Saturday 11 February 2012

Introducing myself

I am a retired professional photographer living twenty miles north of Dublin city, Ireland. I worked in many areas of photography but mainly in advertising and design and latterly in architectural and the built environmental photography until 2005. At that time, I handed over the firm to Donal Murphy, my business partner, a truly excellent photographer, who has won many awards. View his site here: www.donalmurphyphoto.ie
I started submitting to Alamy.com in 2003, the stock library which currently (February 2012) holds more than 28 million images. My meagre contribution stands at about 5,600 images, but slowly growing. In the first few years of my participation I uploaded lots of travel pictures from many different locations and the money return was fairly decent. In recent years that has diminished through dilution by the number of photographers and the quantity of images, deals done with publishers (led down that dark road by Getty) and the ubiquitous worldwide recession. Of course, the prices offered by iStock and it's microstock lookalikes were a major hit in the pricing of stock images.
Many of my compatriots whom I know through various stock forums submit to multiple agencies as well as Alamy and also have their own portfolio sites where they market from directly, but I decided early on to stick to Alamy alone. Firstly I felt that my stuff was too generalistic in subjects and not particularly conceptual - actually a rag-bag of images, so the logical home was Alamy, which does not edit contributions for content. Secondly, I had had my fill over the years of the business of photography. I no longer wished to market myself or get involved in accounts.
So there it is - I am now a happy hobbyist, albeit with years of photographic experience in his back pocket.

2 comments:

  1. Dear barry, you won't remember me probably, but its worth a try. I met you at Red Island on many occasions as my family were regulars there, visiting every year and your dad took lots of pictures of me.
    we were very friendly, and you also took some lovely shots of me, which I have sadly lost.
    Anyway, you were very kind and took me into Dublin from the airport when I started at TCD in 1964. Just wanted to say hello and wondered whether you remembered me.

    Liz Veitch ( nee Bryan)

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  2. Hi Lizzie,
    Of course I remember you. Email me directly at barrydotmasonatgmaildotcom. I've written it that way to defeat the internet spiders.
    Regards
    Barry

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