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Have you done your legacy images?


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5 hours ago, Bill Brooks said:

I think it is somewhat similar to the film scanning problem photographers had around the year 2000.

 

Some did, some did not. I scanned 6,000 transparencies discarded 4,000.

 

It’s your choice. Thats the beauty of the Alamy system

 

Cant really see the similarity.

 

Trannies were only scanned once - Alamy have revisited keywords etc at least 3 times.

 

Scanning in 2000 produced files which could be sold for very good prices which made the process worthwhile. Fiddling with keywords/tags on existing files in a continually falling market with no obvious tangible rewards is a waste of time.

 

Regen

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On 9/7/2017 at 03:25, geogphotos said:

And what percentage of the 105 million images on Alamy would you estimate have been reworked so far? And will ever be?

 

My assumption is that none/hardly any of the agencies or larger contributors will find the time, that a lot of contributors have lost interest since they started and are hardly active, and that it will only be a relatively small proportion of contributors and a relatively small proportion of images that ever get to be reworked. I doubt that agencies sending in a new hard disc or submitting by FTP will even get around to using the new AIM system for new and current images. I send in images by FTP,  they go on sale more easily than before, and that is good enough for me. 

 

Surely (1) the whole point is that an individual CAN improve their own position because most images WON'T be reworked.  Great for the contributor but I don't see how it ends up making much difference to the overall search experience.

 

(2) And as yet nobody has pointed out what the problem is that the new system is supposed to be fixing. 

 

 

1) Perhaps one can spin it to a positive and see this as a chance for "individuals" to get a leg up against the massive collections from the all the agencies? Of course I fully sympathize with the sheer work that you hypothetically would have to do, but perhaps breaking it up into smaller chunks to make it feel achievable and worthwhile i.e. start out with those that you think are your best and zoomed/sold ones to give further boost? Completely understand the questioning of it all, but without trivialising your plight, it is what it is now.

 

2) There's been suggestions, but without confirmation from Alamy we won't know for sure. Perhaps e-mailing contributor services?

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1 hour ago, geogphotos said:

 

Martin,

 

You are missing my point entirely. It is not about other individuals or myself.

 

(1)If images have high rank because of their sales record and quality then Alamy surely benefits from theming appear high up in the images.

 

(2) How does it improve the buyer search experience to hypothetically allow individuals who have time on their hands to elevate their own images in searches above the position that they currently have ( through their AR sales record)? This inevitably means that other images are 'demoted'. 

 

I can't see that Alamy constantly shuffling the pack of cards attracts more buyers.

 

Personally, I think Alamy made a rod for their own back at the outset when they decided not to use industry standard IPTC fields. They also have all this image data ( even at individual level (?), certainly for each contributor and pseudonym) and algorithms from actual real buyer data so why not use standard Caption and Keywords ( as every other agency does) and (3) let the best images from the best contributors float to the top.

 

 

 

 

Ian,

 

Ok - but you did mention something along those lines earlier (getting a leg up), hence my continuance.

 

1. Logically that makes perfect sense. However, currently images can't have individual rank, only pseudonyms - correct me if I'm wrong, that would be major improvement.

 

2. From a buyer's perspective there surely are soo many factors that influence the search, not just individual efforts with the new AIM. Alamy re-ranks, new images, new contributors, contributor various efforts with keywording or re-keywording and buyer's various, but hopefully improving, ability to perform well executed targeted searches. Regardless, my impression is that most that refrain from doing any new AIM work on old images are actually better off in searches i.e. tinkering with old stuff and they start to slide down the search - so is this even a real problem? 

 

3. If I remember correctly there was talk a few years back about eventually moving towards individual image rank, hasn't happened yet AFAIK. Would be cool to know/hear about Alamy's roadmap for developments, but I don't think that will happen.

 

Anyway, what are you trying to achieve? ( <-- said in a friendly manner) Making your own mind up about attacking your older stuff or trying to get Alamy to go back to old AIM?

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It doesn't improve buyer search experience to hypothetically allow individuals, who are willing and able to devote time to it, to elevate their own images in searches above the position that they currently have ( through their AR sales record)? This inevitably means that other images are 'demoted'. 

 

Ian, the problem I had was when the new AIM was introduced, my images that once had a good position through the traditional methods, slipped.

If you have a major tag or more suddenly included in a 6-8 tag string, and while that important tag can still be searched within the string, it doesn't have the chutzpah of a single tag, and won't come up as high in searches. 

I'm just trying to get back to where I was.

if my competing image was above John Doe's before the change on its own merits, (barring sales) it still should be. If it has slipped many pages after the new AIM because of errors caused by the new AIM, that's what's not fair.

Betty

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  • 4 months later...

I'm pretty much housebound these days (recovering from an operation), so I've been spending a lot of time working on my old (and not-so-old) images -- adding supertags, deleting and adding keywords, fleshing out captions, etc. So far I'm seeing encouraging results, some almost immediate, including views and zooms of recently updated images. No sales yet of  reworked images, but I'm hopeful. 

 

Consequently, I'd say that -- for those with smaller collections especially -- updating images with the new AIM in mind is probably time well spent. Not sure about contributors with tens of thousands of images, though, as it's very time consuming. I'm a bit shocked at how lazy I've been with keywording a lot of my pics. It's a real learning experience.

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So you recommend a hip op John? :P I hope your recovery is going well.

 

I've updated 96 submissions, that's only until April 2016 backwards. I joined in 2002!!

It's mostly to repair the broken 'New South Wales' tag which sometimes came up as 'Wales South New' or lost its 'New' altogether. So far, I haven't seen any real change to zoom/sales.

 

I don't think I will ever update 18,000 pix, I only do it when I need a break from something.

 

Gen

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1 hour ago, gvallee said:

So you recommend a hip op John? :P I hope your recovery is going well.

 

I've updated 96 submissions, that's only until April 2016 backwards. I joined in 2002!!

It's mostly to repair the broken 'New South Wales' tag which sometimes came up as 'Wales South New' or lost its 'New' altogether. So far, I haven't seen any real change to zoom/sales.

 

I don't think I will ever update 18,000 pix, I only do it when I need a break from something.

 

Gen

 

Thanks, so far so good.

I'm not sure that I'll ever finish my much smaller collection. Having to be a house mouse certainly helps matters, but I'm not sure I'd recommend breaking a leg.

It's all short-term pain for long-term gain.

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16 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Thanks, so far so good.

I'm not sure that I'll ever finish my much smaller collection. Having to be a house mouse certainly helps matters, but I'm not sure I'd recommend breaking a leg.

It's all short-term pain for long-term gain.

 

Hang on in there John, it can only get better.

Not that it is any comfort, but at least you have free hands. I was in plaster from hip to neck for 6 weeks once! A little restrictive...

 

Gen

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1 hour ago, gvallee said:

 

Hang on in there John, it can only get better.

Not that it is any comfort, but at least you have free hands. I was in plaster from hip to neck for 6 weeks once! A little restrictive...

 

Gen

 

Yikes! Doesn't sound like much fun. A crocodile encounter perhaps? I'll consider myself lucky.

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3 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Yikes! Doesn't sound like much fun. A crocodile encounter perhaps? I'll consider myself lucky.

 

Almost. It missed me.

 

saltwater-crocodile-crocodylus-porosus-a

 

Twas a horse... We jumped together and landed separately...

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On 2/9/2017 at 08:47, York Photographer said:

Not done any, and have no intention! Rearranging my Sock Draw would be a more productive use of my time!

 

:)

Nearly +1

- I have other things to do. I do one or two occasionally when I fall upon one that does not seem okay.

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In quite a few cases, because over tagged images are uneditable, I'm resorting to adding new tags to the end of captions. It makes nonsense of the captions, of course, but it's the only way. I wish Alamy would fix it, but they obviously won't, so that's that. Perhaps 10% of my images unfixed and unfixable.

But guess what? They have good discoverability. Ha.

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I found that in many cases, the reason why my legacy images have over 50 tags is that keywords have been split.

Putting them back together as a phrase bring the tags back under the limit. 

 

I won't make a major effort to re-unite/edit them. I only do it if I think it's important. 

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On 9/7/2017 at 00:52, John Mitchell said:

"One advantage that was asked for was the ability to add a tag globally to already tagged images without losing the tags already in place. Another, say you have a set of three similars you've just uploaded, tagged ahead of time or not. You can select all three, add a phrase you've just thought of to them at once, or completely tag all three at once,  rather than add it to one in the old system, then copy and paste to each of the other two."

 

Good examples. Those definitely were things that needed fixing in the old system.

Unfortunately, all of those improvements do not work for my legacy images, which have more than 50 tags.  So fixing past images is a MAJOR pain.

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13 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

I'm pretty much housebound these days (recovering from an operation), so I've been spending a lot of time working on my old (and not-so-old) images -- adding supertags, deleting and adding keywords, fleshing out captions, etc. So far I'm seeing encouraging results, some almost immediate, including views and zooms of recently updated images. No sales yet of  reworked images, but I'm hopeful. 

 

Consequently, I'd say that -- for those with smaller collections especially -- updating images with the new AIM in mind is probably time well spent. Not sure about contributors with tens of thousands of images, though, as it's very time consuming. I'm a bit shocked at how lazy I've been with keywording a lot of my pics. It's a real learning experience.

That’s exactly what I experienced, John. 

Like you, in the process of fixing broken tags/phrases,  I realized how badly I had tagged the first couple of thousand images.  Especially lacking we’re good captions.

This begs the question, did some of those images not sell because of poor tagging and captions? Are they worthy of being chosen?

 

Yes, many of them can compete with other contributors’ images that have sold.  The playing field is now even. These reworked images seem fresh to buyers because they never saw them before while they were buried in the back, but positions has been improved through judicious application of tags, phrases and captions.

My zooms and sales shot up as I fixed my images. And the premise that someone else’s images were hurt because less worthy images knocked theirs down is rubbish, or the buyers wouldn’t be buying the fixed ones. If they were bad, soon they’d slip back.

We are in direct competition with each other. The idea of bowing down to the top sellers because they have thousands and thousands of images isn’t in my makeup.

That said, I still go out of my way to offer others help and tips. That is in my makeup, too. Phillipe was great. In spite of being very successful, he still offered his expertise on a regular basis. He never seemed to think helping the competition was wrong.

Good for you, John. Productive use of your down time. 

Betty

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36 minutes ago, Betty LaRue said:

That’s exactly what I experienced, John. 

Like you, in the process of fixing broken tags/phrases,  I realized how badly I had tagged the first couple of thousand images.  Especially lacking we’re good captions.

This begs the question, did some of those images not sell because of poor tagging and captions? Are they worthy of being chosen?

 

Yes, many of them can compete with other contributors’ images that have sold.  The playing field is now even. These reworked images seem fresh to buyers because they never saw them before while they were buried in the back, but positions has been improved through judicious application of tags, phrases and captions.

My zooms and sales shot up as I fixed my images. And the premise that someone else’s images were hurt because less worthy images knocked theirs down is rubbish, or the buyers wouldn’t be buying the fixed ones. If they were bad, soon they’d slip back.

We are in direct competition with each other. The idea of bowing down to the top sellers because they have thousands and thousands of images isn’t in my makeup.

That said, I still go out of my way to offer others help and tips. That is in my makeup, too. Phillipe was great. In spite of being very successful, he still offered his expertise on a regular basis. He never seemed to think helping the competition was wrong.

Good for you, John. Productive use of your down time. 

Betty

 

It beats knitting, which just wouldn't work for me. I'm finding some real bloopers while sifting through old images. For instance, yesterday I happened upon a set of images uploaded several years ago in which I'd misspelled the name of the town. Hmmm... I wonder why none of those have never licensed? I tend not to think about competition much. Life's too short. In the long run, we pull each other up by each others' boot straps. I'm sure there is a similar saying in Oklahoman folklore. B)

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I have long taken the view that rekeywording, chasing ranking and even submitting new work was pretty well pointless if one had sunk below the median. I had even considered starting a new account. However I recently reviewed what was happening with my pseudonym results as they have been unchanged for a year with few new images. One has a markedly better performance, CTR and sales - I wrote a couple of posts on the Pseudonym thread. It seems to show that one can raise one's ranking from the doldrums (I seem to have managed it for one pseudonym at least) - I had been very sceptical that it was possible; I am prepared to admit I may have been wrong. ( I would add I am not sure that CTR is very important judging where my images appear in real world tests, not BHZ, in many cases they seem much higher than CTR/BHZ would suggest.

 

Now I have that benchmark I have started to rework the keywords on another of my poorest performing pseudonyms that has mostly recent travel images to see what happens.  I do 5-10 a day in 2-3 sessions as I have a short attention span, at least for this task. I have extended the caption, grouped my keywords into phrases and eliminated repeated tags. I seem to be ending up with 8 -10 long supertags and occasionally a few other tags. The first batch (Fri-Sunday) went live yesterday (Monday) - time will tell. I expect lower views but hopefully better CTR.

 

I also plan to submit some new work from my 2 year backlog on the basis that regular submission appears to help ranking. Aim will be at least a weeklyy submission even if it is only 5-10 images each time. Just need to finish some decorating first.

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31 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

It beats knitting, which just wouldn't work for me. I'm finding some real bloopers while sifting through old images. For instance, yesterday I happened upon a set of images uploaded several years ago in which I'd misspelled the name of the town. Hmmm... I wonder why none of those have never licensed? I tend not to think about competition much. Life's too short. In the long run, we pull each other up by each others' boot straps. I'm sure there is a similar saying in Oklahoman folklore. B)

It’s called the “Oklahoma Standard”. Recognized by all the other states in the Union after the Oklahoma City bombing who said they’d never experienced such generous and kind people.

Basically, it’s giving the shirt off your back for others. A couple of days after the bombing, a sharp, wet cold front came in. Some rescuers didn’t have warm boots and that was made known. A poor, common workman got off his shift, drove to the barriers and handed the guard the boots off his feet.  Those kinds of things went on and on.

The day of the bombing, a call for medical volunteers went out. I had previously been an Ophthalmologist’s assistant. Many victims had glass in their eyes. After the doctors worked, I knew sterile procedure and how to correctly put on a pressure eye patch bandage. I put on my whites and spent hours waiting in a hot, humid gymnasium to help. I wasn’t needed since there ended up about 30 volunteers per patient.

What was telling is how the TV stores brought in and set up televisions in the gym for us to stay in touch with news, and the bottling companies sending water, cola and gatoraid for us. For us...the several hundred volunteers waiting to help.

Betty

 

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6 minutes ago, Betty LaRue said:

It’s called the “Oklahoma Standard”. Recognized by all the other states in the Union after the Oklahoma City bombing who said they’d never experienced such generous and kind people.

Basically, it’s giving the shirt off your back for others. A couple of days after the bombing, a sharp, wet cold front came in. Some rescuers didn’t have warm boots and that was made known. A poor, common workman got off his shift, drove to the barriers and handed the guard the boots off his feet.  Those kinds of things went on and on.

The day of the bombing, a call for medical volunteers went out. I had previously been an Ophthalmologist’s assistant. Many victims had glass in their eyes. After the doctors worked, I knew sterile procedure and how to correctly put on a pressure eye patch bandage. I put on my whites and spent hours waiting in a hot, humid gymnasium to help. I wasn’t needed since there ended up about 30 volunteers per patient.

What was telling is how the TV stores brought in and set up televisions in the gym for us to stay in touch with news, and the bottling companies sending water, cola and gatoraid for us. For us...the several hundred volunteers waiting to help.

Betty

 

 

I remember the bombing. A real tragedy. Hard to believe it was over 20 years ago.

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Having done 3000 images, I still have 7000 to go for my other pseudos.  I have a vague feeling it's made a difference.  But even if I do 30 a day 5 days a week for the rest (unlikely), it will take me another year.  The returns are likely to be modest (much like submitting new stuff).  Still, right now I'm hibernating anyway, and shooting little, so I'll do as much as I can. 

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1 hour ago, Martin P Wilson said:

I have long taken the view that rekeywording, chasing ranking and even submitting new work was pretty well pointless if one had sunk below the median. I had even considered starting a new account. However I recently reviewed what was happening with my pseudonym results as they have been unchanged for a year with few new images. One has a markedly better performance, CTR and sales - I wrote a couple of posts on the Pseudonym thread. It seems to show that one can raise one's ranking from the doldrums (I seem to have managed it for one pseudonym at least) - I had been very sceptical that it was possible; I am prepared to admit I may have been wrong. ( I would add I am not sure that CTR is very important judging where my images appear in real world tests, not BHZ, in many cases they seem much higher than CTR/BHZ would suggest.

 

Now I have that benchmark I have started to rework the keywords on another of my poorest performing pseudonyms that has mostly recent travel images to see what happens.  I do 5-10 a day in 2-3 sessions as I have a short attention span, at least for this task. I have extended the caption, grouped my keywords into phrases and eliminated repeated tags. I seem to be ending up with 8 -10 long supertags and occasionally a few other tags. The first batch (Fri-Sunday) went live yesterday (Monday) - time will tell. I expect lower views but hopefully better CTR.

 

I also plan to submit some new work from my 2 year backlog on the basis that regular submission appears to help ranking. Aim will be at least a weeklyy submission even if it is only 5-10 images each time. Just need to finish some decorating first.

 

 

The other thing I did with deleting tags was to remove the more esoteric or tenuous conceptual keywords, hence the much reduced number of keywords.

 

What approach have others taken?

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