It's all over!

Knife salesman behind display of knives at the Tsukiji fish market, Tokyo, Japan
...Japan, that is!!! I've finished editing my Japan pictures and so I shortly will have 250 images of Japan online with Alamy. I reckon 1 in 10 pictures I shot have been made it onto Alamy which means that I shot about 2,500 pictures in 14 days. There's quite a lot of sumo and baseball pictures which aren't of suitable quality for stock but perfectly good for my own album and web use, and a load of similars from things like the Kamakura horseback archery.

Of course, the downside of my collection on Alamy being so Japan-heavy is that my CTR will probably drop further since travel is such a competitive area. But, who cares, the hard work is over..almost. I have got to keyword about 150...

Fresh seafood and fish stall at the Tsukiji fish market, Tokyo, Japan 3/3

Fresh tuna on sale at the Tsukiji fish market, Tokyo, Japan 2/3

Alamy Measures Stats November 2008

*Sigh* The most depressing part of struggling on Alamy is actually that they make your stats so available and detailed. I am clearly not succeeding on Alamy and I don't wish to go into denial and blame the credit crunch. I have found some enthusiasm to start shooting some stock over winter at least but the following stats represent my worst month so far. Here is my view of Alamy for the month of November: Proportion of searches for: 1 word = 15% , average of 22.48 pages viewed 2 words = 52% , average of 10.38 pages viewed 3 words = 24% , average of 7.14 pages viewed 4 words = 8% , average of 7.75 pages viewed 5+ words = 1% , average of 7.33 pages viewed Total number of pictures at end of month: 403 Number of sales for month: 0 Average number of my pictures viewed matching query: 2.11 Total average CTR for searches in which my images appeared: 1.35% My CTR: 0.37% WTF!!!!!

Coloured and golden Koi carp, Hiroshima, Japan 3/4

Proportion of searches for: 5 letter words 15.86% 4 letter words 15.69% 6 letter words 14.44% 3 letter words 14.08% 9 letter words 11.59% 7 letter words 11.23% 8 letter words 8.20% 2 letter words 4.28% 10 letter words 2.14% 11 letter words 2.14% 13 letter words 0.18% 16 letter words 0.18% Most popular words (top 5 in each position ignoring "and"): First word: christmas chinese tinsel toilet amsterdam book ENGLAND victorian Second word: CARDS dragon UK christmas child office Third word: UK manger Traditional shop lake smith Fourth word: UK district beautiful buildings mountain concrete Fifth word: village Any position: christmas CARDS UK chinese dragon Most popular variations: shell: (petrol OR fuel) christmas: (cards OR stars OR decoration angel OR penguin OR presents) amsterdam: (coffee shop OR bike) book: (pile OR chapter) old: (book OR paper) toilet: (seat OR flush) household: (rubbish OR recycling OR store) victorian: (street OR christmas OR doll OR toy) In contrast to the stats that I can gather from my own Measures data, here is what the whole of Alamy is searching for: Most popular Alamy searches (top 5 in each position ignoring "alamy" as a search): by number of unique customers searching: Christmas "christmas tree" dubai cat champagne by number of sales: tallin leeds "kid profile" "dawn ireland" warnemunde by number of zooms: courcheval malaysia hawaii christmas cuba

All of Alamy Theories

Japanese coins in a bottle
I've titled this as All of Alamy Theories since that should avoid any abuse, but also because this analysis is based on only a week of Alamy Measures data and I'm supposing that this can give enough information to suggest a trend!

People searching for everyday subjects have the least patience for searching

This theory is based on the top searches on Alamy. This week the top searches started with "woman", "child", "man", "christmas", "children", "family", "school", "young", "old", or "red". With the exception of "christmas" and "red", I would expect these words to come out top every week in terms of the number of unique customer occurrences (all have 100 or more searches in a week). The subject "woman" has a possible 1,683,703 results, which even when qualified with another word gives about 10,000 results on average. However, these top subjects get less than 400 views by each unique customer, that's approximately 4 pages viewed. It's as if the customer has an expectation to find what they want on popular subjects without digging. This theory stands for the top 173 subjects, which received less than 7 pages of views on Alamy, which this week were:

woman child man christmas children family school young old red car dog london new couple the computer business boy teenager van mexico PEOPLE white snow san money water black traffic uk female lake baby police house girl india ST green city shopping great teen office dubai modern hotel florida hospital chinese North Person beer john vietnam Texas building Virginia african la horse british spain Gold asian broken River kids french teenage father open sports south one student hand digital male human Ice women cat winter eiffel switzerland fish big manchester japan home obama empty vintage australia two russia credit beach small road rock shanghai dublin COSTA BUSINESSMAN drinking china Indian night paper video american wolf mother metal book Earth Russian english senior University glass moon coffee older mobile royal sun fiji blue back hispanic chocolate polar construction happy St. Italian sydney high window World street maldives teenagers party supermarket table doctor bermuda hurricane group james nurse students hot Electric animal shop champagne native vegetable BUS air classroom cafe football crowd TREE adult apple

Theory: To sell stock photos of popular subjects you need to have pictures on the first four pages of the results on Alamy. To achieve this takes a good Alamy Rank and if you don't have a good rank, you may not be best placed to cover these subjects

There are popular subjects where searchers will spend longer searching when the subject is more specific

This theory is based on the lower ranks of the most popular searches on Alamy. This is perhaps the best place to look for subjects as there is plenty of demand and although possibly plenty of images, the searchers appear to spend longer looking, an average of 13 pages. These subjects probably change each week so the following is only an example:

telescope Havana poland cup cabbage perspective damascus corridor laptop orca huayna Malaysian atm workman asia smiling satellite ljubljana pollenca byzantine Sarawak sixties hammock porridge multicultural designer positive chile hungary morecambe celebration valencia taoist bend mann caribbean blues wrist Sharm honeycomb calcutta botanist connection Crutches Mountain stretching dead Anatomy shadow elementary kindergarten boobs x Olives guatemala salvador photos support backgrounds forest CHURCH fir aquarium greenhouse doll seattle caravan volleyball Cayman Bangkok cider panda machu penguins surfing ball baseball active community malaysia beetle Tatra jail balanced sunrise wristwatch marble stormy tango picture fuerteventura lips Sabah volcanic breasts stone Hawaii award savings fisherman gymnastics nova puzzle feather venice

Theory: More specific but still popular subjects are perfectly accessible by lower ranked contributors on Alamy - particularly conceptual images where the searcher will spend lots of time looking in the lower pages

There are popular searches which go unanswered on Alamy

In the lower ranks of the popular searches on Alamy are a number of subjects which return no results. These subjects will vary each week but consistently go unanswered. There is a good deal of misspelling and poor english in this area but that is not to say that the searches are invalid. There is clearly an opportunity to fulfill these requests with no competition at all. There were 119 subjects this week which fell into this category as follows:

Blowholes amazonen junio "Marrakech "pioneers" Cabo chritmas del eyl Hilditch Kenneth Kingda musso neolithic rusizi teenagerd vegatable 1963 A/B aaron Avenida Avranches AX30DWpeople Barrios Berberis 'bill blathnaid brazillian bruno buddha buddhamonton businessperson canna Caroline chewit chil Chines chritsmas colage collage Collapsing columbines compter consoda daithi dart dava debretts 'Dutch dzanga-sangha elasticated elephans ELY, emilie eucalypt frederik freston Gilboa gus hameau Heliocidaris Hgirl highly hotle hstern Hsuehshan Ibn icleand iiza Isaiah Jebisseh judge Kamalame Kazimiercz kim kiviak, Kleburg konstruktion latvian leke Lev loose louguan Meadowhall menie milage mosesberg MUNICIPAL munk na nasser neptune Noel Oparach owner Poste poundbry preda Prestes Prima process reservoir retangular rouelette roza Sakalava samuel sant Sheila stawberry stefani stopped tenn trafficcongestion tricyrtis Wesminster woddy zhinan

Theory: This one is more about keywording than shooting. When you keyword you need to think out of the box, which All of Alamy will help with, and use appropriate, unambiguous misspellings

Land of Bridges

The wooden Kintai Bridge (Kintai-kyo) spanning the Nishiki river, Iwakuni, Japan 1/5" />
The wooden Kintai Bridge (Kintai-kyo) spanning the Nishiki river, Iwakuni, Japan 1/5
I am slowly coming to the end of editing Japan. I've managed to edit some 1,500 pictures with another 1,000 to go. A lot of the best pictures were taken in low light and so won't make it onto Alamy, particularly there are loads of the sumo and baseball which I took for myself knowing that ISO 1600 was not going to work for stock but we shall see.

This little selection reflects the Japanese tradition of bridge building both in miniature (in the garden below) and on a massive scale at Iwakuni (above). The bridge at Iwakuni is built from wood with no nails of screws. Over the centuries it has been swept away by floods and re-built to the same design and is well worth a visit. Iwakuni was the furthest west that we managed to travel in our two weeks in Japan, most of the next batch of pictures are from Miyajima and then Tokyo and Kamakura. The final 1,000 are from Kyoto including a grey skied Golden Temple which might not be good enough for Alamy.

Once I've finished with Japan I might feel like picking up the camera again. At the moment I have no inclination to bring it with me everywhere I go (like I did in the summer) as the weather is rubbish and it is dark when I commute to and from work. I can see some more table top images over the winter if I find the motivation to do it. In the meantime I am close to the 450 mark on Alamy which whilst a milestone has not resulted in any more sales...boo. Let's hope my premium pseudonym works for me.

Himeji-jo (Himeji Castle), Himeji, Japan, showing bridge and moat 2/2

Bridge over the main pond at Shukkeien japanese circular stroll garden, Hiroshima, Japan

Discount license
If you want to license the images directly at a discount, contact the photographer at sales@smyrnoff.com otherwise use the links above to license through Alamy.

Alamy Measures Stats October 2008

I think I am losing enthusiasm for Alamy. Whilst it provides a meaningful outlet for my photography, it is rather soulless as far as photography goes. It does not reward artistic merit but rather rewards those who can "produce" photos, something I have not scratched the surface of. November in England is not an inspiring place for the artistically shallow! Here is my view of Alamy for the month of October: Proportion of searches for: 1 word = 18% , average of 19.00 pages viewed 2 words = 50% , average of 20.04 pages viewed 3 words = 20% , average of 7.44 pages viewed 4 words = 9% , average of 5.44 pages viewed 5+ words = 3% , average of 8.73 pages viewed Total number of pictures at end of month: 375 Number of sales for month: 0 Average number of my pictures viewed matching query: 2.01 Total average CTR for searches in which my images appeared: 0.95% My CTR: 0.65%

The A-Bomb Dome at night with moon, Hiroshima, Japan 3/3

Proportion of searches for: 4 letter words 19.93% 5 letter words 16.93% 7 letter words 15.52% 6 letter words 12.87% 3 letter words 11.82% 8 letter words 6.70% 9 letter words 5.47% 2 letter words 4.94% 10 letter words 3.53% 11 letter words 1.94% 15 letter words 0.35% Most popular words (top 5 in each position ignoring "and"): First word: snowman cape christmas haunted UK boots Second word: house town UK garden cards shrine Third word: UK cape town chemist money Fourth word: town UK money turbine open sign warm group africa driveway Fifth word: EUROS Any position: snowman insulation ludlow ostrich Hiroshima Most popular subjects: japanese: (home OR Bullet train) willow: (river England OR tree river) UK: (road signs OR foorball ground OR motorway OR autumn hedgerow) old: (house OR paper) car: (wash OR wind turbine) ?!?! affordable housing: (UK OR building) empty restaurant: (UK OR London) baby: (stroller OR hide OR strollers) christmas: (angel OR cards OR stars) home: (depot OR ventilation) queue: (UK OR Britain) In contrast to the stats that I can gather from my own Measures data, here is what the whole of Alamy is searching for: Most popular Alamy searches (top 5 in each position ignoring "alamy" as a search): by number of unique customers searching: Christmas "christmas tree" barcelona fireworks football "credit crunch" iceland by number of sales: meditation "historical art collection HAC" "venice art" "northern ireland" "child yoga" by number of zooms: Nice Skagway "person and red" puppy madrid There is no good news this month. I've added 100 pictures in the last month and my CTR has more than halved. Even though Alamy's CTR is depressed this month, this is not good news. I think I need to create a new Pseudonym to house my Travel pictures as they are terrible at the moment (in fact, I ought to remove them altogether at this rate). Time for a bit of reflection on what should be on my portfolio I think, before I dissappear into the lowest ranks of Alamy. Andy

Excessive similars? Too much competition more like

Himeji-jo (Himeji Castle), Himeji, Japan (deleted)
I have started editing the next batch of our Japan trip and so another 50-odd images are Awaiting Processing with Alamy. In the meantime I have come to a difficult decision, I am going to remove some of my images from Alamy. This is based on some consideration of AlamyRank.

The pictures illustrating this post are of Himeji Castle, probably the best castle in Japan as it was not bombed in the war and has not burnt down in recent history, and so is a stunning and almost unique site in Japan. Unfortunately it is not a unique sight for Alamy contributors as a search for Himeji castle shows 523 images. There are pictures of it in the autumn, pictures of it in the snow, pictures of it with cherry blossom and pictures of it at sunset, or at night...and so my 30 images of the place, albeit taken on a blue sky day, need to be significantly different to the others otherwise I will get lots of views (probably more than 10 views every time someone searches) and no zooms and sales. The effect on my AlamyRank would be significant.

I already put these pictures in my lesser ranked pseudonym but this morning I took the decision to remove 14 of the 30 pictures. The pictures on this post are now residing in my Alamy recycle bin awaiting deletion. I have also done a scan of some other recent pictures in my portfolio and deleted a couple of others - for example, a picture of the Lutheran Cathedral in Helsinki on a overcast day, there's 382 pictures of it on Alamy, none of which have a grey sky like mine.

The temptation to leave similars on Alamy is very strong. Once the images have passed QC they don't cost me anything to store, however the cost to my Rank - and hence my sales in the future - could be very significant. Whether I will ever learn to edit the pictures before uploading remains to be seen!

Himeji-jo (Himeji Castle), Himeji, Japan (deleted)

Before you've left the airport

Ferrari supercar on display on the Best of the Best stand at Heathrow Terminal 1, London, UK 2/2
It's taking me a long time to face more editing of Japan. I think that this is the problem with digital photography. It used to be that you paid someone else to process your pictures, but now you are expected to do it - and know how to do it - yourself.

It may also be that I overdosed on photography while we were in Japan. I have certainly never taken so many pictures, nor used such a variety of options on a camera before. The resulting mountain of pictures is barely manageable and although I have become familiar with Capture NX I still don't like the fact that you cannot simply browse the pictures quickly to edit them down. So far I have had to take the approach of setting up a batch in NX to convert everything to JPG and then use Windows Image Viewer to edit the pictures down to something reasonable, then go back to the raw image and process it. I used to use the Adobe Raw plugin in CS2 which allowed you to view a batch and mark them for deletion but it doesn't support the D300 and I am not inclined to shell out for CS3. It is a real pain that NX is so poor at the first stage of the workflow - the review.

The mountain of images is due to the fact that this holiday's photography started much earlier than normal, right in the airport terminal. That's what happens when your brain realises that every shop front, every cafe, every "scene" of everyday life is a potential money making opportunity, you go a bit nuts. So here are my airport pictures on Alamy (actually they are dull, but if you need a picture of the "Best of the Best" stand, well here you go...)


W.H.Smith Books store in Heathrow Terminal 1, London, UK


American Express Foreign Exchange counter at Heathrow Terminal 1, London, UK


P.S. I still haven't keyworded the Reading Festival pictures...I might never get to them, I don't like keywording, as if processing wasn't bad enough.

Alamy Measures Stats September 2008

September was a quiet month for me, with two weeks away from work, shooting in Japan (also known as a holiday to my fiancée). So I have loads to upload, my first 66 pictures from Japan go live tonight, I have to admit I may have taken too many pictures this time! Here is my view of Alamy for the month of September: Proportion of searches for: 1 word = 15% , average of 14.52 pages viewed 2 words = 57% , average of 15.18 pages viewed 3 words = 22% , average of 6.47 pages viewed 4 words = 5% , average of 4.57 pages viewed 5+ words = 2% , average of 12.68 pages viewed Total number of pictures at end of month: 272 Number of sales for month: 0 Average number of my pictures viewed matching query: 2.32 Total average CTR for searches in which my images appeared: 1.19% My CTR: 1.41%

Ludlow Castle tower from inside, Ludlow, UK

Proportion of searches for: 6 letter words 18.78% 5 letter words 15.92% 4 letter words 14.69% 7 letter words 13.27% 3 letter words 9.39% 8 letter words 9.39% 9 letter words 7.55% 2 letter words 5.31% 10 letter words 2.86% 11 letter words 2.04% 15 letter words 0.61% 12 letter words 0.20% Most popular words (top 5 in each position ignoring "and"): First word: christmas table father john credit Second word: christmas mountain lewis crunch Claus Third word: UK street house england christmas Fourth word: UK BINS amsterdam summer hummingbird Most popular subjects: london: (children OR family) christmas: (star OR angel OR cards OR garland) woman: (ATM OR balloons) UK: (motorway OR housewife OR football ground OR restaurant inside) recycling: (bin OR tip) plastic: (clothes OR recycling) beer: (festival OR making) baby: (stroller OR money) south: (africa: (bush OR marina OR winter) OR west trains) children playing: (outside summer OR street uk) In contrast to the stats that I can gather from my own Measures data, here is what the whole of Alamy is searching for: Most popular Alamy searches (top 5 in each position ignoring "alamy" as a search): by number of unique customers searching: christmas, compass, computer, iphone, "piggy bank" by number of sales: "orkney islands doug blane", "persian gulf sunset", "superstock woman dancing", vaccine, "MAI CHAU VIETNAM" by number of zooms: "antique market", scorpion, "ARCTIC FOXES", "Kimberley, Australia", "victoria falls" I'm quite excited by the results this month but that might be because I was dreading writing up another month because of the lack of sales. However, my CTR is above the Alamy average and some of my images are starting to get view in categories where sales are more likely. My Christmas images are appearing in searches - this is a little late in the year I reckon, but bodes well for next year. I have some images of people which are getting views since I've moved towards a more editorial look to my pictures, this is in spite of not having keyworded the Reading Festival properly yet (I have until next summer!). The Alamy data is interesting, clearly this is the month for Christmas searches, the credit crunch is predictably sparking an interest in piggy bank images (go to the microstocks, folks!), and "compass" perhaps leads to editorial about the direction of the world's finances. Andy

Back from Japan

A quick note to say that I am back from Japan. In two weeks I managed to run out of space on my laptop hard drive and returned home with my three 4Gb cards full in addition. I averaged about 300 photos per day for two weeks so I have an enormous amount of work to do to edit for Alamy. I think I need some more storage!

Watch this space and I will try to upload some views of Japan, both picturesque and the mundane.

Alamy Measures Stats August 2008

Well, yet another busy month for Alamy as they have upgraded Measures with some teething troubles but with masses of new data to crunch. Alamy have opened up their database to the contributors so that we can see what's hot and what's not. The result is probably too much information but I'll see what I can beef up from it anyway. Here is my view of Alamy for the month of August: Proportion of searches for: 1 word = 17% , average of 11.86 pages viewed 2 words = 37% , average of 10.98 pages viewed 3 words = 35% , average of 9.65 pages viewed 4 words = 8% , average of 7.00 pages viewed 5+ words = 3% , average of 3.52 pages viewed Total number of pictures at end of month: 264 Number of sales for month: 0 Average number of my pictures viewed matching query: 2.13 Total average CTR for searches in which my images appeared: 1.01% My CTR: 1.19%

Overhead view of the Oracle roundabout on the Reading IDR (Inner Distribution Road), Berkshire, UK

Proportion of searches for: 4 letter words 19.09% 6 letter words 18.52% 5 letter words 16.81% 7 letter words 12.82% 3 letter words 10.83% 8 letter words 7.41% 2 letter words 3.99% 9 letter words 3.42% 11 letter words 3.13% 10 letter words 2.85% 12 letter words 0.85% 15 letter words 0.28% Most popular words (top 5 in each position ignoring "and"): First word: cape south national camera electricity Second word: town window gallery toilet beach Third word: UK sign bins sunset town Fourth word: UK africa edinburgh scotland sign Fifth word: tracks Most popular subjects: noisy: (neighbours OR flat) toilet: (cistern OR seat) script: (book OR paper) royal: (lifeboat OR mile) cape town: (sunset OR views) national gallery: (edinburgh OR scotland) In contrast to the stats that I can gather from my own Measures data, here is what the whole of Alamy is searching for: Most popular Alamy searches (top 5 in each position ignoring "alamy" as a search): by number of unique customers searching: globe "New York" london istanbul family by number of sales: "great ocean Road" minneapolis "monster truck" "london christmas" lidl "san francisco north beach" by number of zooms: russia "tavira portugal" Dorset "tsukiji tokyo" "rialto market" This month's conclusion for me is that in spite of my poor AlamyRank and hence lower number of views, my CTR is improving again (what some contributors call the AlamyRank yo-yo effect!). The two pseudonyms are now bedded-in and working how I wanted, AndySmyStock has a good CTR, AndySmyCreative has a poor CTR, so the more creative/abstract images are not pulling down the more obviously sellable stock images. Last month's sales were predictably a flash in the pan and I expect a drought for at least two months before my next sale otherwise I would be outperforming other far better Alamy contributors.

Missed the boat for Reading Festival Tickets

Festival goers arriving at the main entrance to the
Reading Festival carrying luggage, Reading, UK 2/2
Well, what a contrast. I've been away for a bank holiday weekend in Herefordshire, uploaded some stock from the Reading Festival and I'm only a week and a half away from Japan. Last week saw a welcome break from bad weather on Thursday night, when the festival goers were arriving for the festival so I drove down to the site to get a few shots. My shots have only just cleared QC so, what with the bank holiday, I've missed the opporuntity to sell on the back of the Reading Festival tickets fiasco but here are a few in any case.

Whilst I was wandering up and down outside the site, a bloke came legging it past me with a security guard in hot pursuit. I quietly strolled after them and found myself taking photos of the bloke being apprehended. Of course, these probably won't sell as no-one would risk suggesting that he was guilty of anything, and in any case, I can't confirm it. I did overhear that he was being accused of snatching a bag of wristbands (being shown to him in the second shot) but his response was "you can't prove anything" or words to that effect. I can safely use this to illustrate that festivals are hot-beds of crime and the security team and the local police always have a busy old weekend, this year the organiser's sent out this Music festival wristband warning

Alledged thief being accosted and searched by security guards at Reading Festival after running from the main entrance

The rest of the photos show some of the local traders making the most of the passing trade and a few people looking for tickets, just your average fair outside a major festival

Temporary off-license set up on Richfield Avenue during the Reading Festival, Reading, UK showing crates of beer being sold

Two teenagers hold placards asking for tickets to buy for the Reading Festival on Richfield Avenue, Reading, UK

Abstract editorial? Oh dear...

Blue pyramid glass bulidings against a blue sky
Ho hum, this week has been spent at work and the weather has not been stock-friendly in the evenings. I've had another two batches of images go through QC and one or two images, though perfect technically, probably won't sell. They've been plonked in my "Creative" pseudonym as I don't expect them to sell and I don't want them to affect my main pseudonym's Rank. The main problem with them is that I don't have a property release so they can't even be used "creatively", which leaves them in the wilderness of non-editorial non-released subjects - which I am quickly becoming a specialist in :-(

At least the Olympics are exciting for us Brits...

Abstract of wooden clad multi-storey car park in Reading, UK

Close-up of the pages of a book 1/6

The image on the left, by the way, is an image that I re-shot this week on my D300, using the same settings and lens as the two examples that failed shown in my QC Tests. This one passed with no issues whatsoever, my best case yet for soft or lacking definition being linked to upscaling and not lens or technique. I'll soon forget about my QC issues, but I'm still feeling hurt from all the comments that were made...about crap glass, crap technique, crap workflow...well here is the proof.

Pictures just there in front of you

A family with prams, children and a baby, holding balloons,
with a single female, using HSBC bank cash machines in Kingston, UK
Sometimes pictures are just there in front of you, put on a plate (above). This is definitely my kind of photography, cheap, editorial, useful. I'm not sure I could have orchestrated this one better, a large family, coloured balloons, striking lighting, and the D300's best vivid colours - I might need to turn down the picture control as the saturation is uber-stock! On top of that, finance is a hot topic, family budgets, the credit crunch, people pawning their jewellery...

And then (below left), over a quiet coffee I find that the tables in front of me are empty, and the ambient lighting is interesting and I get a classic commercial shot in the bag (albeit without release). It looks perfectly staged but I assure you that every other table in the place was full, this one was no problem for my VR lens and D300 handheld, I didn't have to adjust this shot at all, it came off the camera like that.

As for the blue sky shot on the right, well even that was in the hands of the gods. This week it has been blue sky one minute, black sky the next. This was a chance shot on the way home. The M25 was jammed so I chose a different route, spotted the sign and pulled up. By the time I had taken a couple of shots of this and the adjacent offices it started raining out of blue sky (how does it do that?!) and the rest of the evening was dark and gloomy.

Inside the Moka cafe restaurant in the Bentall Centre, Kingston, London, UK

Renault UK Ltd head office, Maple Cross, UK 1/2 showing logo on standard

Here's to lucky shots, let's hope they get spotted.

For those following the QC angle on my blog, all three of these shots came straight off the camera looking like this. Upsized by 120% in Capture NX and saved as JPEG, straight through QC, and finally Bob's your mother's brother and all that...

Discount license
If you want to license the images directly at a discount, contact the photographer at sales@smyrnoff.com otherwise use the links above to license through Alamy.

Grow your own fruit

Tayberry plant isolated on white showing leaves and fruit

It has been an eventful week, with some harsh criticism of my images on the Alamy forum. I don't wish to dwell on it, but since this is my own soapbox I will just say this; If you are not interested in the QC Tests, don't post a comment.

Back to new photography, and this little gem has made it through. It is quite nice that this image could be used to illustrate growing your own fruit, as I actually grew it. I did have to sacrifice the two un-ripe fruits as I removed the whole branch but that's just what you have to do in the name of stock. Tayberries however, are not very common, and I am loathed to keyword it as a raspberry (even though I'd probably get away with it), so it will probably not sell.

Enjoy the picture, I enjoyed the berry!

Harvest time in rainy August

Sadly the summer has already finished here, the rain has set in and this last week has been miserable. Just time to post up a couple of my last D100 submissions to Alamy.


Stormy clouds over Thirlmere, Lake District


One of the failings of the 6MP camera is the absolute detail you need to shoot landscapes. These examples are acceptable as prints and will be fine at small sizes but I don't think they will ever get put on a cover or a commercial project. Still, they do show something of the British countryside, at it's moodiest and sunniest...


High tension power lines across a wheat field panorama with pylons to the horizon 1/3


This next one was shot in the depths of Berkshire, a county that I always thought as quite surburban. Luckily, five minutes drive south from where we live, the roads are quieter so long as you avoid the main arteries.


Tractor bailing hay in a field at harvest time 1/4

Excited...then blackout

This year has been a year of blackouts in our street. This isn't normal, this isn't expected, I'm a little embarrassed to say that we take power for granted in the UK.

This month has been a month of blackouts in our street. We've woken up to my alarm going off, and realised that Anna's won't be. Typically we've lost 5-10 hours of power once a week.

Yesterday it finally broke. I got home in a state of excitement as my D300 arrived at work and I wanted to take pictures and read the manual and the weather was terrible, black clouds, squally rain and..no power. Five minutes before I arrived home the power went off and it didn't return until the small hours of this morning. Apparently they had to dig up the road (not our road strangely - even though only our road was affected) in the middle of the night. Hopefully they've fixed it once and for all.



Close-up of the pages of a book 5/6


So after we popped out for dinner, I managed to read 50 pages of the 427 page D300 manual...yes 427 pages. This thing is more powerful than the laptop I'm writing on. It literally wants to take pictures for you. It is a piece of art too, the screen on the back, the viewfinder, the live view and the feel of the photos it produces. It is honestly like rediscovering professional photography again. For the first time I've found a camera which makes everything look better than it really is.

Of course I'm sure I can find a way to take boring pictures, after all, that's what I do. Until I get back home I won't be able to show off any pictures, but this camera will get me shooting again, even if I fail QC (which I'm sure I'll manage), I won't care because I can shoot landscapes with this camera...a subject which was off limits for stock at 6MP.

Alamy Measures Stats July 2008

Last month was both my best and my worst. Alamy took the opportunity to re-rank their contributors and because of my lack of zooms and sales in the preceding period they have downgraded both my pseudonyms. That is quite a blow as my CTR was rising and I reached the 200 picture mark. At the same time, last month I made my first sales! I sold two pictures, the first picture twice (once for a printed folder and once for an associated web page) and the second picture for an educational book. The second one is intriguing, and I've posted it here, because I can't think of an educational use for such a specific image. What I do know is that John Lewis this weekend announced a fall in profits so the same image got quite a few views over the weekend but alas no other sales as yet (fingers crossed that the papers used it and will report the use in due course). It is not a very exciting image (slight understatement!!! and remember, with a D100 I don't even get to crop!) but I am proud of the sale nonetheless, after all, I must have got the keywording right! Without further ado, here is my view of Alamy for the month of July: Proportion of searches for: 1 word = 13% , average of 17.21 pages viewed 2 words = 43% , average of 11.93 pages viewed 3 words = 29% , average of 6.09 pages viewed 4 words = 10% , average of 6.15 pages viewed 5+ words = 6% , average of 11.02 pages viewed

The John Lewis customer collections depot in Reading, Berkshire, showing delivery vans

Total number of pictures at end of month: 206 Number of sales for month: 3 Average number of my pictures viewed matching query: 2.43 Total average CTR for searches in which my images appeared: 1.43% My CTR: 0.63% Proportion of searches for: 5 letter words 18.72% 7 letter words 14.87% 4 letter words 14.62% 6 letter words 12.82% 3 letter words 11.79% 8 letter words 11.03% 2 letter words 5.13% 9 letter words 5.13% 10 letter words 2.56% 11 letter words 1.54% 12 letter words 1.28% 13 letter words 0.26% 17 letter words 0.26% Most popular words (top 5 in each position): First word: Cape, coastal, berkshire, Edinburgh, mudeford Second word: and, town, bin, erosion, boat Third word: uk, bin, table, south, bag Fourth word: uk, mountain, africa, and, station

Stop! Thief! and dispatch my D300

Last week flew by and so I don't have much to report. My efforts to Shoot! the Day came to nothing, the weekend before last, as I managed to contract a stomach bug which left me in northern France but totally incapable of doing anything, I spent the whole of Friday trying to sleep it off in the front seats of my car while the sun beat down overhead. Saturday, I recovered, but struggled to take pictures whilst leading a convoy of ten cars across the fields between Abbeville and le Touquet-Paris-Plage. The french villages were stunningly pretty with stately homes peeking out between wrought iron gates, but all the while I was following TomTom on shortest route, and watching the RX-7's trailing behind me. Our speed meant that this was a spirited drive rather than sight-seeing per-se, much to the annoyance of one old boy in a Skyline (he's in his early twenties!)

Anyhow, I digress, as the reason to post today is not because of photos, but because of cameras. I've taken the plunge and bought a D300 off Ebay, to put to rest my failing battle with stock quality and Alamy QC. The problem, and the reason for no new photos today, is that the seller has not contacted me since I won (last Tuesday). I am hoping that this is not going to end in tears, but the chunk of money I paid by PayPal is looking more and more at risk.


A Thames Valley Police helicopter searching the fields
near Marlow, Buckinghamshire, UK 3/5

I've had a few scrapes with Ebay. Once I was conned by a hijacked account, in the days before such things were expected, and lost a grand, and I've had some small things go astray. Since then I have bought a good deal of my photographic gear from shops in the UK, and in the far east, via Ebay, and not had a problem. Both my main Nikkor lenses came this route and saved me well over £300 on UK retail. Whether this is a real saving when you consider the lack of UK warranty is debatable, but that's the trade-off for getting great gear on a budget. Ironically, this new purchase is from a UK individual who bought a UK camera in February from Jessops (and will supply the receipt) and so I was paying a little extra for the warranty.

So I took the "Buy it Now" option and paid a fair price. I had already emailed the seller asking about the origin of the camera and I received a prompt reply which gave me confidence, but since, nada...zip...

Watch this space, I guess...

EDIT: And this space is now full. The camera arrived today and appears in perfect working order. So QC, let's see what you make of this...

P.S. Had to order a new memory card, 2Gb won't get me very far with this one!

P.P.S. Now I'm very very excited...D300 review

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas in July

Once again I have to quote my post on Alamy's soft or lacking definition because once again my blogging has been held up by my QC failures. This time I have managed to add Interpolation Artifacts and now Over-manipulated to my troubles!!! I am now shopping for a better camera body as 6MP just takes too much effort to get past QC (and for good reason, as announced here).

Festive blue bead garland 3/4

Festive snowman cut-out 3/4

I've been getting all festive in the last couple of weeks and looking for subjects to fill the buyers' hearts with joy. The result is these cheeky showman images and some limited DoF beadwork.

I haven't started keywording these images yet, I tend to quickly caption them to get them live and then return to them under my own steam. This means that they are out there and can be found by caption and I can link to them but they won't get a great deal of traffic.


Festive blue beads and gold star garlands 1/4

This week is Shoot! the Day (yes, the whole week until the 27th) so I will be trying to get some shots this weekend within the S!TD window. I've sprained my ankle but I'm still going to northern France this weekend and will be shooting peasants (if I see any) so expect some arty french farmhouse images in the offing.


Festive clothes pegs for hanging greeting cards cut-out 5/6

Time out!

This week, I've been mainly adding, cut-outs!

My post about Alamy's soft or lacking definition, which went down so well with you all, reflects the reason for my lack of posts, they kept saying no to my photos until I was running with a backlog of nearly 40 pictures, grrrrr! Finally, yesterday, they relented and my more careful editing (see, I'm not in denial!) has seen me through. If they had said no again I would have been ready to join the ranks of the "6MP isn't good enough for Alamy" brigade, but then again, they may not have looked at my pictures so this still may be true...


Chinese dragon cut-out 6/6 [catchy caption, eh?!]

So...cut-outs. I been working with the archetypal silo rig, large translucent box, infinity white background, SB800 on a stand (free-standing Manfrotto monopod, no less, turning out to be very versatile) triggered on SU-4 slave mode by the on-board Speedlight. Plenty of information on this kind of rig out there, for which I am very grateful. So on to the subjects. I am about to start on some Christmas themes but for now I've found a friend in a chinese dragon, which was procured on a trip to Hong Kong, and some salad servers...this next one of the dragon is my favourite and could well be used for "looking to the future of the Far Eastern economies"


Chinese dragon cut-out 1/6 [no less catchy than the last!]

Cut-outs (or silos) aren't the most exciting things to photograph but they are a staple of the stock photographer's portfolio so I will be adding a smattering of them over time. It is a good environment to go a bit abstract, especially with the help of a macro lens, but I'll keep that for the next post



Blue plastic hand salad servers 3/5

No more recycling bins? I beg to differ

I was saddened to see that there is a glut of wind turbines in stock photography in the PhotoShelter Buyer Survey 2008. We recently visited Holland where wind turbines are 'de rigueur' and we both find them quite fascinating, and on top of that, I have a great opportunity living in Reading where there is an 'urban' wind turbine which towers over the M4 - I was hoping that it would be useful as an example of how wind turbines can be sited in commercial/retail areas without detracting from the area - it appears as though it is in the CostCo car park!


The Ecotricity wind turbine, Reading, Berkshire, UK.
The turbine was designed by Norman Foster
and towers over the M4 at J11

What does surprise me is that the buyer survey said "no more recycling bins" and yet, in the UK at least, I get searches every day for recycling bins. I don't know quite what the buyers are looking for and I'm not the one getting the zooms. I can reassure you that my recycling bin has given a property release and doesn't expect a cut of any sales.

Alamy Measures Stats June 2008

Third full month on Alamy and these are some stats from my measures view of Alamy. Views were down this month, but that was expected as I tightened up my keywords and removed some images which were sub-standard

Proportion of searches for:

1 word = 13% , average of 21.45 pages viewed
2 words = 30% , average of 14.09 pages viewed
3 words = 33% , average of 16.21 pages viewed
4 words = 19% , average of 16.02 pages viewed
5+ words = 4% , average of 5.36 pages viewed

Average number of my pictures viewed matching query: 1.83
Total average CTR for searches in which my images appeared: 1.13%
My CTR: 1.35%

Proportion of searches for:

5 letter words 17.52%
3 letter words 16.85%
4 letter words 13.75%
6 letter words 13.30%
7 letter words 12.64%
8 letter words 7.98%
2 letter words 5.32%
9 letter words 5.32%
10 letter words 4.21%
11 letter words 1.33%
15 letter words 0.89%
12 letter words 0.44%
13 letter words 0.44%

Most popular words (top 5 in each position):

First word: edinburgh, amsterdam, UK, recycling, plastic
Second word: and, bin, UK, of, crowd
Third word: UK, england, and, table, festival
Fourth word: mountain, mile, tantrum, and, books

These stats seem to show that the buyers tend to search with the obvious word first (wow...I mean, how earth-shattering is that statement...it's worth coming back to my blog for that exclusive insight) By rights you could just put this one word in the keywords and get very good Alamy rank but at the expense of rarely appearing in searches. The best approach appears to be combinations of no more than four keywords - but most of my pictures are of something so this is easy. The surprise, that "and" keeps coming up. Should I start putting "and" in my keywords on every image? As it happens, "UK" turns up on most of my "UK" ones anyway.

Alamy's Soft or Lacking Definition

Whatever you might think about Alamy QC failing images for "soft or lacking definition", as explained here, so far those of us who frequent the forum have yet to see a picture that the photographer can show at 100% to be free of some kind of flaw. Since I seem to be capable of creating pictures that are soft and lacking definition on demand I thought I would put up some more examples for those who are still in denial about it.

Last week I had just such a moment. I'd had no failures for a week or so and was thinking all was fine and then three times in a row I got a soft and lacking definition failure. It turns out that the two photos responsible for the failure are soft, as follows (shown as 100% crops of the original 48+Mb files):


This one is most likely mis-focussed @ 1/350s f10 31mm handheld


This one is most likely the subject moving and/or mis-focussed and to cap it all, there is clear CA at the edges of the bird @ 1/800s f8 400mm VR handheld

Don't stare at them too long, they hurt your eyes (that's a clue!).

Alamy QC seem to do a very simple thing, they zoom to 100% in the centre of the image (which is the quickest check they can do). So, apart from scanning across the image for dust and odd birds and things, I would do a final check by zooming to 100%, dead centre and if it ain't right, don't submit it.

Here's other common effects that gets the dreaded soft and lacking definition failure:


This picture was taken at high ISO and then noise reduction was applied heavily leaving a painterly effect @ ISO1600 1/60s f4 18mm handheld


This picture has been interpolated up from 6MP RAW NEF to 71.8Mb 8-bit PSD showing "jaggies" on the edges @ 1/1000s f5.3 300mm VR handheld

The other failure which is poorly understood is demonstrated in the following images, "chroma noise is something you get with older digital cameras, low MP cameras and at higher ISO settings:


The lower half shows chroma noise, the upper half has had the noise removed.


This shot shows the chroma noise exagerated by pushing the saturation to 100%.

Alamy have written a guide to removing chroma noise and some other retouching techniques, here

Hope that helps...