Nymeria Posted February 12, 2015 Share Posted February 12, 2015 Dear forum members, I've been uploading to Alamy for some time now, but as you can see by my pic count very slowly. I usually end up keywording forever which is quite the killjoy for me. I do mostly travel pics and mostly in Japan as that's my prefered country for travelling. I've sold 2 pics a year for the past three years, which considering the small size of my portfolio is expected? I would appreciate feedback on my keywording (too much?) and my pic choice. I have a mix of common travel regions, but also try to add regions that are not covered on Alamy yet. My question here is, does it make sense for example to upload pics for a region that has not been searched for in the past year on Alamy? I've been uploading pics of the beautiful Kerama Islands recently, but there seems to be absolutely no requests for those. There's basically no competition, but if there's no requests either... What I'm most hung up on though is keywording as I try to cover my bases. After all what does it help if I have pictures online that can't be found, right? I fear that I might be overdoing it though as I go well into the main keywords most of the time. I spent more time keywording than anything else. Any help/suggestions/tipps would be very appreciated. Kind Regards, Silvia Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arletta Posted February 12, 2015 Share Posted February 12, 2015 Yes, you could have more images That's for start. You travel and have only 400 files? Oh come on! Keywords are not bad, they are good actually and you have some nice images. What I miss here is variety. I can see you've been to Poland. How did you like the visit here? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted February 12, 2015 Share Posted February 12, 2015 "My question here is, does it make sense for example to upload pics for a region that has not been searched for in the past year on Alamy?" Tough question to answer, but I'd say it's worthwhile. You never now when an interested buyer might come along or what the next "hot destination" might be. It is probably not a good idea to concentrate too much on regions that haven't been searched for, though. You've got some really nice images. Just keep uploading. As Arletta pointed out, your collection is small. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nymeria Posted February 13, 2015 Author Share Posted February 13, 2015 Arletta, I have a lot more than 400 but I'm quite vicious when deciding which pics to put on Alamy. I.e. on one side pics that should go through QC (although I do miss the occasional spot that puts me in the sin bin) and on the other side pics that at least show something interesting. I've been basically all over Japan by now so deciding what location to do next and how many pics of each location I should put online is also quite difficult to decide. Usually when I visit I new location I take around 200-300 usuable pics and edit them down to around 20-30. I have around 50 locations or even more that I could upload, but as I said, keywording really slows me down Not sure if I should just keep on uploading anyway and have the pics ready and waiting for keywording instead of having them sit on my PC. Would reduce any downtime I have due to missing another spot as well. How do you handle it? Upload all you have and then keyword whenever you have time or upload and keyword and then upload and keyword (which is what I currently do). I was in Poland during the EURO 2012. Stayed there for a month working as translator for a Japanese TV crew. T'was fun! John, thanks, I'll defintely keep uploading. I found one of my pics in the Hyatt travel magazine and that's nearly as nice as getting a bit of money out of it! I always say I'll have 1000 by the end of the year, but so far I've failed three years in a row. Maybe this time! Cheers, Silvia Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arletta Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 I have around 50 locations or even more that I could upload, but as I said, keywording really slows me down Not sure if I should just keep on uploading anyway and have the pics ready and waiting for keywording instead of having them sit on my PC. Would reduce any downtime I have due to missing another spot as well. How do you handle it? Upload all you have and then keyword whenever you have time or upload and keyword and then upload and keyword (which is what I currently do). I'm still confused which way is better... Lately I add IPTC data first and when all batch is ready, upload it. In other option I always make huge mess in my folders Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mickfly Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 Arletta, I have a lot more than 400 but I'm quite vicious when deciding which pics to put on Alamy. I.e. on one side pics that should go through QC (although I do miss the occasional spot that puts me in the sin bin) and on the other side pics that at least show something interesting. I've been basically all over Japan by now so deciding what location to do next and how many pics of each location I should put online is also quite difficult to decide. Usually when I visit I new location I take around 200-300 usuable pics and edit them down to around 20-30. I have around 50 locations or even more that I could upload, but as I said, keywording really slows me down Not sure if I should just keep on uploading anyway and have the pics ready and waiting for keywording instead of having them sit on my PC. Would reduce any downtime I have due to missing another spot as well. How do you handle it? Upload all you have and then keyword whenever you have time or upload and keyword and then upload and keyword (which is what I currently do). I was in Poland during the EURO 2012. Stayed there for a month working as translator for a Japanese TV crew. T'was fun! John, thanks, I'll defintely keep uploading. I found one of my pics in the Hyatt travel magazine and that's nearly as nice as getting a bit of money out of it! I always say I'll have 1000 by the end of the year, but so far I've failed three years in a row. Maybe this time! Cheers, Silvia Found one of your pictures in the Hyatt mag? Do you mean it was used without permission? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nymeria Posted February 14, 2015 Author Share Posted February 14, 2015 Mickfly, no, it was licensed through Alamy. What I meant is that seeing your pictures put to use is nearly as nice as getting that paycheck. Both is best of course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jill Morgan Posted February 14, 2015 Share Posted February 14, 2015 I keyword first, then upload. That way if I want to upload to other venues the keywording is already done so I don't have to do it a second or third time. If you have lots of images, take clusters of the shots from the same shoot so some of the keywords will be the same. Then save those in a metadata template in Bridge so you can simply call up that template and those keywords will be included automatically. If you just did 5 images a day you would be adding 35 images a week. And be critical when looking at them at 100%. If not sure, try downsizing the image to 17mb to see if that helps. I often downsize images just to be sure. Jill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lastrega Posted February 14, 2015 Share Posted February 14, 2015 I don't have many images up either, but I have ditched almost everything I've ever photographed before last summer for quality reasons, so my problem is that I don't have a huge amount of images ready to go - I envy you your position in having lots ready. I would upload them and do the keywording afterwords. I find that I can do a bit of keywording here and there when I have a spare half hour and that way it doesn't seem such a big job as doing it all at once. It might seem obvious, but if you upload batches that are all of the same area / subject, then you can save a lot of time by using the same basic keywording on each image and just add more specific keywords for each image. I find it's easier to do small amounts of keywording in little pockets of spare time, but that's the way I work with lots of things - I have difficulty with allocating a huge chunk of time to a big job, so I break it down into manageable bites and it gets done - but at least it does get done! You have a lot of great images, by the way! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted February 14, 2015 Share Posted February 14, 2015 seeing your pictures put to use is nearly as nice as getting that paycheck. Not for a professional it isn't. This is a professional forum. I haven't seen more than about a quarter of my licences in use and it doesn't bother me a bit as long as the licence is paid for. Pursuing infringements is a lot of work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nymeria Posted February 14, 2015 Author Share Posted February 14, 2015 Thanks for all the suggestions. As I only upload to Alamy I think I'll go with uploading what I have and then just keywording whenever I have time. That way I'll always have something to keyword instead of waiting around for another batch to clear. I do keyword in batches, i.e. same location/topics with reusing part of the keywords. Makes it go a lot quicker. Spacecadet: I did not mean that I enjoy seeing my pics in use if they haven't been licenced. I have had infringments, although thankfully minor ones (not related to Alamy), but they make you wary of ever putting anything online. I do enjoy seeing what they've been used for once licensed. I think there's nothing wrong with being proud of something you made being used. Obviously that feeling sours if it's being used without your consent, knowledge and payment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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