In these quiet days between Xmas and New Year I notice several photographers on forums reflecting on the year that has nearly ended and ‘taking stock’ ( excuse the pun) of 2016.
I started with Alamy back in 2003 and was absolutely thrilled that the internet, in the shape of Alamy, had provided such as opportunity to really commit to stock photography. Prior to that I had dabbled with a couple of the old traditional agencies but couldn’t get in with the top few agencies. So the advent of Alamy was a real motivation for me.
After five or so years of just Alamy I made a decision to distribute my RM images, largely secondary editorial, more widely and not have my ‘eggs in one basket’. I started with agefotosck then things really started happening after 2012 with Universal Images Group ( UIG)
I had around 425 Alamy sales, and the rest of the 1230 sales have come from the UIG network of agencies ( Getty Images being the most important single one), a reasonable number from Agefotostock, and small numbers from Robert Harding ( where I only have about 30 images), Imagbroker ( just 1 so far) and a couple of direct sales from Geography Photos ( small in number but decent fees).
All these sales are for Rights Managed images through ‘proper’ agencies – no RF or microstock.