A is for.......Alamy:

Passed -Flora the Singleton Giant

I have recently started to upload some images to British agency Alamy. More premium priced than microstock they are probaly best described as a Midstock agency. Though they take any kind of stock subjects they are probaly best known for travel and editorial images -with frequent credits in the British national newspapers.

Now, this is not a new sign up for me. I opened my account at Alamy in January 2008 back when my only other agencies were Snap Village (deceased) and Picture Nation (deceased). They were British, took editorial and anybody could upload on line. It all looked good until I started to see their frankly Byzantine upload requirements. You couldn't just upload your images as you could with other agencies. Instead a curious upsizing was required for which you had to buy special software (Genuine Fractals was their recommended one). Cue lots of instructions about compressed/uncompressed sizes which I didn't really understand then (and still don't!). Alamy went on hold before it even began for me. Anyway, years passed and all that kerfuffle was eventually scrapped. Now you just need a 6 megapixel (or more) camera and you're good to go. Provided your camera is on their "Approved Camera List" that is. My Nikon D80 is, I'm pleased to say.

So, start uploading then David? Well, no because about that time microsite Yaymicro announced a

Failed - chromatic aberration

partnership deal with Alamy - I was happy for them to take their cut for saving me all that time uploading and keywording. This would have been a sound plan if they had ever actually put any of my images on Alamy. After a year or so I emailed them and they assured me they would get there eventually but it would take time. I'm guessing they were cherry picking best images for Alamy and not just mirroring their whole library there. More time passed and still no Alamy action and in the meanwhile Yay have virtually sunk into oblivion (for me) so I'm not sure how much longer I'll even be uploading to them.

Right, time to upload direct. Start with uploading four images as a test. Just upload (you only have to add captions/keywords after approval). My test came a cropper when one of the Eiffel Tower failed their Quality Control (QC) for chromatic aberration (fringing). It had been approved at every other site I belong to. However, there was no wait period and I was free to upload another four images. I just re-uploaded the passed ones from the first batch and added another hopeful. These passed and I was in. Once in you can upload as many images as you want at any time. At this point you can add your data and wait for the next server update for them to go on sale.

Now for the important bit: Alamy rules do not allow you to set a different license type (for the same image) to what you are selling elsewhere. If those images are Royalty Free on microstock then you must set a Royalty Free license on Alamy. This throws up another problem because Alamy require editorial images to be Rights Managed - ruling out a large chunk of my portfolio which are Royalty Free on the micros. You could, of course, shoot some editorial just for Alamy and that would be fine.****

Passed - Pigs head with apple

The second important thing is their Quality Control (review) system. They do not check every image but if they do reject just one they also reject every other in that batch AND in all other batches awaiting approval. Harsh, but there it is. My strategy for now is to literally upload one image and await the outcome. Reviews are usually a day or less. Once I get a feel for their standards I'll up my
numbers. Be aware that if you get a sufficient number of QC fails you will be suspended from uploading for a while or ultimately face account closure.

My image choice strategy, for now, is to choose a few images from each area of my port (e.g. each Greek island etc). I'll report back how it all goes. Regards, David.

****EDIT: RF Licensing is coming. See my post here Alamy update

Persisting with Picfair:

The Sinceros -my most viewed image on Picfair

When I first posted about British photo agency Picfair back in November 2013 I was certainly full of hope for this new venture and even more so when I got my first sale just a couple of weeks later. So, time for an update.

Well, first the headline fact, I have yet to have had my second sale there despite my portfolio now numbering some 870 images. Am I giving up on them? Not at this stage and here is why.

Founded by former journalist Benji Lanyado in 2013 the site has gradually grown -both in the number of images available and the team itself. Very much a one man band at the start Picfair now has a number of people on its team which you can see on the "About" section of their site. Originally launched in Beta the site is now fully functioning as an image selling agency and received a substantial boost of investment last Summer (read about that here http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/08/picfair-raises-520k-to-take-on-getty-with-an-image-marketplace/ ). Ignore the "taking on Getty" headline -I'm pretty sure that they are not actually claiming that!

So what's great about Picfair? Well the two big attractions to me are firstly that there are no reviews to go through. You get the images online and for sale that you want, not filtered through somebody elses opinion or taste. Just like having your own photo selling site in fact. Secondly, and most importantly, you get to choose your own selling price and receive 100% of that amount (Picfair make their money by adding a percentage on top to the buyer -currently 20%).

This choose your own price feature does has its own set of issues, however. Firstly, some great photographers are setting their prices really low. I have seen some stunning images being offered at little above the minimum allowed pricing of £1. This doesn't make it easy for those of us trying to get a reasonable fee for our images. Which leads to the second (big) issue -just what should you price your images at? All mine are at a standard £10 per image. Now for a small use on a blog that's a high price compared to purchasing from a Micro site. However, the standard Picfair license doesn't offer any variations so that £10 image could just as easily be used on the front page of a National newspaper.

Ideally, I'd like to experiment with different price points to see if that makes a difference to sales, however what Picfair currently lacks is a global price change facility (unlike FineArtAmerica where you can reset your entire portfolio pricing with one click). You can, of course, edit your pricing image by image but there is no way I am doing that 870 times! I could try just changing the pricing on some images but I am really loathe to set up a two tier system suggesting that "these are my best ones at £10 and this is a bit rubbish at £2".

So, for now I am persisting with Picfair. It is still fairly early days for them as a business and I see no reason why the site will not gradually attract more buyers -especially given the fantastic quality of many of the images being submitted. The batch upload is quick and efficient (and they now offer FTP on request to those that want that -I don't) so they do not represent a big demand on my time to keep uploading. Hopefully, I'll have some sales news to report in the not too distant future. Regards, David. EDIT: Click on the comments below for a response from Picfair :)

Pro's: Choose your own pricing/No reviews/Prospects for growth
Con's: No global price change/ Uploading no longer works on IE9 (a minor gripe and maybe just me)

Signed up to PicFair.com:

Today I signed up to a new picture agency - the recently launched  British company PicFair.com. I've been following their progress over the last few weeks and the time now seemed right to take the plunge.
Founded and run by British journalist Benji Lanyado (who writes for The Guardian newspaper amongst others) the agency specialises in licensing images for both Editorial and a variety of commercial uses. (Edited -please see the comment below from Benji on the licensing).
The exciting thing about PicFair is that you get to set your own prices and receive 100% of that amount if they are sold. PicFair make their money by adding a modest percentage on top of your price (as well as a transaction charge to the client for each sale). It's not unlike FineArtAmerica where you also set your price and receive all of it.

Images are licensed for single use each time (unlike the Royalty Free Microstock model where clients pay once only and can keep using your image without further payment). There is only one size available (i.e. the maximum) so that needs to be kept in mind when setting your prices and there are no Extended License options available either. I have initially set my prices at the £10 per license level. All prices are set individually on upload so you can vary the price of your images and also change your pricing at any time in the future. If there is a way of bulk editing your prices across your portfolio I haven't found it yet (but it is only my first day there!).

One thing that takes some getting used to is that you add your title/description/keyword info before uploading the image - the complete reverse of what I am used to.
At present there is only the facility to upload one image at a time -something that will put some off I imagine. That said, images uploaded very quickly so with a bit of determination (and time) you can build up a decent size portfolio.

Downsides? Apart from the one at a time upload there is certainly an issue with the security watermark -it is barely visible and I hope this will be addressed going forward. There was also a strange quirk when after uploading you get a nice "thank you" message pop up and a reminder that you can share news of the upload with social media (the site seems well integrated with Facebook and Twitter). My problem at this stage was that there was no way of losing the message let alone sharing anything. The only way I found to move on was to hit the back button on my mouse to take me back to the upload page. This did throw up one unexpected benefit though -the info entered previously was still there, so where I wanted to upload several images of the same subject I just had to add the next image and click upload again. It may just be my browser though (IE9) causing this. I've sent them an email asking about this issue and will post further when I get a response.

So far I've just put up 11 images to get the feel of things but it is certainly an interesting proposition. It's also nice to be working with a British agency again following the demise of PictureNation. First day images included (of course) Margaret Thatcher and also Phil Lynott. You can see my little (so far) portfolio here PicFair . Feel free to comment by clicking on the comments link below this post. Regards, David.

Farewell to PictureNation:

A sad day here as I have just received my final payment from PictureNation and my account is now closed. I did search for a few of my images but my over 2000 image port has gone.

I said it all when I first posted about them closing down, so I won't repeat it all again.

All the best for the future to Jane-Louise, her team and all the contributors. Regards, David.