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Just wondering, has anyone ever had an image fail QC because there was too much litter visible on the ground -- cigarette butts (time to ban them IMO), bubblegum, seagull poop, twigs, etc.?

 

I try to clean up as much urban grunge as I can, but with some shots there's a limit to the amount of time that I'm willing to spend. Plus I don't think that litter qualifies as "blemishes," which is given by Alamy as a possible reason for QC failure.

 

 

 

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Nope never failed for that, in fact that could be what the image is all about so keyword for litter :-)

 

Right. Sometimes it's all about the garbage. I was thinking about images where the litter is more of an eyesore than a main subject.

 

I guess the larger question is can too much incidental grunge in an image limit its sale-ability?

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John, I feel your pain. I call what I do most of the time here in NYC, "Romantic Realism." The romantic part is that I digitally pick up the street trash. I can't tell you how frustrating and time-consuming this is. I had assumed that  Vancouver has cleaner streets than New York. Mark has a point, of course . . . but like everything, it's a judgement call, and I feel that most of my street snaps need a lot of spotting.

 

In film days, I once found myself in Buenos Aires, while they were having a sanitation workers strike. I went to a hardware store and bought a broom and a scoop and actually cleaned up several areas before shooting. The locals thought:  there goes one crazy gringo. Maybe that's what I should do here? 

 

In answer to your question: no, QC has never failed an image of mine for uncleanliness . . . not yet. 

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I've just sold an image where I painstakingly cloned out a stack of overhead cables - it looked horrible with them in! Of course with such large scale bodging, it is marked as being digitally altered and a few words of explanation provided. In fact it is being used in a travel guide book, there may be some disillusioned tourists at this location in the future.  :unsure: 

So, like Edo, I clean up the images when I think that it will improve their saleability, but I also have shots of litter - that so far have failed to sell, I must improve my litter shooting.  :) 

Would an image be failed because of litter? Not on Alamy where aesthetic consideration is not a part of the QC process. Maybe a windy day and a piece of blowing litter that looks like sensor dirt....

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I'd have thought that litter is all part of the landscape and I can't see why this might be seen as a QC failure - that's simply content. If litter isn't wanted, surely just change viewpoint or walk on?

 

Rgds,

Richard.

 

Agreed.

Can't for the life of me think of why QC would all of a sudden start failing images because of content (cigarette butts, bubble-gum etc,). And I truly believe QC can tell the difference between litter and dust-spots on the sensor.

 

However, as for sometimes removing bits of litter from images as Edo mentions above, sometimes that is an option I must admit I have taken. Sometimes, imo, an image is truly spoiled by an errant discarded ice-cream wrapper where moving to a different viewpoint won't help, and I don't hesitate in such cases to clone it out . . . but it's not a QC issue either way.

 

dd

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a-clean-sidewalk-and-dirty-piles-of-snow

 

Here's an image I captured recently, after that big snow storm we had. It demonstrates both points: I left some dirty stuff in and took some out. The piles of snow after two days are dirty, and that was the subject, the point in snapping the picture. You don't see it now, but I removed a white paper napkin from the cleared area of the sidewalk, because it drew the eye away from the important elements of the image. I'm sure most of us do this from time to time. 

 

Let me add a couple of side points. I don't shoot for Alamy or to pass Alamy QC. Yes, of course I want and need to pass QC. Each time I failed QC, it was because of an error of mine that was not noticed or corrected while doing my PP.

 

I shoot for the buyers who come to Alamy, and so I want to have good images on display. 

 

Edo

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Thanks for the replies. It sounds as if too much irrelevant litter is not a potential QC problem. My pet peeve is having to clone out unsightly cigarette butts. If people would just put them in here rather than leave them lying around on the street for birds to choke on, then we would have a cleaner and much more photographer-friendly world IMO.

 

P.S. I don't want to sound too self-righteous since I did the same -- i..e. thoughtlessly toss smouldering butts on the street -- when I used to smoke. But ignorance was more excusable back in the 70's. B)

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P.S. I don't want to sound too self-righteous since I did the same -- i..e. thoughtlessly toss smouldering butts on the street -- when I used to smoke. But ignorance was more excusable back in the 70's. B)

..and ex-smokers are the worst.......

 

 

True, but at least we're biodegradable, whereas cigarette butts aren't.

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