I have just heard that my initial submission of images to Alamy has passed their Quality Control tests. Every image that I submitted has been accepted, which is great news. I spent a long time preparing the submission, carefully examining each image and removing any dust or specs, entering keywords and generally making sure the quality of the image was as good as I could get it. A few did need to be upsized in order to make the minimum file size but those were mainly images taken with the Canon 10D. Mostly those taken since I got my 1D Mark II did not need upsizing with the exception of a couple of cropped images. Now I need to start making the selections for the next couple of submissions and begin the lengthy process of preparing them for submission.

Everything I have read and heard suggests that stock image sales depend on the quantity of images available. in other words, it's no good expecting sales if you only have 50 or so images with any given library, you need to submit more and more. I have ben advised to look at having several hundred with each library and one photographer I know has about 3 thousand images with Alamy but then he shoots specifially for stock purposes and has converted his garage or cellar, I forget which, for that purpose. I don't expect to go to that extreme but am hoping that if I can build up a few hundred images over the next few years that I may start to see some sales trickle through. I am planning to send Alamy pictures that I probably won't want to use myself or that are more general in subject - a lot of my images are very specialised and would probably not work with a library like Alamy so I will need to find an alternative outlet for those.