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51 minutes ago, Sally said:

That’s just not going to work. The average person, who has no aspirations to be a professional photographer will be more than happy to simply get a credit with their name in the paper.

I don't do free. I tell them the only place I want to see my name is on a check!!

 

Cheers and gone

 

Shergar

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On 25/04/2019 at 11:46, Bigjimh71 said:

I have done some stuff for Newsquest. The rumour at the time was that they got a bonus for the paper that paid the least for photography, although I have never seen any proof that this was true. They stopped asking me to cover events when I asked them to cover some of my expenses. In response to that, they just got some young lad who was willing to do it for free instead. 

There was proof available indeed.
 

Newsquest is to give £9,000 in prizes to its centres which publish the largest amount of free copy and photographs taken by readers.

Henry Faure Walker, the company's chief executive officer, has written to staff giving details of a competition which will result in a league table of newspapers and websites which can produce as many pages/stories as possible on the cheap. The "good, competitive fun", as he described it, will involve a top prize of £4,000 plus £3,000 for second place and £2,000 for coming third.

 

I was banned from my local newspaper when I questioned their 'Facebook Camera Club', which in my opinion was simply there to harvest pictures for their paper.

https://blog.mickflynnimages.com/2017/04/love-to-see-your-pictures-in-print-so.html
https://blog.mickflynnimages.com/2017/05/banned-from-my-local-newspaper.html

The editor also let me know that they really don't want to pay when I had an infringement dispute with them.


"In the highly unusual event of us purchasing a general image for online use we would not pay more than £25+VAT."

 

Edited by mickfly
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4 minutes ago, mickfly said:

There was proof available indeed.
 

Newsquest is to give £9,000 in prizes to its centres which publish the largest amount of free copy and photographs taken by readers.

Henry Faure Walker, the company's chief executive officer, has written to staff giving details of a competition which will result in a league table of newspapers and websites which can produce as many pages/stories as possible on the cheap. The "good, competitive fun", as he described it, will involve a top prize of £4,000 plus £3,000 for second place and £2,000 for coming third.

 

I was banned from my local newspaper when I questioned their 'Facebook Camera Club', which in my opinion was simply there to harvest pictures for their paper.

https://blog.mickflynnimages.com/2017/04/love-to-see-your-pictures-in-print-so.html
https://blog.mickflynnimages.com/2017/05/banned-from-my-local-newspaper.html

The editor also let me know that they really don't want to pay when I had an infringement dispute with them.


"In the highly unusual event of us purchasing a general image for online use we would not pay more than £25+VAT."

 

What cheek! 

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I quit worrying about small news papers in 1975.  I am only interested in images

to be licensed for publication, over and over again and Alamy has become my favorite

vehicle to do that.

 

I was dropped from the Live News upload and within hours and via a bit of communication

with the News Desk was approved again.  There were a few small hoops to jump through and

like a good trained Donkey I jumped through them.  As I have written many times on this

thread, "I've worked with most of the major news photo agencies over the years and Alamy

is the best I have seen."  If there is a problem it is most likely with the contributor.  The only

real concern that I have is, is Alamy really capable of distributing news photos for the highest

dollar amount?  I do not know the answer, but I am trying to see how Alamy does?

 

I will also add that Alamy's idea of uploading news images within an hour of an event is not

smart.  As an experiment on Joe Biden I photographed the event and then left to upload.  In

the process of leaving early, I missed some important images that I could have done.  The

oldest rule in "magazine photojournalism" is show up early and leave late.  I am not interested

in trying to compete with the wire services, their pictures are published for pennies on the day

of the event and then forgotten.  I am only interested in making iconic images that are licensed

over and over for decades.

 

Just my opinion,

 

Chuck Nacke

 

 

Edited by Chuck Nacke
my mistake
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11 hours ago, mickfly said:

There was proof available indeed.
 

Newsquest is to give £9,000 in prizes to its centres which publish the largest amount of free copy and photographs taken by readers.

Henry Faure Walker, the company's chief executive officer, has written to staff giving details of a competition which will result in a league table of newspapers and websites which can produce as many pages/stories as possible on the cheap. The "good, competitive fun", as he described it, will involve a top prize of £4,000 plus £3,000 for second place and £2,000 for coming third.

 

I was banned from my local newspaper when I questioned their 'Facebook Camera Club', which in my opinion was simply there to harvest pictures for their paper.

https://blog.mickflynnimages.com/2017/04/love-to-see-your-pictures-in-print-so.html
https://blog.mickflynnimages.com/2017/05/banned-from-my-local-newspaper.html

The editor also let me know that they really don't want to pay when I had an infringement dispute with them.


"In the highly unusual event of us purchasing a general image for online use we would not pay more than £25+VAT."

 

Good for you! Standing up is always right. I applaud your stand.

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8 hours ago, Chuck Nacke said:

I will also add that Alamy's idea of uploading news images within an hour of an event is not

smart.  As an experiment on Joe Biden I photographed the event and then left to upload.  In

the process of leaving early, I missed some important images that I could have done.  The

oldest rule in "magazine photojournalism" is show up early and leave late.  I am not interested

in trying to compete with the wire services, their pictures are published for pennies on the day

of the event and then forgotten.  I am only interested in making iconic images that are licensed

over and over for decades.

The idea is not wrong, but it's difficult to achieve sometimes.

 

Saying that, I was at the big Brexit protest a month ago and watched staff photographers from PA and AP. 

They probably have basic captions pre-loaded, then they transfer the images via wifi to their phones and off they go. 

I'm sure they will sit down after the event and select a few more pix, but this is how it works nowadays.

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17 minutes ago, vpics said:

The idea is not wrong, but it's difficult to achieve sometimes.

 

Saying that, I was at the big Brexit protest a month ago and watched staff photographers from PA and AP. 

They probably have basic captions pre-loaded, then they transfer the images via wifi to their phones and off they go. 

I'm sure they will sit down after the event and select a few more pix, but this is how it works nowadays.

I work alongside agency photographers all the time.  Their photos go direct to the picture desks where they are edited,  captioned and distributed immediately. I have seen a picture taken by an agency tog appear on a newspaper web page in less than two minutes.  This plays to what Chuck was saying.  

 

There is is a danger of missing important shots as Chuck and I have said before.  A good example happened to me last week.   I photographed a Downing Street cabinet meeting last week.  I uploaded from there I was packing up when a number of cabinet ministers turned up for a national security meeting.  I was the only photographer in Downing Street.  I took the shoots.  But, I then had to rush round to the Cabinet office for Labour Party politicos arrive for Brexit talks. They turned up about half an hour late.  This was an important story so I filed those and moved on to the next story.  I did not file the national security story as the hour was up.  It turns out this was the meeting that “leaked” the Huawi decision - a key news story.  I was the only one with pictures but did not file.  Swings and roundabouts I guess.

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7 hours ago, Bigjimh71 said:

Does anyone know is it shots uploaded within an hour of the event your attending finishing or is it within an hour of the shot being taken?

It's not a hard rule to be taken literally. Alamy aren't the customer remember, but the news outlets. Think about how the images might be used. For 'breaking news' then the faster you upload the greater the chance of being published, for 'picture of the day' style images time is of less importance but still a factor. 

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1 hour ago, vpics said:

The idea is not wrong, but it's difficult to achieve sometimes.

 

Saying that, I was at the big Brexit protest a month ago and watched staff photographers from PA and AP. 

They probably have basic captions pre-loaded, then they transfer the images via wifi to their phones and off they go. 

I'm sure they will sit down after the event and select a few more pix, but this is how it works nowadays.

 

I remember shooting the last Trump protest outside Blenheim Palace. At times I was shooting alongside the big agency photographers, but their speed of filing ensured their pictures were used by the national press. I see one way of combatting that is to seek out eye catching images that hopefully only you have photographed, but if the big agency images have already been used would you still get a look in? Possibly all hypo theoretical as I have no news upload via Alamy.

 

Will need to think about the June Trump state visit best approach as it will be media saturated.

Edited by sb photos
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2 hours ago, vpics said:

They probably have basic captions pre-loaded, then they transfer the images via wifi to their phones and off they go. 

 

 

 

It's not that difficult to do......pre-caption>wifi from camera to phone>sent out from phone...in  real time.

I do it almost on a daily basis with my weather pix

 

Such as this one from this morning...

 

Aberystwyth Ceredigion Wales UK, Saturday 27 April 2019  UK weather: Storm Hannah batters Aberystwyth with powerful winds gusting at over 60mph. A yellow warning for wind has been issued by the Met Office for much of the UK for today   photo © Keith Morris / Alamy Live News Stock Photo

 

Pre captioned (using Shuttersnitch) with:

Aberystwyth Ceredigion Wales UK, Saturday 27 April 2019 UK weather: Storm Hannah batters Aberystwyth with powerful winds gusting at over 60mph. A yellow warning for wind has been issued by the Met Office for much of the UK for today photo © Keith Morris / Alamy Live News

 

Sufficiently 'generic' to cover  a range of situations......

-

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Ah. As I usually shoot concerts and festivals I tend to always shoot in raw. As I am looking to expand what I do I may need to rethink that.

I'm going to be shooting a couple of protests this afternoon so will have a play around and see what I can achieve.

I've not got my live news uploads re-enabled yet so this gives me a good chance to have a play around and test out whats possible.

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8 hours ago, Bigjimh71 said:

Does anyone know is it shots uploaded within an hour of the event your attending finishing or is it within an hour of the shot being taken?

It's within 24 hours of the shots being taken.  The hour thing is just a guideline.

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8 hours ago, Bigjimh71 said:

Ah. As I usually shoot concerts and festivals I tend to always shoot in raw.

 

I shoot Raw + Jpg to two cards....and then use the in-camera raw editor to maker any adjustments needed...takes only a few seconds (or simply send the camera jpg ..)

 

The pic i posted above was shot and sent in within about 45 seconds

 

km

 

 

and this one too was filed via my phone and is running in the Sun Online as part of their Storm Hannah coverage...

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8951579/storm-hannah-leaves-homes-without-power/

 

NINTCHDBPICT0004857500561.jpg?w=960

Edited by RedSnapper
add image and URL
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2 hours ago, vpics said:

The idea is not wrong, but it's difficult to achieve sometimes.

 

Saying that, I was at the big Brexit protest a month ago and watched staff photographers from PA and AP. 

They probably have basic captions pre-loaded, then they transfer the images via wifi to their phones and off they go. 

I'm sure they will sit down after the event and select a few more pix, but this is how it works nowadays.

 

A lot of them now also attach a voice recording instead of written captions when they file through to the wire agencies. That's a nice, quick way (although not without pitfalls regarding names/spelling), but of course also then requires work on the agency side again, which isn't realistic with Alamy. The other thing is that it requires enough manpower agency-side to identify, follow and anticipate some of the less obvious, less predictable news events, especially in London, and it would require co-ordinating the available togs more on those breaking news stories that weren't in anyone's schedule at the start of the day. The larger agencies simply have that manpower.

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On 26/04/2019 at 15:36, Sally said:

This is very worrying. If live news prices have fallen so much then it simply makes it not worth the effort. I got two invoices today for which I would normally expect to get around $50 at only $14. That’s a massive reduction and makes them about the same as stock images.

Maybe that's what's behind all this. If market forces have forced the prices so low that there's no money in it for Alamy unless they can pare down the process

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12 minutes ago, Avpics said:

Maybe that's what's behind all this. If market forces have forced the prices so low that there's no money in it for Alamy unless they can pare down the process

It seems a bit of a coincidence that these lower prices have occurred just after the ‘culling’ of live news contributors, and I can’t help wondering if a whole new model of live news is upon us. When I queried the price I was told that there had not been a change of fee rates, just that live news rate can vary. Yes, they can, but similar uses over more than a year have never varied more than a few dollars, so a reduction of almost 75% doesn’t constitute a variation in my book. 

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6 hours ago, Starsphinx said:

Surely supply and demand has to come into it - are there really that many photographers from other agencies taking the same photos as are available on Live news Alamy?

 

No. At some events there can be very large numbers of photographers, especially if you have them working in teams, and at times a scrum. Recently I dug out some old B&W prints I shot in the late 70's of an orderly scrum of photographers photographing the head of a CND march about to leave Hyde Park. I only recognised one photographer and 3 in the march, Tony Benn, Ron Todd and of course Bruce Kent. There must have been 30 or more photographers, can't count them as I'm away in Bristol. It's nothing new.

 

I was photographing a smaller event in Oxford yesterday, perhaps 2000 marchers, with Peter Egan and other animal rights activists present. Even then there were other photographers and videographers there, but none I recognised, and I didn't spot any upload in the live news feed. Would likely have been different if it had took place in London. Lots of police but peaceful, no one scaling the fences around Oxford Uni labs. Wasn't worth touting my shoot elsewhere, so mine will go into Alamy stock.

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2 minutes ago, sb photos said:

 

No. At some events there can be very large numbers of photographers, especially if you have them working in teams, and at times scrum. Recently I dug out some old B&W prints I shot in the late 70's of an orderly scrum of photographers photographing the head of a CND march about to leave Hyde Park. I only recognised one photographer and 3 in the march, Tony Benn, Ron Todd and of course Bruce Kent. There must have been 30 or more photographers, can't count them as I'm away in Bristol. It's nothing new.

 

I was photographing a smaller event in Oxford yesterday, perhaps 2000 marchers, with Peter Egan and other animal rights activists present. Even then there were other photographers and videographers there, but none I recognised, and I didn't spot any upload in the live news feed. Would likely have been different if it had took place in London. Lots of police but peaceful, no one scaling the fences around Oxford Uni labs. Wasn't worth touting my shoot elsewhere, so mine will go into Alamy stock.

See this is where I cannot but help think Alamy have misjudged and got it wrong.  There is absolutely no way to tell in advance if an event like that is going to become big news or not - and surely it is better to have photos of it that don't sell than not have photos that would sell?  The misjudgement is in the way Alamy have handled this - because I know photographers who would previously have automatically sent to Alamy are now going to send elsewhere and that is to Alamys detriment.

I get the need to slim down and clean up the newsfeed - but it could have been done in a different way.  The whole"soft" and "breaking" news idea has been put forward many times - how about having it so that there are subjects which only "accepted" members can submit (weather anyone?) and include a constantly updated list of events where accredited photographers are covering and make it clear to all those no on the list that if they submit on a subject or event listed as covered they will lose privileges but allow uploading of newsworthy stuff otherwise.

Alamy backroom would then have 2 feeds - the accredited subjects and events where they know the contributors are going to be spot on and a second feed of all other news stuff so that if (when) a story suddenly develops out of nowhere (a couple of drunks passed out on a bench becomes novichok) they can immediately check the second feed and possibly find there was an Alamy contributor on scene and they have scooped every wire service in town and have photos worth a fortune.  Having contributors otherwise upload such things as stock or send it to other services is not going to help Alamy.

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25 minutes ago, Starsphinx said:

See this is where I cannot but help think Alamy have misjudged and got it wrong.  There is absolutely no way to tell in advance if an event like that is going to become big news or not - and surely it is better to have photos of it that don't sell than not have photos that would sell?  The misjudgement is in the way Alamy have handled this - because I know photographers who would previously have automatically sent to Alamy are now going to send elsewhere and that is to Alamys detriment.

I get the need to slim down and clean up the newsfeed - but it could have been done in a different way.  The whole"soft" and "breaking" news idea has been put forward many times - how about having it so that there are subjects which only "accepted" members can submit (weather anyone?) and include a constantly updated list of events where accredited photographers are covering and make it clear to all those no on the list that if they submit on a subject or event listed as covered they will lose privileges but allow uploading of newsworthy stuff otherwise.

Alamy backroom would then have 2 feeds - the accredited subjects and events where they know the contributors are going to be spot on and a second feed of all other news stuff so that if (when) a story suddenly develops out of nowhere (a couple of drunks passed out on a bench becomes novichok) they can immediately check the second feed and possibly find there was an Alamy contributor on scene and they have scooped every wire service in town and have photos worth a fortune.  Having contributors otherwise upload such things as stock or send it to other services is not going to help Alamy.

 

I've generally kept out of the right or wrongs of the live news debacle.

 

As you brought it up, I can only assume Alamy had a valid reason for the changes. Although far from perfect it could have been their best option, I doubt they would have made such changes without undertaking a realistic risk assessment or similar. Who knows, we just have to get on with life and earn a crust. Now to set off for home and yet more culling and editing.

Edited by sb photos
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10 hours ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

 

I always thought that the variation in price was due to a threshold reach (x amount of images downloaded, you get a further discount?)

In the past year I have seen $34 and $31 so it does happen

Have you seen $14? 

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