Alamyrank and pseudonyms

This is a piece of irony for the statistically obsessed elements on Alamy.

Alamy ranks photographers according to pseudonym. The general message is to delete weaker images, or as I did, at least put them into another pseudonym.

So that is what I did to some extent - until I got bored - about 6 months ago. I put my weaker images into a separate pseudonym, Scott Hortop Images.

Now I have found that the click through rate for these images is 1.31%. And for Scott Hortop (my "better" images) 0.99% (that's measured over the last year or so).

What is going on? Why should my rubbish images (that really do not sell) have a better click through rate than my good images (that do sell)?

I can only now think of one answer right now - image content clutter. In choosing what images to put into my second tier pseudonym, I chose the images that had the most unimpressive cluttered thumbnails. Where it is clear what the image content is - a nice clear image - buyers don't need to click on the new larger thumbnails. So click through rate goes down. Where the content is fuzzy, buyers have to click to see what is there. So click through rate goes up.

Just a thought. The main point is that it's unpredictable how buyers behave.

One thing is sure, had I not carried out this exercise the CTR on my main pseudonym would be greater than 1%. And I think that being less than 1% has sent my Alamyrank over the edge into a lower tier so that my good images are ranked lower than my bad.

So beware! Meddling with pseudonyms can be less than productive...

Control

Just been to see "Control", the Ian Curtis biopic in Kingston. Yet again am bowled over by the photography, all stark black and white making terraced house interiors and exteriors.

I'm realising that I tend to be rather more influenced by great cinematic photography than stil photography - at least in the sense that great photography in a movie has a longer hold on my brain than great photography on a wall.

It's not static v. dynamic, it's more that during a movie that contains great photography I find myself clicking in my head, thinking about which moments I would capture and there were many dazzling moments in this film. Not to mention the great Joy Division music & recreation of some great gigs (all of which I missed).

Love Will Tear us Apart, but the descent of a great talent (being able to lead a creative lifestyle I might only dream of) to suicide at the age of 23, was far more complicated than that.

It was also curious how someone so talented, now so famous, earned so little money from his creativity. At least I have one of these things in common.

Getty submission done and dusted

It took a lot of effort so the envelope of stock photos that I posted to Getty Images (in Ireland) today had better be worthwhile. Understandingly the requirements, figuring out how to package the images onto a CD (no online upload here), and the time taken to prepare the images was over a day. Much of that was cataloguing the model releases - I am only glad that most of the property releases were for my own home! Still, to avoid pedantry at the receiving end, I completed four releases, one for each shoot, each with a photo of my own house, just in case I forget what it looks like presumably.

This will be an interesting experience. But first to get accepted.....

Dancing with the devil (part 2)

If part 1 was Getty (yesterday's post) then part 2 is Getty on the cheap, iStockPhoto.com.

I do some web development and some of my clients ask me to buy stock photos from iStockPhoto. When it comes to business you have to leave some morals behind so I go ahead and do it. Yesterday I received a notification that I had 4 credits remaining to use within 3 days so I have gone off and used them.

Pic 1 was on the latest pics added section of the home page. If you think the shirt and tie combination is lurid then it's also available in pale green. No doubt also available in photoshopped lilac and mauve but I did not bother to look. To find this image searchers can use such keywords as "fashion model" "sex symbol" "modern" and "male beauty". But probably not pink. Somehow, I can't see the model in a pink shirt.

Pic 2 is a 'Sexy Russian Girl" and had just appeared on the home page after I refreshed it. My lucky day.

Just to be a little more serious about things I went off to find a couple of t-shirt stock photos for my client Pier 32 who prints ethical tshirts to use in his website or on his blog which I write. Contrary to what many pro photographers would have you believe, there are good images to be found on iStockPhoto and I'm looking for something a little classy and ethically sound. The sexy Russian girl will never make it although I'm sure the printing presses are up to dealing with skimpies. Or bear hats.

Anyway the last two images were the best I found in a search on "tshirt woman nature". They will have to do.

I have just earned the photographers 20 cents per image. I feel better now. If not exactly ethical.

Getty for Easter

This week I have been doing a fair bit of work around the house. If I've not mentioned it before, in order to live the way I want as a photographer (my wife too, doing her thing) we are looking to sell up and more or less pay up the mortgage. So with the competition to find a buyer ever escalating, I've sorted the bedroom and am now dealing with the bathroom.

This, and the weather, has played a little havoc with my work schedule this week. The shooting stock photos day has become 'a laying the bathroom floor day' and I've also fitted in painting and other stuff....

So, not going away at Easter, I have turned to the little job that I have been putting off, getting in a submission to Getty Images 'Lifesize' collection. "Paying to play" will cost me $250 (half price for the first ten images!) so, with Getty's 70% grab on the proceeds I have to sell $833 of images to get my money back.

Can it be done? The images are sold as 'rights ready', an allegedly easy to understand for the photo buyer rights managed concept. $833 will require about 4-6 editorial uses or one commercial use. Money back in year one is what I want - anything more is a failure because I have to make money.

To test things I'm submitting ten images which cover a broad range of subjects - nothing special about them, ultra low budget productions in and around this house and a few shots of London. I suppose the common feature is that I took them on the Canon EOS5D because Getty turn their nose up at Pentax.

Getty sell lots of images. Many images sell many times each year. While some organisations have buyers who take hours to find a cheap image, many send their buyers to Getty because they know that they will find something quickly. It may be lazy but it is also cost effective.

And I am lazy too. I'd much rather prepare a few images than hundreds to see a return. The shear time effort of making money elsewhere in stock is now not justifiable other than as a sideshow or hobby. Getty does make money despite recent turmoil. Lots of it. Can I get a slice of it? We'll find out.

If they have me.

Sometimes I take photos for pleasure

Something I too often forget to do. Last Thursday's shoot - while hanging around waiting for things to happen.

Alamy crunch

The re-ranking of stock photo search image order at Alamy was just over a week ago now. Just peaking at the ordering of a few random searches was not encouraging for me - now I can look at the 'Alamy Measures' statistics for the last week to find that the number of images viewed in that week are 37% of what they were for a random week pulled up from a month ago. Photos 'zoomed' (inspected at a larger size by potential buyers) are down by a similar amount.

At Alamy one has to generate $250 in commission in a month to receive a cheque. That commission is traceable back to sales first reported a few months ago. So when I look this month and see that I might not be receiving a monthly cheque for the first time in perhaps 18 months and couple this with the new image ordering I get more a little concerned about how things are going.

Right now I have more pressing things to get on with than to worry about Alamy. But I do keep rudimentary statistics to give me an idea of results and whether they make it all worth the effort and I will update these soon.

Photography and the credit crunch

In my new disciplined time management regime, Thursday is due to be my "stock shooting" day or "awayday" as I sometimes put it. A day to get out and do some stock photo shooting - but it's going to be cold, wet and windy, surely a day to stay indoors?

No, hang on, after years of an artificial smile all over the face of businesses pretending that all is well, bonus induced smiles on the face of those who just happen to to have been in the right place at the right time (while there, just following the herd), and a smile on the face of all those dollar stock photos being sold for identical uses on the websites and brochures of businesses pretending to full of 'nice' people, we suddenly face a crunch. A reality check. Thursday should surely be the day to get out into the City of London and take photos of miserable people on a miserable day....

Except it's not like that. It's Joe Ordinary who suffers when the people who run the City fantasy world get things wrong. Joe Ordinary sold a loan by the commission led salesman, who got a bonus on his commission because he sold Joe an insurance policy that won't pay out, a salesman who worked for a company with a huge call centre and a $1 photo of a girl with an artificial smile on its website, a company that got the money it lends through a multiplicity of clever deals all organised by clever people at another bank to stay (just) within the letter of the law in terms of the policing of a marketplace where all is geared up to give overpaid and under-talented people big bonuses for making more clever deals.

When it all this cleverness goes pear shaped, Clever Jim won't suffer. At least not in a way that normal people use the word. He'll just get a reduced bonus, or perhaps none at all, but he still earns 10 time what Joe Ordinary earns. Sure, some Clever Jims will lose their jobs, the unlucky ones, but not many. The system will have a quiet year or two, a few more years of relative conservatism before swinging into action again in mutual cleverness because if you are not inclined to be clever (or lucky, or of course arse lick) you are left behind. The surest way of all in this environment to lose your job.

How will this affect the assignment photographer? At least in my line the number of assignments should not fall too far. But art budgets for brochures and annual reports may be slashed. I see this as an opportunity for me to compete in new markets; I don't want to present myself as being cheap, undercutting, but if I can get across that the way I work allows people to generate the images they want in less time and less cost because of my methods and lower cost base.....

If there is a move towards using more 'real' people (rather than the artificial smile) then I stand to gain. The 'real' message is one I intend to push. Will the photography market reject artificiality? There's a section of the market that will always do out and buy the $1 pretty girl but I think there will be many out there who see that it's time for a mood change. We will see.

Stirring it at Alamy

Stirring the image order that is.

The Alamy images presented to buyers are ordered by a programme called "Alamyrank". Every so often its algorithm changes - at the last change it boosted more of my images than ever to the top of the pecking order. This coincided more or less with a 50% reduction in my monthly sales that has continued for the last four months.

Now there has been a reordering again and my images have been pushed down again somewhere into the bunch. Let's see what happens to sales...

Alamyrank seems like an unregulated see saw. The boards even report images that have sold being pushed to the bottom of searches.

Meanwhile over at QC....

Alamy Quality Control continues to reject images from my Canon EOS 5D ("interpolation artefacts") while my images from a Ricoh GX100 tiny digicam continue to pass with flying colours.

Hey guys, those 'artifacts' are actually Christmas lights scattered amid the branches of the trees on Oxford Street!

Glastonbury - done!

With just 24 hours to go until it closes, four more human beings have just been thrown into the great Glastonbury lottery. Some of them don't even want to go - well you don't have to, but be guided by fate.....

Family, who'd 'av em?

Classy photos though.

Photoshelter makeover shock!

Many photographers will have received today's email on the Photoshelter redesign - with a big push on their new blog written by Rachel Hulin. Does her background at Nerve.com ("Original Essays and Photography on Sex, Arts and Culture") promise a new sexed up Photoshelter, I wonder? Indeed going into the current article on the blog "I Heart Event Listings" reveals naked flesh right up front and another (restrained) article on Nerve favourites Kate and Camilla. I wonder if Rachel chose my image that one graced the home page of Nerve? :-)

My own submission of naked flesh to Photoshelter has met with mixed results. This, in the same spirit as the pic on Rachel's blog got thrown out:

While this got in:


There's no accounting for taste.

Well there you are, the first sexed up Photoconnect blog posting! Don't hold your breath for the next one....

Enough S&M?

The timetable that I set up in my last post is still on the wall.... and more to the point I have been looking at it and trying to follow it! No matter that I've not spent as much time as I should on each of the business tasks, I have spent time on each of them that I might not have otherwise. I've also even found time to to some minor improvements in the home....

And I feel better because everything seems more in control, I'm in touch with all the important bits that I need to be in touch with and I have less to worry me.

So it does not matter that yesterday I did only a couple of hours of S&M. No Sales activity at all (because I'm still not 'there' to present my portfolio) but on the Marketing front I did choose and buy a more suitable portfolio box, and a nice bag to carry it in, so when I turn up at a prospect I can now actually look the part and just as importantly more confidentially feel the part.

I also prepared a few more images to go into the portfolio including the best one from the recent opera shoot and the one you see here of my daughter on a tram in Bilbao (I spent a little time on this one using layers to balance the interior and exterior light - a perfect example of the more personal image that is good for the portfolio).

Time management (or Who Knows Where the Time Goes?)

Who knows where the time goes? sang Sandy Denny - I am sure that she was referring to something deeper than the pressures on a photographer to move his business forward but it's a phrase that keeps going through my head...

Example. Decision is made that its a good idea to have an online backup of images at PhotoShelter. Sign up, load up images while doing other stuff - easy. Except once I get started I think - some keywording is useful to help find the images; enough to transfer them over to sell on the Photoshelter Collection. Doing this will save lots of time in the long run.

Result - I'm potentially sucked into doing something that is comforting in terms of keeping me busy but rubbish in terms of pushing the business forward.

The business I am talking about here is not a photography business (in the general sense), certainly not a stock photography business (it makes not enough money and makes it at some undefined time in the future), but an assignment photography business. That should be the focus.

All those old images no matter how potentially valuable (£'s or sentimental, if lost) should just be dumped onto Photoshelter for now (the important point being to have them there to recover if this house goes up in smoke).

So here I am on a Monday morning thinking time management, must do better, must not give into temptation to be busy.... On the recent sales course, the tutor showed us how he manages his time - he organises each day of his week in a standard way so that all the stuff that really needs to be done to run his business gets done. This is something that I had been thinking of getting in place for a while but having someone tell me to do it (particularly someone into sales) just may make it happen.

So here it is. It should really allow for three days of active client service activity but I'm playing catch up both in terms of developing the client base and catching up with important admin that always gets left behind so I'm allocating two and a half days.....

WEEK 1

Monday
AM - Planning for week; sales & marketing (that's me now!)
PM - Web design business (yes, I still have this to deal with even if i'm not looking to develop it)

Tuesday
AM - Shooting
PM - Shooting

Wednesday
AM - sales & marketing
PM - business admin

Thursday
AM - Shooting
PM - Shooting

Friday
AM - sales & marketing
PM - Flexible

WEEK 2

Monday
AM - Planning for week; sales & marketing
PM - Web design business

Tuesday
AM - Shooting
PM - Shooting

Wednesday
AM - sales & marketing
PM - Shooting

Thursday
AM - Awayday
PM - Awayday

Friday
AM - business admin
PM - Photoconnect / stock processing (a half day soft option!)

What's the awayday? It's getting out and pursuing my own interests - a mix of relaxation and stock photography or photography of something special for the portfolio. I can't do this every week but it's important to developing the whole so I'm setting up a two week cycle.

The half day's flexible slot on Friday allows for catch up if necessary.

Of course, things can be flexed to allow for client shoots but ideally I'll try to match them to the available slots. Such as this Thursday when I have a shoot.

Right now, in the background, I'm trying to sell a house - if I don't have a shoot (or really urgent web design work) then I'll use the time to do things to advance this cause in this time. Some might say that I should be doing S&M (that's what Sales & Marketing can feel like!) but it's time spent earning money in a different way.

OK. That's the plan. Print it off. Put it on the wall.

Can I stick to it? Where does all the other stuff fit in? Such as blogging - mine - my client's (I getting paid for that!). Reading emails? Checking on Alamy sales? Picking my nose? Today's FA Cup semi final draw? (Having outclassed Middlesborough, Cardiff are on the way to Wembley!).

I'm not sure. I'll find out and report back.

Tripping with Lynch

Photography is important to my enjoyment of cinema - in fact in terms of making an impression and influencing me in styles that I would like to emulate in still photography it possibly gives me more to think about than time spent wandering galleries. In the age of the DVD it certainly is more accessible.

Two days ago I started watching David Lynch's film, Inland Empire. Like many other Lynch films the dense hallucinogenic weirdness of the first 15 minutes, suddenly a mood shift, opening up into something approaching light reality (only Lynch reality) for the next 45.

Then last night, not knowing how long was left in the film I sat down to watch the remainder.....

After 30 minutes of a claustrophobic oppressive battering of the senses I did not have a clue what was going on. My son (15 years old) was watching too - he had not seen the first hour but I remember thinking that I probably know no more than he does. An hour later we were still both there watching Laura Dern's confused and horrified face echoing our own thought process of "What the **** is going on?". A half hour more and the trip was over - in total three hours of confusion, nausea and stunning photography (all captured with a handheld cheapo home video camera often held by Lynch himself) and it was over, finishing with a credit sequence with all the lightness of a pop video.

I've watched Mulholland Drive 3 times now. Lost Highway twice. But they have some narrative to identify with even if it does not make sense.

Inland Empire was a gruelling experience; Lynch letting rip with his artistic vision and damn the commercial consequences. Why do I want to go back for more?

(Want to understand it? Reading reviews does not help!)

Backup online - Photoshelter archive

Try as I might, I fail to come up with a backup strategy for my images which I can trust. The problem of tracking multiple backups to hard disks and my inability to then get hard disks out of my home always worries me. As does my daughter who has twice come close to burning down the house...

So I have succumbed to joining Photoshelter Archive, accessible from my Photoshelter Collection account (that's the edited online stock photo library) but otherwise quite independent of it. I have 10Gb of space at $9.99 per month and that will be enough to keep me going for a while.

As I write this all the images that I have so far prepared and submitted to the Photoshelter Collection are uploading in the background. These were chosen in the main as being my better more interesting stock photos (or at least the first ones that came to hand!) - fortunately I kept these images stored on my hard disk after preparation so now I can bulk upload to the Photoshelter Archive.

Curiously I'm uploading ALL the images again because I cannot transfer from Photoshelter Collection to Photoshelter Archive - but I can send images the other way. So in future I will upload to the Archive and then across to sell on the Collection. If they are not rejected by the editors, that is.....

Some of these stock photos being uploaded were rejected for the Collection. But I can now put them on sale through the Archive where the commission is only 10% - an alternative way of completing sales requests off photoconnect....

I'm fascinated by some of the other options on the Photoshelter Archive - including setting up a 'virtual agency' which allows for me and other photographers to share a separately branded sales platform - it could for example sit within photoconnect. Or anywhere - to compete with Photoshelter Collection using the same engine (more or less). But what a waste of time without a huge marketing budget, which Photoshelter Collection allegedly has.

The Photoshelter Archive is about more than storing and selling stock photos. It allows me to store:

• crucial client photos from assignments
• images from my portfolio and
• personal images that I do not want lost

It's also an alternative to email for securely transferring images to a client.

Images can be kept private, put on sale, shown in public portfolios or shared with individual clients.

Because I'm being reasonably fussy about what I store, and I am storing prepared high quality .jpgs only (not RAWs) the storage should go a long way - 2000 images maybe. This is good because the next level up in terms of membership is $29.99 per month - an interesting option if I wanted to showcase stock images on the Light Touch site - although why I should do this I'm not sure when I have photoconnect!

Passport photos - who needs them?

On the first day when I make LightTouchImages.co.uk the referral point for my Adwords advertising I get a request to do quick passport like (but smiling) shots for a firm in the City. Co-incidentally the government has decided today that a passport may well get you out of having a UK ID card and all this reminds me that I have not yet registered to get tickets for Glastonbury.

The Glastonbury connection? Well each and every person who would like a ticket has to register - here - (explained here) and to register you have to upload a passport-like photo. Registration does not get you a ticket but gets you into a draw to win the opportunity to buy a ticket - which if you win you do not have to take up if you don't want to. If you win and choose to go, you can take up to three other people - but they have to be registered too, but do not have to have won. The whole scheme is pretty well thought out as a way of stopping ticket touts.

I intend to take the harmless step of registering - even if I lose I might just find someone I know who wins, and if I win I will then have about three weeks trying to find up to three people who have registered and want a spare 'ticket'.

Once registered, win or lose, this "Passport to Glasto" lasts 5 years giving me the opportunity to win and get there one day. Of course I'll take the camera - I am sure I will get something rather more interesting than the current crop of Glastonbury photos on photoconnect. I quite fancy taking lifestyle pics of stoned not so trendy not so young things updating their blogs wirelessly from a tent in a godforsaken swamp in the West Country. Me, I'll have the VW camper (thank you).

But first I have to do some Glastonbury passport photos. I hate passport photo assignments.

Today's shoot

My favourite shot from today's outing to Dicken's World in Chatham, Kent - promotional photography for the European Chamber opera's forthcoming performances of La Boheme.

Life happens

Two bits of news have upset the apple cart for today's shoot. My potential new assistant will not be able to make today's shoot (someone I know will have a wry smile about that....) and my father has been rushed into hospital and is not at all well.

I may be off to Wales tomorrow.

Test using dust-aid sensor cleaner

At Birmingham's NEC event (see recent post) I bought some Dust-Aid DSLR camera sensor cleaner. Today I tried it out on my Pentax's K10d and istD and on my Canon EOS5d. The latter came from Canon with a dirty sensor that did not respond to my blower brush - I don't have to change lenses on this camera so it's foing to be interesting to see what happens.

I had to use a special Canon Cleaner lower tack pad on the Eos5D and the Pentax K10d. I used the same pad to do both. I used the standard pad on the Pentax istD.

This is the Canon EOS5d before...

and after

Sorry, the sky had changed! Still, a dramatic improvement with just one or two smaller marks remaining.

Here's the Pentax istD before (note bottom left)


and after


Still some specks remaining but the biggy has gone.

On the Pentax K10D the change was more subtle so I'm not reproducing the results.

At Birmingham the guy who sold me the Dust Aid said that greasier dust could remain and you needed to use Eclipse to remove that. We can see thta in the above. And the K10D with its self cleaning sensor would be expected to expel looser dust so maybe that is what happened here - what was left on the sensor was the trickier dust spots anyway.

(Note all photos are of a section of the image)

So at least now I have three relatively clean sensors. I'm particularly pleased with the Canon which had not responded to the blower brush. But will it stay clean, even though I will not be removing the lens? I've read elsewhere about manufacturing debris in some EOS5d's causing all sorts of problems. Hopefully I have a clean one now.

Selling assignment photography

Spent much of the day on a course at the Association of Photographers - a lot of demand with 20 there - far more than I thought. I was relieved not to be the oldest there!

There was lots about cold calling, about which I learned a lot, and about dealing with a 'go see' about which I learned less but when I'm in front of someone I'm rather more confident anyway.

The main points for me were:

• Use email to get something (eg image & link to website) in front of people
• That email's then referred to in a follow up call
• The statistics may seem loaded against (know what they are!) but this is moving into territory with much higher potential gains
• Every failed call is a statistical necessity to earns you ££££'s (always look on the bright side......)
  
• The pay for editorial shooting is rubbish!
  

There was a suggestion that in the event of someone requesting to unsubscribe then one should send some written material (eg a card) - I have not quite worked that idea out yet.

After the session I met a potential assistant who it turns out has telesales experience. Nice unassuming guy, with great enthusiasm. And cool too....