Keith Douglas

A few weather photos in the Sun Online, 14 June 2019: TD7NPT amer ghazzal Pedestrians are hit by torrential downpours and heavy rain crossing Westminster Bridge, London TD7PAN amer ghazzal Pedestrians are hit by torrential downpours and heavy rain crossing Westminster Bridge, London TD7M6F DGDImages Flooded Old Padeswood Golf Course on the outskirts of the town Mold in Flintshire TD7M6D DGDImages Motorists travelling through flood waters on the A541 Mold to Denbigh Road near Lixwm, Flintshire TD7NW3 amer ghazzal Pedestrians are hit by torrential downpours and heavy rain crossing Westminster Bridge, London TD7NTB amer ghazzal Pedestrians are hit by torrential downpours and heavy rain crossing Westminster Bridge, London TD7M6B DGDImages Flooded business on the outskirts of the town Mold in Flintshire after the River Alyn broke its banks https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9290027/uk-weather-forecast-today-met-office-warning-rain/

7 sales for $165 gross. Below my recent averages on both. Keith

When I read Alamy's statement it makes business sense to me. They're reducing the time that they have to spend on non-productive activities (cleaning up the news feed) so that they can spend more time on getting the good images out to buyers. Whatever criteria they had used to achieve this there would be some contributors who ended up on the wrong side of the cut and were not happy. But I would argue that the objective measure they applied, i.e. have the contributors' images sold as news, is both as fair as any, and is correct from a business perspective. Yes, as a result, Alamy may miss out in the future on some news stories, but this has to be viewed against the cost of supporting a free for all where the overall quality was declining and more and more time had to be spent cleaning up the feed and finding the newsworthy images.

No, the correct response is what Alamy did "news access was limited to those who used news upload regularly and had made live news sales" Actually selling news images is the measure of success that is important to Alamy and so the criteria that they applied was the correct one. With a breaking news story 15 miles away from you (as you have told us), it's a shame that you didn't take the opportunity to get out there, get the pictures and show Alamy what you can do. Instead you spent time trying to make an issue out of your inaction and blame it on Alamy. Is that what a successful news photographer would do?

But if it's up to QC standards then just submit it as stock. I took some images at a comedy event on Sunday and uploaded an initial dozen straight away to Live News. Most of them were shot at ISO 25600. It's now 2 days later, well outside the Live News window. I have an update to the event, a report of it has appeared in the local news, and I have spent some time balancing noise reduction and sharpness in other images. I think they're pretty good and some might sneak through QC, but I'd rather not risk it. Submitting as reportage instead is a much better option, so that's what I've done.

Thanks for that find Adie

You have some good images, but you need more of them and more variety. You could also do with expanding your captions. What are the abandoned boats? What is their history? More details about location etc. You've only got 136 images which is a very small number. These cover a limited number of subjects, and I think this will further decrease the likelihood of you making sales. I don't know what the competition is like (at Alamy and elsewhere) for landscape images from where you live. Quite a lot of them don't seem specific enough to your island. Do you have scope to expand your range of images to include people, settlements, buildings, farming, vehicles, infrastructure etc. etc.?

Pretty much the same here too. They also use generic images from Google Street View rather than a picture illustrating the actual news story.

Not so. Tuesday morning, 6:35 am. I followed the police vans down the road to take the photos. There are other UK news stories too but I'm not going to do a detailed search as I'm not the one saying that there aren't any! Oh, and I was out an hour earlier to get weather pics, which is why I came across the story!

That was last week. You now need to be able to take the photo and upload it before the event happens: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-47947745 😉😊

You can get it second hand in the UK for about £7 hardback and £15 paperback. I suspect that the hardback version is from 1978, and the paperback from 1997. Well worth it though.

But that's not what you've been told at all. You've been told to stop submitting images to Live News because your images weren't selling as News. There could be two photographers who shoot similar subjects - one who achieves regular sales, the other who achieves zero sales. Who would you accept images from? Is the successful news photographer going to get a scoop every time? No Is the successful photographer going to shoot 'soft news' subjects some of the time: Yes Is the successful photographer going to sell News images every time? No The anger of some contributors has been on Alamy for implementing a plan to improve the Alamy business. Do those same contributors question their own work and ask themselves why their News images didn't sell? What steps are they taking to improve their own news images?

Have you come across the book: Pictures On A Page: Photojournalism,Graphics and Picture Editing by Harold Evans. First published in 1978, updated in 1997. "For the general reader it is a classic collection of news photographs fascinating in their own right. For the professional and the student it remains an unrivalled study of photo-journalism, a complete analysis of how photographs are taken, selected and edited for newspapers and magazines."

Yes, the grass is always greener, and the other agency is far more accommodating. Back to the real world. I had seen that local professional photographers, who I had stood next to taking shots had been successful with another agency whereas my photos with Alamy didn't get taken. Surely my images were as good as theirs? A couple of weeks later I had a sunrise news story that I submitted to this other agency as a bit of a trial, and also to Alamy. The other agency, and Alamy were both keen. The image appeared in the National Press the next day via both agencies. They were good News images - the sales say that, not me. A few months later I had another, but admittedly less compelling news story. I submitted it to the other agency. Heard nothing, not even an acknowledgement. Yes, any agency will bite your hand off if you are offering them images that will make them money. But the idea that they're going to be any different to Alamy for anything less is fantasy. However, and this comes back to the point I have made before, the important thing is to establish a track record and a history of delivery of news stories that will sell on a regular basis. That's what Alamy appear to be looking for and that's what any agency based in the South West, North East or anywhere else will be looking for too.

There's a lot of photographers taking images of the Flying Scotsman and competition is fierce. I had some success with Live News images around the time that the Flying Scotsman made its inaugural steam tour after its restoration - 25 Feb 2016. By a long way, my highest $$$ seller on Alamy from that shoot was this one - make of that what you will. Although I have also sold pictures of Flying Scotsman itself from that time, both as news and stock, and also elsewhere (mainly POD).