Hi,

For those who have seperate portfolios for micro and macro (and / or midstock) how do you decide which portfolio to put an image in??

Thanks
Phil

For me there are several criteria that count in either direction.

Contents:

- Common, not so unique images with great volume potential goes to micro (Paper clip isolated on white).

- Unique photos with limited sales potential, but high value for those who need it, goes to macro (Most of my travel and editorial photos)


Technical quality:
Photos with great sharpness that can easily be enlarged to Alamy's 48MB standard are likely macro candidates.

Photos that have to be reduced to 4MP to look sharp are obvious micro candidates.


Then, there are all those in between, around 98% I guess   

From what I'm reading here, it seems that macro is good for travel photos.  Is that right?

Or is it that travel doesn't sell well in micros?

I'm curious

Claude

You are right and you are right. Many travel photos, particularly from "exotic" places (nowhere is exotic for those who live there), will mostly sell in low volume. A photo of a temple in the jungle of Cambodia can't be used to illustrate anything but a temple in the jungle of Cambodia.

On the other hand, those who need a photo of that particular temple in the jungle of Cambodia are mostly willing to pay more than a dollar, and often many hundred dollars, since that is cheaper than going there to take the photo themselves.

But to get good money for travel photos, they really need to be top notch. There are so many people travelling with cameras now, and the market is flooded with mediocre travel photos that will never sell, not even once. Here, as anywhere else, quality is what sells.

Oh and BTW since Alamy is introducing the novel use, which might only be slightly more expensive than iStock pricing, is it now justified to put the same images on both Alamy and microstock?

How do we know how expensive the novel use photos are going to be?  I am sticking with sending photos to alamy that are not on the micros.  I think it could damage alamy if we all start uploading microstock photos there.

I have no problem sending them to the midstock sites that allow higher prices though, like LO, SV and FP as the price can be similar to alamy or with a much smaller difference.