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Agency Based Discussion => Alamy.com => Topic started by: BaldricksTrousers on July 07, 2017, 05:45
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So a macro picture of a bee on a flower or a distant swimmer in an anonymous sea is an Alamy "Live News" British weather image, but a picture of streets festooned with recently placed pictures in support of the Emir of Qatar during the on-going Gulf crisis doesn't qualify as "news". It's a bit galling.
Oh, well...
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Well, they will also open the section "fake news"…
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Every year in the UK the fact it can be warm in summer is deemed newsworthy......anything going on in foreign parts is considered irrelevant unless a Brit stubs his toe....hence the famous Times Headline "English Channel Fogbound Europe Isolated"
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The British are obsessed with the weather
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Every year in the UK the fact it can be warm in summer is deemed newsworthy......anything going on in foreign parts is considered irrelevant unless a Brit stubs his toe....hence the famous Times Headline "English Channel Fogbound Europe Isolated"
LOL - yeah, I realise that. But it's not the fact that it's UK weather "news" that galls, it's the fact that the bee and flower and the lone swimmer could have been shot anywhere in the world at any time in the past. Now, a stony beach packed with ghastly necrotic-looking bodies trying to get sunburned I could understand as a UK weather "news" picture.
Qatar's crisis is hard to photograph because the only visible signs of it are flags and pictures of the emir plastered around the place - oh, and Turkish products in food shops (but that's hardly an obvious change as far as outsiders are concerned). The only hard news pictures to be had are of officials sitting round tables or holding press conferences.
Here are a couple of the Alamy non-news shots:
https://www.dreamstime.com/earning_det.php?imageid=95662083 (https://www.dreamstime.com/earning_det.php?imageid=95662083)
https://www.dreamstime.com/earning_det.php?imageid=95662052 (https://www.dreamstime.com/earning_det.php?imageid=95662052)
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The British are obsessed with the weather
It's because we can't talk about anything that involves emotions.
(Unless it involves the fate of one of our photos, of course)
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Though given they are living up to the promise of doing QC in 24hrs is it much of a disadvantage....is "live news" marketed differently for example? Actually what the British are interested in is nubile females hot sun being a useful excuse in these PC times...along with the exam season where it appears about 98% of those taking exams are female ;-)
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Though given they are living up to the promise of doing QC in 24hrs is it much of a disadvantage....is "live news" marketed differently for example?
You can search by live news, which excludes everything that didn't go through that feed in the previous 48 hours. I presume the aim of that is to attract news organisations and if it's working it would potentially give a significant boost to sales for hot news topics.
(Aren't nubile young females heavily over-represented in stock photos and adverts worldwide?)
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(Aren't nubile young females heavily over-represented in stock photos and adverts worldwide?)
When I used to shoot models I found the views/buy ratio extraordinary....I guess I lot of buyers conduct a lot of "research" in that area. Gave up on that uneconomical though I did have a couple of very successful shoots.
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Though given they are living up to the promise of doing QC in 24hrs is it much of a disadvantage....is "live news" marketed differently for example?
Yes, Alamy can pick up pics from Live News and direct them straight to recant buyers.
Inspections outwith Live News aren't done over the w/e. (In my recent experience, files submitted on Friday afternoons are accepted the next Monday p.m.)
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The British are obsessed with the weather
Because the weather in the UK and Eire is so very changeable like the song you can get 4 seasons in one day
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Though given they are living up to the promise of doing QC in 24hrs is it much of a disadvantage....is "live news" marketed differently for example? Actually what the British are interested in is nubile females hot sun being a useful excuse in these PC times...along with the exam season where it appears about 98% of those taking exams are female ;-)
Live news are fed direct to media outlets. There's a guy who mostly shoots in and around his home town and has made $350,000 taking photos of people going about their daily business plus the weather of course
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Though given they are living up to the promise of doing QC in 24hrs is it much of a disadvantage....is "live news" marketed differently for example? Actually what the British are interested in is nubile females hot sun being a useful excuse in these PC times...along with the exam season where it appears about 98% of those taking exams are female ;-)
Live news are fed direct to media outlets. There's a guy who mostly shoots in and around his home town and has made $350,000 taking photos of people going about their daily business plus the weather of course
Wow! I didn't know that.
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. (In my recent experience, files submitted on Friday afternoons are accepted the next Monday p.m.)
Yeah, they are still stuck in QC and were uploaded very early on Friday.
Incidentally, one problem with them is that since I have concentrated on the pro-Emir posters the pics will not have a long life-expectancy, since when the crisis comes to an end the pictures of him will come down and my images will cease to be representative of what Doha looks like. Stock with a short shelf-life is pretty useless.
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The British are obsessed with the weather
Because the weather in the UK and Eire is so very changeable like the song you can get 4 seasons in one day
Or is it because it's such an inoffensive topic? You're probably better when dealing with strangers to say "Funny old weather today, isn't it?" than something else, such as "It's the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne on Wednesday, will you be marching to celebrate?" Though there may be a few churches where the second is as acceptable as the first.
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The British are obsessed with the weather
Because the weather in the UK and Eire is so very changeable like the song you can get 4 seasons in one day
Or is it because it's such an inoffensive topic? You're probably better when dealing with strangers to say "Funny old weather today, isn't it?" than something else, such as "It's the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne on Wednesday, will you be marching to celebrate?" Though there may be a few churches where the second is as acceptable as the first.
Unless you own a dog you would be considered some kind of weirdo if you opened the conversation with anything else ;-)
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Or a baby. Babies are even better than dogs as a topic for chatting with young women.
However, pretending that you've lost a baby is less likely to win female sympathy than pretending you've lost a dog, so there's not much to gain from wheeling an empty pram around. ;D
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Or a baby. Babies are even better than dogs as a topic for chatting with young women.
However, pretending that you've lost a baby is less likely to win female sympathy than pretending you've lost a dog, so there's not much to gain from wheeling an empty pram around. ;D
Adopting a baby is a step too far ;-)
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Though given they are living up to the promise of doing QC in 24hrs is it much of a disadvantage....is "live news" marketed differently for example?
Yes, Alamy can pick up pics from Live News and direct them straight to recant buyers.
Inspections outwith Live News aren't done over the w/e. (In my recent experience, files submitted on Friday afternoons are accepted the next Monday p.m.)
Live News inspections are only for correct titles/descriptions plus dates and appear to be done after the images are on sale. I suspect they have a semi automated process for checking description dates and Metadata
They are usually accepted in minutes. I uploaded a lot shots to Live News over late Friday evening GMT and they were all accepted and up for sale in about two minutes.
The only time I got some pulled/rejected is because I screwed up on the dates while in a rush. But they emailed to confirm the actual dates the images were shot and let me correct them before putting them back in the News stream. That took about an hour or two.
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The British are obsessed with the weather
Because the weather in the UK and Eire is so very changeable like the song you can get 4 seasons in one day
Or is it because it's such an inoffensive topic? You're probably better when dealing with strangers to say "Funny old weather today, isn't it?" than something else, such as "It's the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne on Wednesday, will you be marching to celebrate?" Though there may be a few churches where the second is as acceptable as the first.
You really need to understand the British relationship with the weather ;D
As their weather comes off the Atlantic it's usually unpredictable and can have a direct impact on daily life.
The shots are usually for fillers in papers or "Phoar! It's a Scorcher!" when the sun comes out.
They can be used as feel good shots of people enjoying the weather or doing stuff.
Or bad weather can be news worthy like snow in june or flooding and major storms etc.
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The British are obsessed with the weather
Because the weather in the UK and Eire is so very changeable like the song you can get 4 seasons in one day
Or is it because it's such an inoffensive topic? You're probably better when dealing with strangers to say "Funny old weather today, isn't it?" than something else, such as "It's the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne on Wednesday, will you be marching to celebrate?" Though there may be a few churches where the second is as acceptable as the first.
You really need to understand the British relationship with the weather ;D
As their weather comes off the Atlantic it's usually unpredictable and can have a direct impact on daily life.
The shots are usually for fillers in papers or "Phoar! It's a Scorcher!" when the sun comes out.
They can be used as feel good shots of people enjoying the weather or doing stuff.
Or bad weather can be news worthy like snow in june or flooding and major storms etc.
Born and bred there.......
My original post wasn't objecting to the idea of weather shots being news, it was objecting to the idea that a macro of a honey bee on a blue flower was a valid news image, while a picture of flags used to show loyalty to one side during a current international crisis (Boris Johnson flew in for talks last night, I think Tillerson is coming today, the German FM was here a couple of days ago) was not a valid news image. There was absolutely nothing in the bee and flower picture to indicate location or the date on which it had been taken. The same was true of the lone swimmer in the open sea with absolutely nothing but a distant unidentifiable swimmer and an expanse of water.
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Though given they are living up to the promise of doing QC in 24hrs is it much of a disadvantage....is "live news" marketed differently for example? Actually what the British are interested in is nubile females hot sun being a useful excuse in these PC times...along with the exam season where it appears about 98% of those taking exams are female ;-)
Live news are fed direct to media outlets. There's a guy who mostly shoots in and around his home town and has made $350,000 taking photos of people going about their daily business plus the weather of course
Wow! I didn't know that.
It's not quite like that. He lives in a very well-known holiday and university town and is an ex press snapper. The town has lots of events and many of his photos are of celebs, minor celebs and academics.
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Though given they are living up to the promise of doing QC in 24hrs is it much of a disadvantage....is "live news" marketed differently for example? Actually what the British are interested in is nubile females hot sun being a useful excuse in these PC times...along with the exam season where it appears about 98% of those taking exams are female ;-)
Live news are fed direct to media outlets. There's a guy who mostly shoots in and around his home town and has made $350,000 taking photos of people going about their daily business plus the weather of course
Wow! I didn't know that.
It's not quite like that. He lives in a very well-known holiday and university town and is an ex press snapper. The town has lots of events and many of his photos are of celebs, minor celebs and academics.
Redsnapper
http://www.alamy.com/search/imageresults.aspx?&xstx=0&userid={81DF4CE9-3C52-4FDF-9821-5CEFC4AE5129}&name=redsnapper&st=12 (http://www.alamy.com/search/imageresults.aspx?&xstx=0&userid={81DF4CE9-3C52-4FDF-9821-5CEFC4AE5129}&name=redsnapper&st=12)
It goes to show though anything and everything can be sold through Live News
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[url]http://www.alamy.com/search/imageresults.aspx?&xstx=0&userid={81DF4CE9-3C52-4FDF-9821-5CEFC4AE5129}&name=redsnapper&st=12[/url] ([url]http://www.alamy.com/search/imageresults.aspx?&xstx=0&userid={81DF4CE9-3C52-4FDF-9821-5CEFC4AE5129}&name=redsnapper&st=12)[/url]
It goes to show though anything and everything can be sold through Live News
Those don't seem to be captioned as live news items though, do they? They should have location and date at the start of the description for the live news feed. Or is that optional?
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Those don't seem to be captioned as live news items though, do they? They should have location and date at the start of the description for the live news feed. Or is that optional?
Alamy don't have this requirement, strangely.
I've been submitting to their live news feed since they launched it and I think it's a great idea as the image is live almost right away...other agencies, including SS, just take too long and sooner or later the news isn't breaking anymore. As for the weather stuff, it's not live news and more like stock since a buyer can easily find a summer beach scene in the archives to illustrate an article. Maybe if it was a smog scene due to worst air quality in years, that's different.
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[url]http://www.alamy.com/search/imageresults.aspx?&xstx=0&userid={81DF4CE9-3C52-4FDF-9821-5CEFC4AE5129}&name=redsnapper&st=12[/url] ([url]http://www.alamy.com/search/imageresults.aspx?&xstx=0&userid={81DF4CE9-3C52-4FDF-9821-5CEFC4AE5129}&name=redsnapper&st=12)[/url]
It goes to show though anything and everything can be sold through Live News
Those don't seem to be captioned as live news items though, do they? They should have location and date at the start of the description for the live news feed. Or is that optional?
On Live Feed images, they have the disclaimer, "This image could have imperfections as it’s either historical or reportage." at the bottom of the file info.
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In fairness - as a former newspaper editor I would rather have a current pic of people on a beach than a stock one which might be years old to illustrate a heat wave. People would be likely to spot things which date an old image and wonder why you paired it off with a current news story.
I wouldn't mind using a file photo to illustrate a climate change story, for example, but not a "Phew! Britain sizzles" one.
I notice that there are a mixture of editorial-type and general stock-type captions in that portfolio, so he's not pushing his ice creams through live news.
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In fairness - as a former newspaper editor I would rather have a current pic of people on a beach than a stock one which might be years old to illustrate a heat wave. People would be likely to spot things which date an old image and wonder why you paired it off with a current news story.
That's true, especially if people are taking selfies with an Iphone 4 or other outdated models.
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Here's some Live News I captured today...don't think the cops were too happy to see me taking their pic (maybe they were getting bribed), fk them, we live in a democracy
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Here's some Live News I captured today...don't think the cops were too happy to see me taking their pic (maybe they were getting bribed), fk them, we live in a democracy
Well, if they were getting bribed its news - otherwise it's three cops and three black guys in a park which is a non-event.
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Well, if they were getting bribed its news - otherwise it's three cops and three black guys in a park which is a non-event.
It's a major drug dealing spot + migrant crisis + defensive cops = newsworthy
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I checked the law in Italy and there's nothing against taking pics of police out in public. How is it like where you guys live?
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Well, if they were getting bribed its news - otherwise it's three cops and three black guys in a park which is a non-event.
It's a major drug dealing spot + migrant crisis + defensive cops = newsworthy
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To be fair, that's not obvious in your photo.
Did it sell from LiveNews?
(I've never sold directly from LN, but have sold some I submitted as LN as secondary editorial later, even years later)
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Did it sell from LiveNews?
Yes, they accepted as LN.
"Milan, Italy. 12th July, 2017. A man who appears to be a migrant pleads to police at Milan's Parco Sempione. Italy is home to many refugees fleeing war and poverty in North Africa and the Middle East"
Would have loved to have taken more shots but the cops started chasing me down lol but eventually left me alone.
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In Qatar there are cops on display to be photographed in tourist areas
http://www.alamy.com/search/imageresults.aspx?qt=JGHRHW&imgt=0
The rest of them direct traffic or drive around in cars. I don't suppose they'd mind being photographed though they might object if they were engaged in an arrest. There's hardly any crime here - not of the cops and robbers kind, anyway.
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The rest of them direct traffic or drive around in cars. I don't suppose they'd mind being photographed though they might object if they were engaged in an arrest. There's hardly any crime here - not of the cops and robbers kind, anyway.
That's how I felt when I was in Dubai recently
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I checked the law in Italy and there's nothing against taking pics of police out in public. How is it like where you guys live?
I've written this before, but when I did a pj nightclass, the tutor sent us out to photograph 'Cafe society' in the pavement cafe-bars in Glasgow. He told us that on a previous course, two policemen had approached one of the students to ask what he was doing, and he said, "Doing a photojournalism class assignment, and now most of the rest of the class are photographing you talking to me!"
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I checked the law in Italy and there's nothing against taking pics of police out in public. How is it like where you guys live?
In the UK there are some restricted areas under anti terrorism laws such as Whitehall near the ministry of defence and embassies where you can't take any photos let alone the police. I discovered this when I was stopped and searched outside the Ministry of Defence....nice guys but still a bit intimidating to see sub-machine guns ;-).
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Here's another one Alamy LN accepted, although a common recurring theme...
Milan, Italy - July 14th, Woman carrying a luxury carrier bag passing by a beggar in the luxurious center of Milan Italy
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I've just sent them a picture I took today of the Emir's administrative palace (the Diwan) in the centre of Doha with a caption about the Emir meeting the French Foreign minister in Doha today (presumably at the palace, though the location hasn't been given on the news wires). We'll see if they take it - it's different from earlier Emiri Diwan pictures because there are large yellow construction machines parked in its grounds.
Oh! It's just passed!
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And now they've removed the bloody file from News and stuck it in the ordinary queue.
I should just be taking pictures of rich women passing by beggars, or unidentifiable swimmers in an anonymous sea, obviously, or how about this one JHT4WY of a swan and cygnets resting on their nest!!!!!!! (No fewer than four pictures of that news event made it through).
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And now they've removed the bloody file from News and stuck it in the ordinary queue.
I should just be taking pictures of rich women passing by beggars, or unidentifiable swimmers in an anonymous sea, obviously, or how about this one JHT4WY of a swan and cygnets resting on their nest!!!!!!! (No fewer than four pictures of that news event made it through).
Oh, £$%^&!
What on earth are they playing at?
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I don't know. The standard (I think) rejection notice for "non-news file in news queue" says: If you had an image of someone announcing this news, a protest about it or management meeting to discuss it, it would be considered live news. If you have any images like this in future we would love your images.
I'd like to see the reviewer come and launch an unofficial public protest here. It wouldn't be the first, of course, there was one about 20 years ago. As I recall, they sent commandos on helicopters to persuade the protesters to stop. As for public announcements about government meetings - yeah, you'll be lucky.
I do have a picture of a dhow with a seagull resting on the prow. Do you think I should offer them that? Doha,
July 15: a seagull perches during Gulf crisis.
Or maybe I could do a weather picture - July 15: Nobody is pictured on Doha Corniche as a vicious heatwave sweeps across the Arabian desert driving residents indoors ......
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Are you going to pursue it with them? In my few dealings I've always found them responsive to a reasonable question. I does sound very odd.
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Are you going to pursue it with them? In my few dealings I've always found them responsive to a reasonable question. I does sound very odd.
Yeah, I fired off a note to them a couple of hours back - so we'll see.
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I should just be taking pictures of rich women passing by beggars,
Oh they pulled that image after initially getting through LN, strange.