a photo, take another close-up on some identifying marks (such as the model number) for your own reference when keywording. I recently sold a photo of an old BT phone box because I researched the exact model that not many would know it by, and the buyer used that model number in their search. So without going to the effort of looking for what BT called the thing, it wouldn't have sold.

 

As for editing, firstly ensure you have calibrated your monitor (apologies if this has already been mentioned).

Take some of your photos such as EDTCRK and EDTD31. The foreground on these is too dark, which would usually be fixed by increasing the level of shadows in your editing software.

Compare E6P9G5 and E6P9G6, of the same building from different positions. The brightness of the sky in E6P9G5 has caused the exposure to be too low for the foreground. However, look at the difference in E6P9G6, where the foreground is far brighter and looks far nicer. You could easily change the first one to look just as good by increasing the shadows setting (or preferably being aware of where to set your exposure when taking the photo).

 

Also look at straightening your future photos. EDTKNY and EDTKP1 are examples of where that building on the far right isn't straight. You often cannot make all vertical edges straight in a photo without it looking "wrong", but I think it's best to at least get the most obvious lines straight by rotating the image a few degrees.

 

Just my own thoughts which I hope help a little. Good luck.

 

Thank you very much for your thoughts, suggestions and detailed review of my portfolio. I agree to all the notes, and already started to work on all suggestions got from this thread. At first I have started to upload some new images, and correct keywords. 

 

Hope my images will start to sell soon.

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