imageplotter

Ditto. My trust is lost. For the first few years, all my images were exclusive to Alamy, all my news images were exclusive, too. Foolish. It has been a learning curve, and I will never trust Alamy again.

It says they're NU, but I'm not buying that for a minute. Getting even more cheesed off with alamy now.

Yep, me too.

Hi Ian, if it's any consolation, I've also had lots of those Metro sales (not via alamy but that other agency, starting with R) with the same complete caption printed, occasionally also with add-on restrictions, and always stating 'mandatory caption'. Sometimes they've even inserted the heading at the front (i.e. politicians in Westminster/Downing Street/whatever). Seems to be a thing they do when in a hurry. I'm not keen on it either, but there's not much we can do. They don't engage in any spell-checking either, defo a mistake when it comes to my terrible captioning skills, haha. Luckily it's only the bargain-basement pic value online version where this seems to happen. Perhaps this is automated content-generation, human interaction (or any form of add-on journalism) entirely optional. Quite Orwellian.

Ditto, this dropped in yesterday: Country: Worldwide Usage: Editorial Media: Editorial website Industry sector: Travel & tourism Image Size: Any size Start: 31 January 2019 End: 31 January 2024 NU Editorial website and app multiple use, in perpetuity. $1.23 And no, I don't care if I get a whole load of "don't post the value, it'll let buyers know how low they can go". I no longer give two hoots, frankly. We're already there. This is Black Friday, Monday-Sunday, 365 days a year. Welcome to the quality agency that is Alamy. Personally, I've given up on them a long time ago.

There is a difference between posting and constant bragging, John. You know that as well as I do.

If one brags, one tends to have a desperate need to do so to flatter one's own over-inflated ego.

I'm not a fan of phone filing, I quite like to have a slightly larger screen to check for sharpness and do at least basic adjustments, I'd rather send off pics I'm happy with. I know I won't ever be able to compete with the wire agencies anyway as far as time is concerned, because some of their togs can rely on the back end doing some of the captioning/basic image adjustments for them. But I'm aware that's just my personal preference and yes, it slows me down and has disadvantages. C'est la vie. It's relative though, my laptop has slowed down considerably in the last 12 months and needs replacing asap. But I have absolutely no desire of getting into that segment of breaking news/major event/accident/red carpet type images where time and elbows are the only factors. Mental note - sit down and work out which pics are exclusive (travel stock). Not looking forward to this....Arrrrrgggghhhh

Lawrenson that sounds like a good idea re. IPTC field. I send separate frames, too (apart from the odd unintended one that slips through when photo mechanic plays up), but they can look very similar to the eye, so having it in the data may be the best way forward. Although it would mean one more thing to do in the workflow and rush to get them into ftp. But definitely preferable to having to go into AIM and checking that window, when you might well be on the go again as soon as the ftp has finished (or during if filing direct from camera/phone). Also, not sure if I'm the only one with that bug, but AIM doesn't function properly on my phone, so I tend to not go to AIM when out and about (unless there is time and I'm on the laptop/pad), I just have a quick check if they've hit the feed. I quite like that other agencies send a brief confirmation mail when they've received the images, but understand that this may be difficult for Alamy due to much lower resources on the desk. But in an ideal world, if they were to implement that sort of confirmation system, then additional info like exclusivity could also be confirmed that way. Or perhaps news contributors could be asked if they want to sign an 'exclusive frames unless otherwise stated' clause (voluntary) in their contract - that would get round the problem for those who are happy to do so. It would mean only ticking that box/notifying the desk if images are not exclusive.

Completely agree. And sadly, I do not agree with the simplistic view to 'make great images and you call the shots'. If only. Boy are there a lot of e***ng crappy images coming up on the front page of many a search, often intentionally keyworded with unrelated stuff, and often from large dinosaur contributors/agencies. All hail to the few, who still earn a penny or two.

Thanks for the response, that is all fair enough. And as I said, it isn't criticism of the news team. But it doesn't explain why there are now quite a few contributors joining directly into the news image route without previous other images, and when submitted images on the first upload do not appear to conform with QC standards for either news or stock. There are a good few other examples of contributors who have joined that way. So sadly, the response does little to to convince me that there isn't a drive from senior management to just procure any sort of images, no matter what. I find that incredibly sad.

I rarely go into DS, too crowded for me, to hard to get a 'different' shot, and the wire agencies too fast. But I'll definitely say hello if I see you on the Green/elsewhere in Westminster. I'm the blonde chatty one, can't miss me, haha.

One or two of their London togs sadly also display the same characteristics nowadays.

and a Dreamies dispenser

...I'm not sure I'd pass that one.