Jump to content

Newbie (I know, not another one one) just saying a tentative hello


Recommended Posts

OK. I don't generally post of forums, or anything else for that matter, however after getting into photography around a year and half ago, I've decided to try and set a goal of 'initially' paying for my camera kit. I'd be interested in any comments on my port so far. I'm guessing I've probably added too many similar images from certain shoots, however, I'm getting better at not posting too many of the same thing. So, any 'constructive' advice would be appreciated, I really do come in peace and don't want to cause any arguments or bad feeling that I sometimes see on forums. Thanks in advance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would try to avoid including keywords which are peripheral to the subject and would tend to cause your image to show in searches where it is not relevant (as this will harm your search ranking in the long term).  Example random image 'Dark haired woman drinking wine...'  does not justify berry, bunch, blackberry, healthy, leaf, noir, raw, red, rose, grape, stem, sunshine. Some other words would work better in keyword phrases, 'dark hair' 'organic wine' (if it can be shown to be so), 'white wine'. 'Young woman' would also work better, so long as the image clearly shows a young woman - a picture buyer using that term would want an image which clearly depicts that type of person. 

 

In general, don't fill the keywords list for the sake of doing so. Relevant keywords will produce better results in the long term. Many new users turn to keyword generating software and these tend to produce too much spam. The thoughtful photog who keywords what he/she sees will thrive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

interesting too that given you have a lot of similars, which ideally could be deleted, you dont have any in "portrait" rather than "landscape" format. Generally for a given scene/view, I would suggest one or maybe 2, if sufficiently different, in landscape format, plus one in portrait format and thats that.

 

Kumar (the Doc one)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As another relative newbie to stock photography some advice would be appreciated. Candour without rudeness preferably. I usually shoot raw with little if any camera image adjustments so it means every image is processed manually in photoshop. This is very time consuming. To complicate matters further i am colur blind so I need to exercise caution in saturation and colour adjustments etc, Does anyone shoot JPG with in camera adjustments etc.

I hope this is not a naive question 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote

 I usually shoot raw with little if any camera image adjustments so it means every image is processed manually in photoshop. This is very time consuming. 

 

Not a naive question at all.  

 

I'll post-process 100% of my non-live news images that go on here. Time consuming? Yes. Essential? absolutely. I've never done JPG with in camera adjustment...seems amateurish. 

 

As for being colour blind, perhaps best never to adjust saturation/white balance/colour hues. Stick to other post-processing, lighting, contrast, curves, selective dodging/burning. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Many thanks for taking the time to respond to my post folks, it really is appreciated. I'll digest those comments over the weekend as I'm busy tonight straight from work and have a couple of questions to your answers. Thanks again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Futterwithtrees said:

As another relative newbie to stock photography some advice would be appreciated. Candour without rudeness preferably. I usually shoot raw with little if any camera image adjustments so it means every image is processed manually in photoshop. This is very time consuming. To complicate matters further i am colur blind so I need to exercise caution in saturation and colour adjustments etc, Does anyone shoot JPG with in camera adjustments etc.

I hope this is not a naive question 

Better to start your own thread, but yes, some do. I used to but was having QC trouble some of which was down to the lower quality of jpegs. But if you have a good reason for using it, you probably can get away with it for the majority of images at low ISOs.

You could always try uploading some of your results here for an opinion on your adjustments. But I'd suggest you need a calibrated monitor.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Guys.

 

Once again, thanks for your time and advice. 

 

To Robert Convery,  - agreed regarding the duplications, I don't intend to duplicate so much in the future. Do you think deleting the almost duplicates I have already will make any difference to me at this stage???

 

To Joseph Clemson  - thanks for the advice regarding keywords. I must admit I find it the frustrating part of this hobby. A couple of questions for you (if you don't mind). If I was to input, let's say 'White Wine' would I then NOT need to input the key words, 'White' and 'Wine' separately as well as you've suggested not using 'red' and 'rose' (which should actually have been rosé) which I thought would help so I didn't have to put 'red wine' and rosé wine' (if that makes sense??).  Also, when I load up image and it gets to the super tagging section etc, the website kind of intuitively leads me to input up to 50 key words, otherwise it suggests 'poor discoverability' and orange colour one bar. From an OCD point of view, getting the green 'good discoverability' gives me a nice warm feeling and sense of achievement, the orange 'poor discoverability' gives me an unhappy sad feeling, but in your opinion this doesn't really matter then????

 

To Doc - that's a good point regarding 'portrait'. I guess I prefer 'landscape' format so I've gravitated towards that, however I also guess it's not about what I prefer, it's about what a potential buyer prefers and wants. I'll make sure in future I shot some in 'portrait' as well.

 

To Brasilnut - fair point about the landscapes and macros not selling on here from what I'm gleaning from reading the forums. I guess I'll go through the same as most people in terms of trial and error about uploading what pics to what sites etc.

 

To John Morrison - fair point about butterflies in Ennerdale, I'll revisit that when I've finished uploading what images I still have to get off my computer and take that advice going forward (be amazing if someone did want a butterfly in Ennerdale though : )    )

 

That's about it in a nutshell. Cheers folks.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Regarding deleting duplicates, they are still on the system for six months, so if they get a zoom or sale you could re-upload the image.

 

When I delete an image I put it in a separate pseudonym, before selecting delete. 

 

There used to be regular re-ranks, the last one December 2016, but the search engine may now be continuously updated, I don't think anyone is sure.

 

Rob 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi all, I am a newbie in stock (only 2 years in it) and I have some questions looking other portfolios,

is better, quantity or quality for increasing sales?

photograph various subjects or specialize in one?

RM or RF in Alamy?

Thanks in advance.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/6/2017 at 02:51, Futterwithtrees said:

As another relative newbie to stock photography some advice would be appreciated. Candour without rudeness preferably. I usually shoot raw with little if any camera image adjustments so it means every image is processed manually in photoshop. This is very time consuming. To complicate matters further i am colur blind so I need to exercise caution in saturation and colour adjustments etc, Does anyone shoot JPG with in camera adjustments etc.

I hope this is not a naive question 

I think Lightroom would be a good investment for you with your color blindness.  You can create presets in Lightroom and have LR apply those presets when imported.  It also does a fine job of organizing your photos.  It's rare that I make color changes to a photo, I do sometimes enhance a single color which is simple in LR.  Looking through your photos the ones shot under cloudy skies could use an increase in exposure, saturation, contrast, clarity, vibrance to make them more attractive to buyers.  Lightroom also allows you to synchronize the processing of images shot under similar lighting conditions which is a great time saver. There are also presets built in to LR, or that can be downloaded that can provide different renderings of your photos.  You can use the Auto exposure and white balance features also,  LR can be challenging to learn to use, but youtube has many instructional videos which help.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

+1 regarding LR recommendation. I couldn't get through the volume of material I do without it and that's just talking about the batch capabilities- I'm blessed with good colour vision.

Discoverability is a red herring- few of my images nowadays have more than about 25 tags. "white wine" as a phrase ranks higher, in theory, than the separate tags. I would have all three if it's the main subject.

BTW accents are ignored in search, so rosé and rose are the same. I only use accents, umlauts and so on in captions, out of courtesy to the language.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Fstop boy said:

 

To Joseph Clemson  - thanks for the advice regarding keywords. I must admit I find it the frustrating part of this hobby. A couple of questions for you (if you don't mind). If I was to input, let's say 'White Wine' would I then NOT need to input the key words, 'White' and 'Wine' separately as well as you've suggested not using 'red' and 'rose' (which should actually have been rosé) which I thought would help so I didn't have to put 'red wine' and rosé wine' (if that makes sense??).  Also, when I load up image and it gets to the super tagging section etc, the website kind of intuitively leads me to input up to 50 key words, otherwise it suggests 'poor discoverability' and orange colour one bar. From an OCD point of view, getting the green 'good discoverability' gives me a nice warm feeling and sense of achievement, the orange 'poor discoverability' gives me an unhappy sad feeling, but in your opinion this doesn't really matter then????

 

 

 

Whenever you add a keyword to your list of tags, put yourself in the shoes of a prospective buyer using that keyword in a search and ask yourself if they would be likely to be looking for your image. If not, you should probably leave the keyword out or perhaps use it in a phrase which better describes your subject.  In this case 'white wine' is good. I would probably also use 'wine'. I would not use 'white' as anybody searching on that keyword alone is probably looking for something quite different. I suggested removing red and rose wine because, as far as I could see from the image, it was simply a white wine of some description (I'm not an expert!).   By all means use single keywords and keyword phrases using the same keywords UNLESS using a keyword on its own is misleading. To use another of your example images, I would keyword 'Cash Shop' and possibly 'shop', but not 'cash' as there is no actually currency in the picture. I would probably also put 'Cashshop' as some searchers may use that.

 

 As a general point, work on the basis that busy picture editors will tend to assume each picture is captioned professionally, accurately and fully, so only include such information in keywords and captions as you know to be correct. i don't know what kind of wine it is in your image, but I don't think it can be all of Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot and Zinfandel,  For myself, if I can't caption and keyword a picture and know that I am accurate, I don't submit it. 

 

Discoverability: absolutely, don't get hung up on the Discoverability bar. Turning it green does not switch on an automatic better placement in search results. Alamy have put it in to encourage contributors to complete the metadata pages, but they have badly misjudged this feature as in most cases it simply encourages people to put in keywords which have little relevancy to the main subject in the image. In the long run, irrelevant keywording will harm your ranking in search results. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry to all if I appeared to be hi-jacking this thread. Ignorance on my part but thanks for the helpful comments made none the less. The comments re key wording are helpful. I have a tendency to populate fully but it makes sense not to include words that do no relate to the main subject and message of the image. Particularly with the ranking system that Alamy uses.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Joseph Clemson

 

Thanks for taking the time and effort to give me your advice. I'm already taking it on board. Sure I'll get some stuff wrong, but that's life, onwards and upwards hopefully. I'm guessing that you've done OK out of stock photography given the advice and that it's worth all the time and effort???

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.