My recent pay out is burning a hole in my pocket, but what piece of photographic equipment/hardware should I buy to enhance my kit?

Budget -  £100 ($200?) ?

Quote from: tommroch on February 16, 2008, 15:13
Hello Madelaide, I am currently reading through Alamy's agreement and Iam also having trouble understanding section 7:

It means if you sell an image directly to a client that was first seen by them on Alamy then you are to advise Alamy of the fact and pay them 10%

Yes...

If you don't you may limit your earnings potential.  All it means is that you give your permission for Alamy to licence your images through certain third party distributors. You can pick the territories you want to be represented in from a list and the current sign up period is until 31st March 2008.

The break down is like this -

Alamy commission 15%

Distributor commission 40%

Contributor commission 45%

There's a FAQ on Alamy all about this.

Quote from: Mormegil on February 15, 2008, 19:26
I understand you can upload non-exclusively there, but it seems like bad form to put the same image up on Alamy as other microstock sites. 

I think it goes on but Alamy make no attempt to stop this happening and in any case I don't think they could.  I personally only upload editorial style travel images and sell them as Rights Managed.

Alamy sells the majority of their images to the editorial market, mainly to the big publishers who have accounts with them. These publishers are less likely to buy Royalty Free images from Alamy as they would be to expensive.

They have a smaller share of the commercial market which is mainly RF. So if you have commercial images set them as RF and editorial as RM.  They don't inspect images for content only technical quality, that way buyers can find images on Alamy that they cant find anywhere else. They now have over 11 million images online!

My last batch submitted at the beginning of February was approved today so the queue seems to be coming down.

They have indicated reviews within 48 hours by the end of Q1 this year.

As a side note Photoshelter are pretty quick too, although their disambiguation is like IS!

Yes, I used my real name in the company field.

Alamy usually review your first submission within 7 days, after that it can take up to a month.

After you've been accepted I think its best to upload as many as you can otherwise it will take you months to build up your portfolio.

They hope to review submissions within 48 hours soon but then I think they will check each image rather than the odd one as they do now.

70

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

20437

Congratulations.

They've linked to one of mine in the blog, this has increased the views but it has only been downloaded once, I hope you have more success.

Quote from: leszek on February 06, 2008, 23:05
....I have just received another rejection and an invitation to try again in 90 days – but I will most likely just give up.

Please don't give up getting into IS, it is well worth the effort.  I had a couple of applications rejected for artifacts, mainly down to the camera I was using at the time. Although four of the rejected photos were later accepted after my application was accepted.

Good luck.

I usually leave submitting to IS till last as their upload system and disambiguation is a pain.  So if SS and DT reject the same file I don't bother uploading it to IS.

If IS do reject a file its usually down to overfiltering or other technical issue.  All the ones I've corrected and resubmitted have been accepted - so far.

At other sites like StockXpert the usual reason is "we have to many like this" and of course there is no point resubmitting unless you're lucky enough to get a different inspector.

Quote from: Vonkara on February 07, 2008, 13:07
I have one accepted so far from a beach volleyball event where I go each year. I uploaded it more because of the 5$ than the incomes I can get from it.

I also have one accepted, but the $5 bonus only applies to photos picked for the "In the News" section. 

It took four weeks to approve my second batch of images.  There is a poll somewhere in the forum at Alamy that suggests this is the norm.  I'll try a larger batch next time as at this rate it will take ages to build up my portfolio.

UK Photographers Rights

http://www.sirimo.co.uk/ukpr.php/2004/11/19/uk_photographers_rights_guide

Interesting reading for those in the UK

Adelaide mentioned on another thread that she was curious as to what subjects sold well for us at each agency. Here's my findings...

IS – Transport (Steam Trains)

SS – Transport (Steam Trains)

StockXpert – Transport (Steam Trains)

DT – Nature (Generic Landscape)

FT – Sport & Leisure (Cycling)

123RF – Industry (Construction)


It's interesting to note that none of the Transport images have been sold on DT, FT or 123RF but the other subjects – Nature, Sport & Leisure and Industry sell well across all the sites.

What are your findings?

They are also my 3rd best performer after IS and SS, but the last 4 weeks have been very poor.

Their search algorithm does not seem to be contextual if you use for example the keyword "wheel" but the buyer searches for "wheels" and you haven't got "wheels" as a keyword then your image will not be found. Likewise "eat" and "eating", it's something to remember when keywording images.

The London Eye is also know as the British Airways London Eye and although they sold their stake in the Eye to the Tussauds Group in 2005 they are still sponsors of the Eye.

One of the planning conditions at the time was that the London Eye could not be used for advertising.  I suppose editorial use would be ok, but you may still require permission if on their property.

I see her spinning both ways.

When she is spinning clockwise her left foot is on the ground, when spinning anti-clockwise her right foot is on the ground.

Or am I seeing things?

I had my first download this week, unfortunately it was a subscription download so nothing to write home about.

I've set my prices at $5 as they're not selling the high-res version of my files. The largest size on offer is the medium-res at 1600 X 1200, not sure why!

I have just been accepted at Alamy and intend to offer them different images to those I have on the microstock sites. Most of them will be UK travel related so they will probably be sold with a RM license.

Reading posts on the various forums there seems to be some animosity towards the microstock photographer.  Although more recently there seems to be a coming together with more and more photographers posting their work to both.

With this in mind do those of you who contribute to both use a different name or pseudonym - one for micro and one for macro?

Just had my submission approved only took 3 working days. 

Quote from: jorgeinthewater on October 09, 2007, 07:57
I guess after a year of stock I'm paranoid about copyrighted labels!!

I think the same rules on trademarks etc apply to RedBubble, but we have to police our own submissions ...

... When you submit or upload content on the RedBubble website you represent and warrant that:

you own all copyright in the content, or if you are not the owner, that you have permission to use the content, and that you have the right to display, reproduce and sell the content. You license RedBubble to use and sub-license the content in accordance with this agreement;
you and your content do not and will not infringe the intellectual property rights or other rights of any person or entity, including copyright, moral rights, trade mark, patent or right of privacy; ...

and ...

You keep the copyright of any content you submit or upload to the website. In order to receive the RedBubble services you grant RedBubble a non-exclusive royalty free license to use and archive the content in accordance with or as reasonably contemplated by this agreement.

and if there are problems then ...

6. Indemnity
6.1 You hereby indemnify and will keep RedBubble indemnified from and against all claims, debts, accounts, expenses, costs, liens, actions and proceedings of any nature whatsoever, whether known or unknown by any person, arising from, incidental to, or by virtue of, the appointment, or any breach or non performance of your obligations under this Agency Agreement or arising out of your wilful act, neglect or default in the performance of such obligations.

They seem to be the standard sort of T&C we agree to at stock sites, yes?

I joined this evening after seeing Karimala's  post elsewhere.

The preview photos are big and the watermark optional but it is small and in one corner, not much good to be honest.

The trend seems to be for the more arty style so perhaps images that would not be considered good for stock could be money earners at RedBubble.

To which stock agency do you submit your work to first?  Do you use a particular site to 'vet' an image you're not sure about prior to sending it to your favourite/most profitable agency?

My acceptance ratio at StockXpert is 58% (the lowest) all the others are higher at about 73%.  It has gone down at StockXpert over the last couple of months.  FP and SV are the highest at 100% with BS close behind.