Those with many non-exclusive images, are you identifying them individually or is it too much work?

[andremichel]

 

Those of you with many (but not all) non-exclusive images, are you spending the time to identify them individually or is it too much work?

 

Have you instead given up and marked the whole port as non-exclusive, resigned to the fact that you only get 40% for everything? 

 

I have 11,000 images on Alamy. From these, I estimate I have 3000 and 5000 of them on two curated libraries. There is overlap but cannot say how much. 

 

I just started trying to identify these images and I am finding it very time intensive and soul destroying. If I stay focused I can get through 100 per hour. That means I have to invest 80 man hours of intense unpaid work over the next two weeks before the new contract comes into force. 

 

Also the only way I can think of doing this, is first I mark all 11,000 images as exclusive and then one by one change to non exclusive as I identify each image in the other libraries. This mean my port's status will be inaccurate until the very end. Can anyone think of a better or more efficient way of doing this?

 

If I am struggling with this size port and only two other libraries, I wonder how others with larger ports and more libraries are coping. 

 

 

[Matt Ashmore]

I'm going through my port and individually marking photos as exclusive. But fortunately, I tended to to tick the exclusive flag more often than not when it became available meaning I have about 200 images to go through. And my collections elsewhere are small so for me it's doable. I do a few images at a time when I have chance.

 

I hope Alamy will recognize that genuine mistakes will be made and hence will not penalize individuals where they accidentally marked one or two as being exclusive to Alamy that shouldn't be.

[John Mitchell]

Less than 10% of my Alamy  images are currently with other agencies. However, they are scattered throughout my collection, so I ended up having to go through my entire portfolio one submission at a time, which was quite time-consuming. The new "Non Exclusive Alamy" filter in AIM is proving helpful in checking my images now that the initial job is done. I still have confusions about what exactly constitutes "artwork" but am doing my best to figure out what Alamy has in mind in this regard. Hopefully, Alamy will take into account the subjective nature of this process and provide any corrections to our "artwork" choices and omissions without penalizing us. 

[andremichel]

On 08/02/2019 at 14:28, Matt Ashmore said:

I hope Alamy will recognize that genuine mistakes will be made and hence will not penalize individuals where they accidentally marked one or two as being exclusive to Alamy that shouldn't be.

 

Given we have to review thousands of images in what can be an extremely brain numbing process, the occasional mistake is pretty likely. 

[andremichel]

21 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

Less than 10% of my Alamy  images are currently with other agencies. However, they are scattered throughout my collection, so I ended up having to go through my entire portfolio one submission at a time, which was quite time-consuming. 

 

How long did that take you? 

 

For you it is definitely worth doing as 90% of your images will benefit from 50% commission. For contributors where the majority are non exclusive, (especially if these are the better images accepted by curated collections), I'm not so sure. 

[Alamy]

On 08/02/2019 at 14:04, andremichel said:

 

Those of you with many (but not all) non-exclusive images, are you spending the time to identify them individually or is it too much work?

 

Have you instead given up and marked the whole port as non-exclusive, resigned to the fact that you only get 40% for everything? 

 

I have 11,000 images on Alamy. From these, I estimate I have 3000 and 5000 of them on two curated libraries. There is overlap but cannot say how much. 

 

I just started trying to identify these images and I am finding it very time intensive and soul destroying. If I stay focused I can get through 100 per hour. That means I have to invest 80 man hours of intense unpaid work over the next two weeks before the new contract comes into force. 

 

Also the only way I can think of doing this, is first I mark all 11,000 images as exclusive and then one by one change to non exclusive as I identify each image in the other libraries. This mean my port's status will be inaccurate until the very end. Can anyone think of a better or more efficient way of doing this?

 

If I am struggling with this size port and only two other libraries, I wonder how others with larger ports and more libraries are coping. 

 

 

 

Although it may be time consuming in your case, as mentioned at the meet up the other day, you should absolutely not mark anything as exclusive if it isn’t. Aside from the commission change not coming in yet, there may be sales staff in negotiations with customers on the basis that you’ve marked an image as exclusive.

 

We feel it’s reasonable to expect the situation where contributors know which of their own images they’ve placed where and in these cases the file names can be provided to us and marked exclusive / non exclusive accordingly.

 

Thanks,

James A

[John Mitchell]

1 hour ago, andremichel said:

 

How long did that take you? 

 

For you it is definitely worth doing as 90% of your images will benefit from 50% commission. For contributors where the majority are non exclusive, (especially if these are the better images accepted by curated collections), I'm not so sure. 

 

It didn't take as long as I thought it would. I spread the job out over a period of several days and didn't keep track of the time spent. I usually worked on it when I didn't have anything better to do. I can certainly understand that for those with very large collections and many images spread around to different agencies, the task could become a real nightmare and perhaps not worth the effort. 

 

P.S. Something that took me a lot longer was deleting almost 3000 images one at a time from a photo-request website that appears to have died. Guess I could have asked them to do the deletion, but I didn't trust that it would ever happen at this point. 

[Niels Quist]

When going through your images also consider the question of artworks, which cannot always be exclusive to Alamy - read this thread, f.inst.:

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/10931-artwork-context-and-exclusivity/

 

 

[losdemas]

On 2/8/2019 at 14:04, andremichel said:

 

Those of you with many (but not all) non-exclusive images, are you spending the time to identify them individually or is it too much work?

 

Have you instead given up and marked the whole port as non-exclusive, resigned to the fact that you only get 40% for everything? 

 

I have 11,000 images on Alamy. From these, I estimate I have 3000 and 5000 of them on two curated libraries. There is overlap but cannot say how much. 

 

I just started trying to identify these images and I am finding it very time intensive and soul destroying. If I stay focused I can get through 100 per hour. That means I have to invest 80 man hours of intense unpaid work over the next two weeks before the new contract comes into force. 

 

Also the only way I can think of doing this, is first I mark all 11,000 images as exclusive and then one by one change to non exclusive as I identify each image in the other libraries. This mean my port's status will be inaccurate until the very end. Can anyone think of a better or more efficient way of doing this?

 

If I am struggling with this size port and only two other libraries, I wonder how others with larger ports and more libraries are coping. 

 

 

 

Personal opinion - especially given Alamy's post in this thread - just not worth the hassle.

[Niels Quist]

29 minutes ago, losdemas said:

 

Personal opinion - especially given Alamy's post in this thread - just not worth the hassle.

 

No, probably correct if the task gets complicated. I had only a very limited number at one other site - and I simply deleted all the images there in December. Then searched for art, artwork, statues, etc. in the AIM and judged whether the found images could be exclusive on Alamy.

The two different filter options (exclusive and non-exclusive) helped in a final check.

 

If I in future want to upload images elsewhere the extra work will be limited.

 

Niels

 

[John Mitchell]

15 minutes ago, Niels Quist said:

 

No, probably correct if the task gets complicated. I had only a very limited number at one other site - and I simply deleted all the images there. Then searched for art, artwork, statues, etc. in the AIM and judged whether the found images could be exclusive on Alamy.

The two different filter options (exclusive and non-exclusive) helped in a final check.

 

If I in future want to upload images elsewhere the extra work will be limited.

 

Niels

 

 

 

Just wondering, when you say "statues", do you mean only "sculptures" of the artistic variety or monuments ( e.g. statues of famous people in parks, etc.) as well?

[Niels Quist]

1 minute ago, John Mitchell said:

 

 

Just wondering, when you say "statues", do you mean only "sculptures" (3D art) of the artistic variety or monuments ( e.g statues of famous people in parks, etc.) as well?

 

Yes, I actually included these in non-exclusive. If I am wrong it will be easy to change. But I judged these to belong to the exceptions. Of course, also considering the rule of thirds and  context.

 

I also have a number of runic stones -  and some isolated - I had to exclude from exclusivity (I asked Alamy).

 

Niels

[John Mitchell]

12 minutes ago, Niels Quist said:

 

Yes, I actually included these in non-exclusive. If I am wrong it will be easy to change. But I judged these to belong to the exceptions. Of course, also considering the rule of thirds and  context.

 

I also have a number of runic stones -  and some isolated - I had to exclude from exclusivity (I asked Alamy).

 

Niels

 

But how will you know if you're wrong? You might end up losing revenue for no reason.

 

OMG. Ancient Viking runic stones as well! Does this mean that "artwork" includes all archaeological and historical artifacts? I can see all this getting very problematic down the road.

 

Alamy's expectations still need additional clarification IMO.

[Niels Quist]

4 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

But how will you know if you're wrong? You might end up losing revenue for no reason.

 

OMG. Ancient Viking runic stones as well! I can see all this getting very problematic down the road.

 

Alamy's expectations still need additional clarification IMO.

 

A short extract of question and reply from Alamy:

 

Hi Alamy contributor service,

 

I saw the rule of statues not measuring more than a third of the image to qualify as “only on Alamy” – as  a rule-of-thumb.

 

What about runic stones -  Like these f.inst?:

 

And from the reply from Alamy Contributor service:

 

Hi Niels

 

The same rule would apply to these as it does to statues and other artworks, if the images are in context they can be marked as exclusive.

 

[John Mitchell]

4 minutes ago, Niels Quist said:

 

A short extract of question and reply from Alamy:

 

Hi Alamy contributor service,

 

I saw the rule of statues not measuring more than a third of the image to qualify as “only on Alamy” – as  a rule-of-thumb.

 

What about runic stones -  Like these f.inst?:

 

And from the reply from Alamy Contributor service:

 

Hi Niels

 

The same rule would apply to these as it does to statues and other artworks, if the images are in context they can be marked as exclusive.

 

 

So it sounds as if the definition of "artwork" might also include close-ups of ancient archaeological and historical artifacts, etc. in museums.

 

Where does the line get drawn, I wonder. This could start getting ridiculous...

 

[Niels Quist]

7 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

So it sounds as if the definition of "artwork" might also include close-ups of ancient archaeological and historical artifacts, etc. in museums.

 

Where does the line get drawn, I wonder. This could start getting ridiculous...

 

 

Yes, it could.

 

So I stopped at a sensible point and will let any future directions decide if I take further action.

 

Please let me know if you get any wiser.

[John Mitchell]

3 minutes ago, Niels Quist said:

 

Yes, it could.

 

So I stopped at a sensible point and will let future any directions decide if I take further action.

 

I've e-mailed Alamy a couple of times with questions about what qualifies as "artwork" and so far have gotten very general/vague  answers.

 

I guess it's time to get back to them with detailed questions about specific images and subjects as you have done. Thanks for sharing.

[Niels Quist]

1 minute ago, John Mitchell said:

 

I've e-mailed Alamy a couple of times with questions about what qualifies as "artwork" and so far have gotten very general/vague  answers.

 

I guess it's time to get back to them with detailed questions about specific images and subjects as you have done. Thanks for sharing.

 

Of course,  we are stuck in this together.

 

Would like to hear your results. If anything would be more suitable in an e-mail for some reason,  my profile contains the URL for my website with contact information.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[John Mitchell]

21 minutes ago, Niels Quist said:

 

Of course,  we are stuck in this together.

 

Would like to hear your results. If anything would be more suitable in an e-mail for some reason,  my profile contains the URL for my website with contact information.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, we're all in the same leaky boat. I'm putting an e-mail together for Alamy with questions about specific images/subjects, and I'll post the answer(s) here.

[Sally]

So, what, for example, about a stained glass window that fills an image?

[wiskerke]

32 minutes ago, Sally said:

So, what, for example, about a stained glass window that fills an image?

 

Why not look it up on Google images and some of the competing stock sites: if the other images are all the same, you have your answer. If they're all quite different, you have your answer too.

 

wim

[John Mitchell]

5 hours ago, Sally said:

So, what, for example, about a stained glass window that fills an image?

 

Stained glass windows are so similar to paintings and murals that I assume Alamy would not want them marked as exclusive unless they are in context.

 

But colour me confused.

[Sally]

7 hours ago, wiskerke said:

 

Why not look it up on Google images and some of the competing stock sites: if the other images are all the same, you have your answer. If they're all quite different, you have your answer too.

 

wim

Cheers. I only have a couple of these. One is from a well visited church. There is one other image on a competitors stock site which it gets confused with in a search, though the quality is not the same, but there is clearly the potential that someone else could come along and take a similar photo The others are from a small church no one else has or is likely to take a photo in, but could do!

[spacecadet]

I'll repeat this as it seems not to have got through.

Exclusivity of representation is not the same as exclusivity of content. The contract change is about the former. Contributors will have to form their own opinion because Alamy's statements have been confusing, but as far as I'm concerned the content of the image has no bearing on exclusivity, with the sole exception of flat copies of works of art whose copyright has expired.

If someone takes a similar photograph to mine this has nothing to do with the exclusivity of representation of my images.

BTW roll on default exclusive. I've had some images up for a few days non-exclusive because I forgot to click the box.

[Sally]

44 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

I'll repeat this as it seems not to have got through.

Exclusivity of representation is not the same as exclusivity of content. The contract change is about the former. Contributors will have to form their own opinion because Alamy's statements have been confusing, but as far as I'm concerned the content of the image has no bearing on exclusivity, with the sole exception of flat copies of works of art whose copyright has expired.

If someone takes a similar photograph to mine this has nothing to do with the exclusivity of representation of my images.

BTW roll on default exclusive. I've had some images up for a few days non-exclusive because I forgot to click the box.

Cheers, that makes a lot more sense. I can’t anticipate whether someone is going to stand in the same spot as me at any time in the future and take a photography which closely resembles mine. However, I can know whether I have put any of my photos on a different stock site. The previously suggested interpretation would be a minefield of confusion and greyness. I’ll not worry, then, about the few images I have of artworks or stained glass windows.