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Hi to all wonderful contributors who all are kind enough to critique and guide new members


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Dear Members,

I am Fahd from Abu Dhabi, I am only expat not an Arab...

I have seen lot of seniors critiquing new members (requested critique) on their portfolios and guide them accordingly.

I am wondering if someone might critique mine and say some harsh words to direct me.

I know it is too early to ask for critique as I only have couple of hundred pics and same number if views with only 3 zooms so far and no sale...

By the way I just joined a month ago

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No harsh words from me Fahd you seem to be doing very well so far with generally well processed and good variety of images.

 

You do seem to have quite a few similars in some subjects which could be culled to improve your CTR.

 

Think about adding phrases in your tagging, not just single words, that buyers would search for relating to your images.

 

With images of flora and fauna, including insects,trees etc, always add the scientific/botanic name.

 

For someone with so few images and only with Alamy for a month you are doing quite well with zooms. Just keep doing what you are doing and upload many more images.

 

Allan

 

 

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A couple of thoughts from me. Too many siimilars. Choose the best few kitesurfing shots and delete the rest. All your kitesurfing shots have the same caption (rather than, say, ‘woman kitesurfing’ ). Is it possible to take kitesurfing shots from a vantage which includes Abu Dhabi landmarks and coastal buildings? You have a “lone seagull”, when it appears to be some kind of plover.

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It’s tempting to focus on increasing your portfolio, rather than revise and learn how to keyword. But I suggest you take the advice and also search the forums for other advice about tagging and revise what you have already, so that you don’t end up like me having to go back over thousands of images!? Good idea to start a proper keyword hierarchy in Lightroom to do this, too, before you end up with thousands of words.

 

There is a ton of good advice and information on the forum, which I wish I had known when I started. I didn’t even realise that there was a forum until I had been a contributor for over 4 months.

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Your little girl is cute for sure. Instead of taking snapshots of her looking at the camera I think you would be more likely to sell images in which she is doing something. I would include "small" in the keywords. Search in Alamy on the words child and children and take a look at the keywords other people are using. It can give you ideas.

 

Paulette (formerly a cute little girl)

 

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7 hours ago, Allan Bell said:

 

No harsh words from me Fahd you seem to be doing very well so far with generally well processed and good variety of images.

 

You do seem to have quite a few similars in some subjects which could be culled to improve your CTR.

 

Think about adding phrases in your tagging, not just single words, that buyers would search for relating to your images.

 

With images of flora and fauna, including insects,trees etc, always add the scientific/botanic name.

 

For someone with so few images and only with Alamy for a month you are doing quite well with zooms. Just keep doing what you are doing and upload many more images.

 

Allan

 

 

Dear Allan,

I cannot thank you enough for your advice and kind words, I do listen to every advice and I will take note all of yours...I love you guys...I will try to remove similar and will avoid in future...I do not have any Photoshop skills and I even don't have subscriptions to lightroom, However I did subsribed to Lightroom Mobile and All of my images are tweeked there, mostly Auto...

By the way I have deleted 28 images which were similar and I think some more will go soon

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1 hour ago, NYCat said:

Your little girl is cute for sure. Instead of taking snapshots of her looking at the camera I think you would be more likely to sell images in which she is doing something. I would include "small" in the keywords. Search in Alamy on the words child and children and take a look at the keywords other people are using. It can give you ideas.

 

Paulette (formerly a cute little girl)

 

Kind words... thanks a lot for your time to look and spot the issue...I will take note of all what you write and will update my portfolio as per guidance...

Thanks again.

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6 hours ago, David Pimborough said:

You need to watch your keywords

 

Example: Keywords like cutebaby babygirl babyboy are a waste of time no English speaker joins those words together in speech or searches just use the words cute, girl

 

Is the child a girl or a boy? You can't have both

 

She is not a baby she is a toddler

 

Phrases like "My daughter" are irrelevant

 

Words like Wellness, woman, yas island, mother, motherhood, travel, white, parent are spam and should be removed.

 

Is the child Asian? Or Middle Eastern? Though both would apply I guess

 

You might want to consider adding innocent, one and single (as in one child or person)

 

Image ID: M5MR4P

 

closeup-headshot-of-a-little-child-at-be
 

Wow, so much information in message.

Thanks for your time for looking into my portfolio, I have noted your advice and I will update accordingly...

Thanks again.

For keyword I use Mykeyworder.com, I am totally new to this stuff and with such guidance, I believe I will improve that pretty soon.

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4 hours ago, Sally said:

It’s tempting to focus on increasing your portfolio, rather than revise and learn how to keyword. But I suggest you take the advice and also search the forums for other advice about tagging and revise what you have already, so that you don’t end up like me having to go back over thousands of images!? Good idea to start a proper keyword hierarchy in Lightroom to do this, too, before you end up with thousands of words.

 

There is a ton of good advice and information on the forum, which I wish I had known when I started. I didn’t even realise that there was a forum until I had been a contributor for over 4 months.

Thanks a lot Sally,

I am glad that you looked into my portfolio, I am happy I found this group and You are write, I am going to Pakistan in August and I had Target to at least 1000 images before leaving Abu Dhabi ( just for a month) and I believe my Tour will bring another 1000 to my portfolio, but thanks God I did ask for critique, so Now I will be more careful in adding pics...In my workflow PC is not involved, Only my mirrorless camera, Memory card and My Huawei P10...and For Post processing I use Lightroom Mobile. And I might also want to get some decent advice in keywording and tagging as I just only use mykeyworder.com to get ideas and sometime I just copy all...

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6 hours ago, David Pimborough said:

Another thing I spotted

 

This is royalty free you indicate there is a model release but no property release

 

The man's hat has a logo on it.  Under the rules you would need to submit it as editorial or remove the logo in Photoshop or get a property release

closeup-head-shot-of-car-machenic-and-tr

 

 

Similarly this can not be royalty free it unless you have a property release it should be royalty free editorial as it's art and there is a shop logo in the background.

 

ceramic-horse-headshot-infrnt-of-hotel-i

Good advice, Thanks for your time, I have changed it after you spotted the issue and that was a good one to look for future postings as well. 

Thanks again for your time.

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6 hours ago, John Morrison said:

A couple of thoughts from me. Too many siimilars. Choose the best few kitesurfing shots and delete the rest. All your kitesurfing shots have the same caption (rather than, say, ‘woman kitesurfing’ ). Is it possible to take kitesurfing shots from a vantage which includes Abu Dhabi landmarks and coastal buildings? You have a “lone seagull”, when it appears to be some kind of plover.

Thanks a lot.

I will try to take shots and will include some buildings as well, Soon I will delete similar images, and will update captions as advised...I thank you again for your time to look into my portfolio...

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9 minutes ago, GS-Images said:

 

Just a quick point on the part I quoted - It's actually beneficial to use the same word in more than one tags. Duplicate words used in the right way are useful for when clients search for that particular phrase. The exact details of how the search engine handles such things is rarely obvious when testing, but the whole point of having phrases is to put words together, giving higher weight in searches if that search phrase matches a tag, compared to having those words appearing "somewhere".

 

So I recommend having tags such as: Rolex, Rolex log, Rolex trademark, Rolex watch, watch Rolex".

 

Obviously there are limits and even Alamy say it isn't necessary, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it or that it doesn't given an advantage.

 

Geoff.

I found this one useful. I went back and started looking at how things get searched for, so I started using some phrases as well, and getting more views because of it. I have a small portfolio still, but I am incorporating everything into my new uploads, and working on fixing the rest.

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11 minutes ago, GS-Images said:

 

Just a quick point on the part I quoted - It's actually beneficial to use the same word in more than one tags. Duplicate words used in the right way are useful for when clients search for that particular phrase. The exact details of how the search engine handles such things is rarely obvious when testing, but the whole point of having phrases is to put words together, giving higher weight in searches if that search phrase matches a tag, compared to having those words appearing "somewhere".

 

So I recommend having tags such as: Rolex, Rolex log, Rolex trademark, Rolex watch, watch Rolex".

 

Obviously there are limits and even Alamy say it isn't necessary, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it or that it doesn't given an advantage.

 

Geoff.

Dear Geoff,

So you mean to say, I can keep these tags but not that much, in other words I can use those tags or phrases but with some limits?

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15 minutes ago, GS-Images said:

 

I didn't phrase it very well, sorry to be a little confusing. :)  What I'm trying to say is that it's fine to use a word several times to create phrases, but only do that when the phrase makes sense and could be used in a search. So don't just add the word several times in nonsense phrases just to help push your placement up in search results. Some may do that as it's possible that duplicating words can help placement (it did seem to at some point but I don't know if that's still the case). It could be seen as gaming the system, which is frowned upon. So just use common sense. 

 

Geoff. 

Yeah you are right, But common sense is not common, and I am not a common man...but now I will borrow from others to get things right...

Just kidding,

I got your point and will implement this into my portfolio...

Thanks a lot.

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19 hours ago, NYCat said:

 

Paulette (formerly a cute little girl)

 

 

Still a cute little girl in our eyes.

 

Allan

 

 

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