Permalink5 August 2009 at 09:59 by Alan Capel - Head of Content
Posted under News
© Patrick Blake
Alamy's 'Find a Photographer' service is now live. This is a free service that puts picture buyers in touch with photographers.
Eligible contributors have been signing up for the service over the last few months and we are launching with over one thousand photographers from around the globe.
Customers are able to search for photographers by location using a Google maps facility. They can then see the photographer’s contact details and website, plus their images on Alamy.
'Find a Photographer' is currently a free service, although we do reserve the right to charge for it at a future date. It is up to the photographer and the customer to define the task, agree a price, transmit images, arrange invoicing and payment and to resolve any problems between themselves.
To qualify for this service, photographers must meet all of the following criteria:
- Be experienced in conducting assignments and/or commissions
- Have at least 100 images and 10 sales on Alamy
- Have a website that showcases their work
We have selected these as our initial qualifying criteria but they may change in the future.
We will contact you if you become eligible. Please note that we cannot accept requests to be included in the scheme unless you meet the criteria.
Please note that Find a Photographer is still in Beta and has been kept deliberately simple so that we can get it in front of customers and learn how to make it better. This first release is focused on helping customers find a photographer in a specific location rather than a general area because this is the feedback we got from our early test group of customers. In order to keep it fast and responsive we have also limited the number of results per page to 10 names on the left side list and 10 place markers on the right side map.
While researching this product with some of our customers we learnt that they were particularly attracted by the idea of being able to see two views of your images - the first via your website and the second via Alamy. These buyers said they also liked to see the images that a photographer had not chosen to display on their personal web portfolio.
For this reason we recommend that you don't create a seperate pseudonym for your images and that you let the customer reach their own conclusion about your work and style by allowing them to browse your personal site in addition to your Alamy portfolio.
If you have signed up to be part of 'Find a Photographer' perhaps take this opportunity to double check that your details, location and availability are up to date. You can do this by visting the 'Find a Photographer' link in My Alamy
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