imageplotter

Hm. Confused now. So what that tells me, as a contributor, is don't bother sending news images on the weekend, we're not too interested and hence have reduced staff. Because...? News doesn't happen on the weekends? There is more and more imagery flooding into the news feed, from more and more countries and challenging markets such as China, which, I am sure, makes it very challenging in return for the team on the news desk to sift through and identify what is actual news, deal with a plenitude of languages and agency v individuals etc., all appreciated. But at the end of the day the message I read as a contributor is still the same...you may have just spent 5 hours in the cold ruining your expensive equipment to shoot something but it's the weekend and we're not staffed. Sadly, I'm getting more and more disillusioned with this, and the direction alamy is taking. I can't even bare to think of the number of hours, days, weeks I've spent shooting, editing, freezing, getting wet, buying equipment, spending cash on getting to/fro. My last sale this month, my worst month for a while, was for the illuminating sum of $3.52 gross. Flat rate bulk discount, yay. An ex news image that was used once before, just after the 48hr news period, of course, so sold for a pittance and then sold again for $3.52. That makes my share in £ ....I won't even go there. And sure, KM will come back time and time again on this and tell us all how it's so worth it and how much can be made. Sure. If you happend to find a tiny niche about 10 years ago and send it a gazillion versions of the same image day in, day out. No thanks. Bitter much, me? Yes. Bothered much any more, no. To clarify, I have every admiration for alamy staffers, both on the news desk and in stock. They try their best, they are friendly and helpful and responsive. And I'm sure they all work very hard in an industry that is fast changing and is a poor shadow of its former self. They do not take decisions on staffing levels nor do they set the priorities and direction of a company. Over and out for a while, not putting any more effort into this.

Thanks Bryan!

Ok, I'm giving up now. Waited for 2 hours now to correct those captions. Alas. Don't think I'm going to bother with filing of news images today either.

...or so we thought.

Same here. Grmpf, was trying to correct a couple of captions on a news upload. All was still well last night at around 10pm.

Had an odd tech glitch this morning when addding supertags. 2 similar shots, one with 8 one with 10 supertags, clicked on both to then add the 2 supertags from pic 1 to pic 2. It allowed me to click them, but the supertag count kept on 8, allowing me to then add further supertags, without the count updating. Rather weird, not had that before.

Thanks Steve!

I used to have terrible back and shoulder pain. Thought it was from the photo backpack, which is around 9kg (not great as I'm only 5'5'' and reasonably slim) including laptop, 2 bodies, lenses, speedlight, etc., plus a trolley with lights when I do portraiture. Went to an excellent osteopath for over a year, helped a lot and it turned out the pain was actually caused by my 20+ years of tennis several times a week, wear and tear and tiny probs with certain muscles/fibre around muscles. The osteppath, apart from excellent treatment, came up with some great gentle repetitive exercises to work on those specific problem areas.Ii still go but no longer weekly (too pricey to be sustainable over several years, sadly), but I can only recommend it!

Hmm...I think someone overslept. It was specifically the public news interface I was talking about, and shortly afterwards, some of the above were rectified. As I said, I know and appreciate they put more emphasis on actually sending out news images to potential clients, and in such a competitive environment few pic editors are likely to browse the web interface. But still - it's a public site, it can be seen by everyone and as such it is a store front (of which, incidentally, I had to identify quite a few to get into the forum just now... they're after me, I'm sure...there's a knock on the door now...help!) Hence the store front should be kept tidy, imho, if you want to be a John Lewis, rather than a Poundland. Looks a lot better this morning, though.

...on the news desk? Is it broken/technical issues? Totally appreciate they are stretched and also that pic sets getting send out directly to clients take priority over any sorting on the web interface, but since yesterday late afternoon/eve, nobody appears to have sorted the news feed. as of 10.53 am/now, there are pics with headings in German, pics with watermarks left in, pics that were re-uploaded with correct heading but the previous set is still there, pics that need to be pushed together, and I don't think anything new has appeared on the feed in the last hour or so which seems strange....hmm. As I said, completely appreciate it is a lot of work and yes it's the weekend, but this doesn't really look professional and is pretty disheartening for many of those who've bothered filing. My 5p.

You nearly got two, I was close to giving away my first ever red to ya, despite respecting your views and comments on here. Usually. That comment was abysmal. But then I thought I'd see your ladies college and raise you a bunch of old anoraks who hang out on a stock photography forum. Even Stevens.

Cheers Wim! I think I used that one before and hadn't saved the web address, many thanks for the link! Ps. Sadly not going back to December though. That is the problem, some of the newspaper images, and esp live news ones, are reported way after they appeared. I think the longest I had was a news pic that was in the Times, reported 7 months after usage.

Does anyone happen to be able to check Guardian and Independent Dec 2thrd/25th by any chance? I have no access and had no word back from Alamy whether it was news usage or not (appreciate they have technical probs in the UK at the moment). Or can you recommend a consolidator archival site that is good for searching print versions of the main UK papers? Sorry bit off-topic here, but would really appreciate some advice, so I can do better checking in future, seems like it's really worth doing one's own searches for print use (am doing the online usesearches, which are easier of course) in addition. Learning curve. Many thanks for any tips!!

Yes I had that with other pics, and that's fair enough in those cases. But their reply was just that the client used it some time in that month and that they couldn't time it, which sounds strange, why put 1st-2nd December then, when the image was shot on Dec 23rd? With previous news images where they were used just beyond the 48hrs, it did state a later on the spreadsheet quite clearly. Confusing. Not heard back again after the initial query. Hmm.

Thank you Sally, that is helpful to know. I found it quite funny when I saw it this morning. Will ask them! Let's hope it was used as a news image.