Quote from: RalfLiebhold on March 20, 2022, 15:15

Times a topic, which one moves me for a long time.
If you look at landscape pictures for example, the bestsellers are completely oversaturated by the colors and partly overworked beyond recognition - but they are bestsellers.

I noticed this particularly blatantly during my last shoot. I personally don't like the bestsellers, but they seem to sell.

How do you deal with it. Do you all turn your color saturation knob all the way up for better sales chances?

Ok, my shots and the competition bestsellers:

https://stock.adobe.com/de/search?load_type=search&is_recent_search=&search_type=usertyped&k=dinant+belgium&native_visual_search=&similar_content_id=&asset_id=217426858

In my opinion, less is more when it comes to post processing. At least for Adobe Stock, I recommend you submit the clean, sharp, color version of your file. This gives customers the most flexibility to enhance the image in a way that matches their project exactly. If you get too funky in post, you are severely limiting your potential customer base. I have discussed this extensively with our moderation team and when I asked what was the most common reason for rejection, there was exactly zero hesitation before I received the answer "oversaturation." Again, less is more. I use the vibrance slider almost exclusively in LRC and almost never the saturation slider for this reason. I do like to replace the sky from time to time, but as noted here, it should look like it belongs.

-Mat Hayward

I have been living here for more than 12 years. I don't know what to take photos of here. If a photo wasn't taken by me it was taken by someone else. I have here an excellent photographer as competition who has been at all the places at the right time. Always in perfect sunny weather which is so rare here and always with the sun shining at a castle etc. It's impossible to be better than this guy even if I do use an app to find out when to be where on a sunny day. My question is, do you move around every 10 years, or even more often, to a different location, far away, to be able to shoot something new? I don't know what to take photos of here. I have been to all the landmarks and places around here that sell on SS. Food photography is also totally pointless. I recently saw a portfolio of a lady who made over 1000 Christmas backgrounds. All were very, very beautiful and perfectly done. I must have clicked on 100 of them and every time it said "Not bought yet". I didn't just go threw the first 3 pages. I gave up feeling very sad and sorry for her. Think about all the work and money and time she put into the photos and so many were not bought. They are excellent Christmas backgrounds. There is nothing wrong with them. Do you guys move after you have taken photos all around you or is it in your opinion just a waste of money because there will be another stock photographer living everywhere? I could start taking photos of every flower I see but photos of flowers I took never sold very well.

Since there is no information about the contributors' gender, religion, ethnicity, etc taken when the photos are submitted, it's about as fair as it can get.

You can't be unfair to particular groups if you don't know they are there.

Quote from: Mantis on November 19, 2021, 09:50

"but also closer to home, we want to make sure we are operating in an ethical and inclusive way."

What does this mean?  What defines whether you are or are not operating in an ethical and inclusive way?  Your contributor base is your contributor base.  The only way I can see meeting some criteria of "ethical and inclusive" is if you could tweak search results by, say, ethnicity, which sort of fits into that equity silo.   But to do that you'd have to know by contributor their ethnicity. So according to your post, that approach is out. Outside of that, how do you use these data from the survey to "make sure" you are operating in an ethical and inclusive way?

So let's say a customer is interviewing you and says, what percentage of women artists make up Alamy, because that's important to us.  You say, well, it's about 40%. The customer says, that's not good enough, we want 60% before we work with companies like yours.  What is Alamy going to do about that statistic?  Fire male contributors to meet that metric? Invest in a campaign to attract more female artists? I mean, if it is viewed as unethical or not inclusive enough for the customer (or Alamy) what is Alamy's countermeasure?

Why isn't it enough to say that there is no barrier to the 'category' of people can apply to supply Alamy so long as their photos meet their standards?
The only thing they could do to make sure they have the 'right' mix  would be to make applicants fill in these details, then reject those who don't tick enough 'diversity' boxes. How would you then make sure people weren't lying?
What if a buyer said, "I only want to buy from suppliers who are X and Y and come from Z."

But the main thing (as mentioned already above) is how can  you claim to be 'ethical' while selling files for low prices and scraping off 60%?
What would you say if a customer asked  you that? "We do it because we have all the power. Suppliers are free to leave."?

Anyone knows how to delete all your photo's at once or close your account in one single action?

Quote from: Brasilnut on October 28, 2021, 03:41

Depending on the amount of $, it may be "worth the risk". Depends on the subject matter entirely, the question you've posed is purely academic. 

(I've consented a few times via Alamy, each time for $100+ earned).

that a good way to have a subpoena mailed to you via register mailed...