Portfolio Review

[Russell]

I'm beginning to despair! Since the beginning of the year my sales have fallen through the floor. I'm getting views, and a reasonable number of zooms - but nobody is hitting the"Buy" button.

 

It's a relatively small collection, and I confess I don't "over-keyword". I try to keep my keywords accurate & to the point, and the captions. I have three stars in QC, and (touch wood) haven't had a fail since I first joined in late 2013.

 

If any of you kind people would care to take a look and comment on the portfolio, I really would appreciate it.

 

Thanks in advance,

Russell

[Robert Convery]

Some of your photos are in dull light and/or with on camera flash. (remembrance service, stone masons, mummers play)

 

I would move those shots to a second pseudonym, to keep a high rank in the main pseudonym.

 

Rob. 

[RedSnapper]

I'm running another of my one-day workshops on stock photography......in Cirencester, April 07 2018....

 

book your place?

 

km

[Robert]

Quite a lot are underexposed (and there is inconsistent exposure). Calibrate your monitor?

[Jill Morgan]

They generally do look a little dark, and you do need to improve your keywords.  I was looking at your giraffes, yet you don't have the keywords "giraffes" even though there are two in the image, and you don't have some specifics such as the one with the giraffe with her legs stretched out so she can reach the salt lick.  Keywords and captions should say exactly what is in the image, not just generally.

 

Jill

[Brasilnut]

I'm quite new here and my sales aren't fantastic, but I'll still pitch in:

 

It seems you're opening up the shadows too much which gives it a weird pre-HDR look.

[Ed Rooney]

Russell, so far the comments on your images and tags have been spot on. 

 

I know about English weather, since I lived there for 7 years. But you are consistently shooting subjects that call for good light on dark, overcast days. Also, I'm not  sure you do any PP at all; everything looks flat and dull. 

 

Edo

[Bill Kuta]

I think that, where appropriate, the country name should be included in the caption.

[Ed Rooney]

1 hour ago, Bill Kuta said:

I think that, where appropriate, the country name should be included in the caption.

 

You think? In the caption, or the tags, or both? I usually have the location in both. I've put in a lot of other stuff too, trying to make use of all 150 characters if possible. Then Alamy made a statement that captions now have less weight in a search. I don't know what to think about this. 

 

Edo

[Betty LaRue]

1 hour ago, Ed Rooney said:

 

You think? In the caption, or the tags, or both? I usually have the location in both. I've put in a lot of other stuff too, trying to make use of all 50 characters if possible. Then Alamy made a statement that captions now have less weight in a search. I don't know what to think about this. 

 

Edo

As I've gone through my legacy images (still a work in progress) I am putting location in the captions.  It sure won't hurt, and may help. I've always put them in the tag body. 

[Cryptoprocta]

There can be problems with overusing the same caption over a group of images, so that it doesn't belong to some of the images. There are several like JFXFG0 which share the caption,

"Local groups don fancy dress for the annual Fleet Carnival processing 2017. The theme this year "Under the Sea"." and also have the keyword 'fancy dress' yet these musicians are not in fancy dress, and you don't have in the caption who they actually are (Dorset Youth Marching Band).

Also your caption just says 'local groups', which means nothing at all (they are not 'local' to most of the world).

In keywords, you have 'Fleet Carnival' but also 'fleet' and 'carnival', yet there is no fleet nor carnival in the image. I know that Alamy's search will split 'fleet carnival' into its two words and mush them with other parts of keyword phrases :-<, but don't encourage this! (Sometimes having one or more word/s from a keyword phrase as a separate keyword makes sense,  e.g. 'marching band', 'marching' and 'band' would be fine for this image. You should have the location in the caption and keywords, town, Dorset, England, UK, and 'Dorset Youth Marching Band' should be in the caption and as a keyword phrase.

You could also put drum, drums, drummer, drummers, musicians, side drum, bass drum, percussion, percussionist, percussionists; maybe (though not as clear in the photo) zylophone and (whatever that's called that the child is playing), but these aren't so clear.

 

[Bill Brooks]

Needs sparkle. Needs a little intense black and a little intense white in most images.

Have some black 0,0,0 and some white 255,255,255 in most images.

[Bill Brooks]

6 minutes ago, GS-Images said:

 

It's what the huge majority of people experience. I don't "assume" anything. You can point out what you experience and I'll point out what I experience. You're doing exactly what you're accusing me off. If you want to disagree with me then fine, but don't you dare go down the same route as before of openly being rude and aggressive in your tone. You've done it before and I let it go despite you making several sarcastic comments clearly directed at me, so don't start all that nonsense again.

 

As for the facts - I have had an email from admin that I'll reply to soon, hence why I just deleted my statement about pseudos, as I need to clarify things. I simply stated what I see and what Customer Relations have told me IN WRITING, but I'll deal with that privately.

 

Geoff.

 

A good use of the dreaded -1 from me to Geoff’s thin skinned post.

[Ed Rooney]

Russell, you might take a good look at Robert Convery's portfolio. He too lives in England, yet all his pictures are taken in attractive light. Why is that? Simple: he avoids shooting in bad light.  

[Martin Carlsson]

2 minutes ago, GS-Images said:

 

It's what the huge majority of people experience. I don't "assume" anything. You can point out what you experience and I'll point out what I experience. You're doing exactly what you're accusing me off. If you want to disagree with me then fine, but don't you dare go down the same route as before of openly being rude and aggressive in your tone. You've done it before and I let it go despite you making several sarcastic comments clearly directed at me, so don't start all that nonsense again.

 

As for the facts - I have had an email from admin that I'll reply to soon, hence why I just deleted my statement about pseudos, as I need to clarify things. I simply stated what I see and what Customer Relations have told me IN WRITING, but I'll deal with that privately.

 

Geoff.

 

Cows, beautful cows, many many beautiful cows! chill/breathe - you guys have different experiences when it comes to pseudos - big deal. I personally don't think in the end that playing around with them will gain you more than organisational benefits. Obviously Geoff you have gone through the trouble of "investigating" this - can you share your findings or point me/us to it if posted before?

[Ollie]

I always include location both in the caption and in the keywords.  But I'm a travel photographer, so that's often important to the subject.

 

I know it's impossible to predict what will appeal to an editor but there does seem to be quite a bit of duplication or near-similars in the collection.  Perhaps being a bit more selective could result in a higher ranking in the search results.

 

Several have commented about dull lighting.  I had that problem last year when I hiked Hadrian's Wall.  I forgot to check in advance to see what day of the year the sun shines up there. 

 

Ollie

[Martin Carlsson]

4 minutes ago, GS-Images said:

 

Thanks Martin. I'm trying to chill but that bully winds me up, as does Bill who has, as usual, decided to jump in and stick his awe in.

 

As for pseudos - I'm in the process of writing to James Allsworth about this and about other things.

 

Geoff.

 

I doubt Ian meant anything bad, if he did I'm sure he'd tell you that straight. Text is difficult. Whenever you can/feel like share something about pesudos that is appreciated.

[Martin Carlsson]

Just now, geogphotos said:

 

Well, it certainly comes as a surprise to be told that I am a bully, sarcastic, rude, aggressive for daring to have a different experience and saying so.

 

Bimey....

 

I don't know if I missed something, but you are big boy so just let it slide for the greater good of this forum - I'm asking nicely.

[Matt Ashmore]

15 minutes ago, GS-Images said:

As for pseudos - I'm in the process of writing to James Allsworth about this

 

If this conversation with James reaches some sort of conclusion as to what impact pseudos do and don't have, it would be great if you were able to share the conclusions.

If truth be known, I don't think any of us contributors really know.. we just have experiences which might suggest one thing or another. It's like CTR.. does that make a difference to images placement nowadays.. or is it just an "interesting metric"...? who knows!

[Matt Ashmore]

4 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

As you say we can't really know the overall situation and that's why until we get a clear position from Alamy we should steer clear from making factual statements about the whole situation

 

2 minutes ago, GS-Images said:

but Alamy are intentionally not saying what actual roll pseudos have (well they did in the email I was thinking of a few months ago, or so I thought).

 

So there is no clear answer to this at all, and we won't get an answer. I understand why, to a point, or should I say that I accept their response even if I'm not sure I understand why the roll of pseudos can't be more transparent. It is what it is though and I'm ok with that.

 

Yeah.. we do tend to get the same stock answer from Alamy that we should just keyword sensibly. I suspect that the reason for this is that they keep changing the behavior of the search engine so if they give a definitive answer now then it might not be the case in 6 months time. They also obviously don't want to give any clues that might help competitors.. it's frustrating though!

[Robert Convery]

I operate two pseudos, plus one for deleted images.

 

I have a slightly different strategy to Geogphotos, my second pseudo was originally to organise shots of flowers, gardens, natural history etc and gradually evolved to include underperforming shots from my main pseudo.

 

My aim has always been to get reasonable sales from the second pseudo and to keep the ctr near the Alamy average.

 

Some stats from the 1st of Jan 2017

Robert Convery approx 1000 images sales 94 views 23299 zooms 232 ctr 1.00

Convery flowers approx. 2000 images sales 59 views 32995 zooms 161 ctr 0.49

 

Rob.

[Brasilnut]

I'm guessing that now is probably not a good time to bring up Microstock again... 

[regen]

2 hours ago, geogphotos said:

My CTR is below Alamy average because I do not edit tightly and have a lot of similars. But that is not the point in discussing pseudos

 

Last month:

 

geogphotos = 0.50

geogphoto =   0.29

 

All sales and all zooms that I have ever had go into 'geogphotos' as a matter of routine. Not advocating it, it's just what I do.

 

I have 4 pseudos which date back to about 2009 and they are subject based. Have never moved any files between pseudos. They tend to jump about a bit depending upon the views and zooms received in a given period but no pseudo stands out as being best. Typically in the range 0.5 to 1.5 with one pseudo having less than 500 files and one having more than 7000 files. i do tend to be very sparing with keywords and never put in the place taken because it always led to lots of unwanted views.- All my files are orange for discoverability.

 

Regen

[Bill Kuta]

8 hours ago, Ed Rooney said:

 

You think? In the caption, or the tags, or both? I usually have the location in both. I've put in a lot of other stuff too, trying to make use of all 150 characters if possible. Then Alamy made a statement that captions now have less weight in a search. I don't know what to think about this. 

 

Edo

 

Yeah Ed, I meant that country should be in both the tags and the caption. I'm talking about country in particular because, although Russell has location in the captions, it did not include country, and I found it annoying to look at the tags to find out. Granted, buyers would probably include country in searches, but still I like to make things easy and obvious for them.

[Martin Carlsson]

8 hours ago, Brasilnut said:

I'm guessing that now is probably not a good time to bring up Microstock again... 

 

I'm genuinely puzzled - how would Microstock have any relevance to a discussion originally about "Portfolio Review", that morphed into Alamy specific strategies concerning pseudonyms and true effects of the CTR/rank? Don't let anything hold you back Alexandre, don't waste space asking for permission - if it's relevant speak up....