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10 hours ago, Jools Devon said:

 

Yes - I when I called to book my place they were not sure if it was running....... that was about a week before the Live news changes... I was on the waiting list, but didnt hear anything else, so assumed it had been cancelled.

<snip>

 

Julian

 

I had an email on 1st April conveying "The take up for this years seminar is low and as a consequence we have reluctantly decided to cancel and not proceed with it." I've no idea how many participants were required to have made it viable. I had originally registered an interest via email.

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And today that which we said would happen has happened.

Daily Mail https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6991977/Teenage-girl-17-murdered-home-leafy-Wiltshire-village.html  using a "google earth" photo.

Why did I not drive 15 miles yesterday to go and get some on-scene shots and upload to Alamy so Alamy could sell them to the Daily Mail?  Could it be that I do not have live news privileges?  That I am actually snowed under with other stuff at the moment which makes going through email application processes something I simply do not have time or resources to do so decided that I would not bother?

Yes, I am bloody kicking myself this morning for not going - but that is the difference that having access to instant upload makes.  I could not tell in advance that this incident would make the nationals any more than I could tell that the similar incidents I have covered and uploaded before the ban would not make the nationals.  

Oh and for the record it was not a leafy Wiltshire village it was a small town - this happened fairly close to the towns football ground where I shoot fairly often.  Later on this evening, I will probably be able to provide more background to the story as their team is in a final I am shooting - background I could have got yesterday if I had had an easy way to do something with it.

 

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On 03/05/2019 at 22:43, IanDavidson said:

 It has been suggested that Keith knew about the changes before most of us (allegedly he posted on another forum before the announcement, but I do not know if this is true.).  That would, maybe, be an explanation.  

 

There's no "suggestion", it's fact. And there's no "allegedly"  about it either, it's there for all to see. Announced 48 hours prior to any official Alamy announcement. Make what you like about it. I have my suspicions what's going on behind the scenes, particularly in light of said members failure to respond to the question previously to put him

 

Quote

 

 

 

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On 04/05/2019 at 18:48, ReeRay said:

 

There's no "suggestion", it's fact. And there's no "allegedly"  about it either, it's there for all to see. Announced 48 hours prior to any official Alamy announcement. Make what you like about it. I have my suspicions what's going on behind the scenes, particularly in light of said members failure to respond to the question previously to put him

 

 

 

I don’t think there is any big conspiracy theory.. Keith knew a day or two before us as I suspect did a few of Alamy’s other big contributors. Alamy have a track record of soliciting opinions from some of it’s more successful contributors.. when the new AIM came in, a select few knew about it and had been beta testing it before the rest of us.

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So encouraging to see the live news page this morning, where the first half dozen UK images are.......... all weather. The first one is one of Keith's.

Then there's a town crier and a bloke with a green face, some more weather and a footballer.

 

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Sold some green faces last week. Uploaded quickly and they were

published by the Sun before I left Glastonbury. Same pictures, same lovely people as last year when I sold nothing, but this year I uploaded 3 hours quicker.

 

Second guessing what will sell will always be a mystery to me..However a quick upload and published before going home is now to me "the Aberystwyth method"....

 

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Just a quick update on this from us.

 

Firstly - there is no cover-up/conspiracy here.  As previously mentioned, we took the decision to remove automatic access to the news feed to all as this past year we’ve seen a dramatic increase of imagery that isn’t suitable, either due to the content itself or from  incorrectly formatted captions. Dealing with this was taking up a considerable amount of time that would otherwise be spent pushing the best content to our Live News clients. For this reason, news access was limited to those who used news upload regularly and had made live news sales. If you didn't use it regularly or didn't make many live news sales, then access was removed. Applications are open if you lost access but want it returned. As you can imagine, demand has been high for this and we're working through the applications as quickly as possible. 

 

As this process involved tens of thousands contributors, we took the decision to only email those who had used the live news service since January 2018, as anyone not uploading since then were effectively not active. We're sorry this has not been welcomed by some of you who didn't get the email notification. 

 

We also recognise that some of you had uploaded images as live news that later had sold as secondary stock, so you were concerned that without news upload then these images would not have been available. As a result of this, as from today, if you are someone who has uploaded news imagery that has later sold as secondary stock, we’ve given you access to the archive / reportage route which means you can upload similar work for secondary sales, but it won’t end up on the news feed to be pinged to the news desks. This means you should still be able to benefit from those stock sales of "news style" imagery, even if it's not live news. This does not affect your live news application if you have already submitted one.

 

For those who don't have access to the archive / reportage route, as with Live News, applications are open and are available via your contributor dashboard.

 

Alamy

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4 minutes ago, Alamy said:

As a result of this, as from today, if you are someone who has uploaded news imagery that has later sold as secondary stock, we’ve given you access to the archive / reportage route which means you can upload similar work for secondary sales, but it won’t end up on the news feed to be pinged to the news desks. This means you should still be able to benefit from those stock sales of "news style" imagery, even if it's not live news. This does not affect your live news application if you have already submitted one.

 

 

What does this actually mean? Are these images on sale immediately? There still seems like little point pushing a picture of a beautiful sunset like I sold via Live news fairly recently... at the moment, a different agency seems like a better option.

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3 minutes ago, Matt Ashmore said:

 

What does this actually mean? Are these images on sale immediately? There still seems like little point pushing a picture of a beautiful sunset like I sold via Live news fairly recently... at the moment, a different agency seems like a better option.

 

I've got the same email. I am guessing that reportage by-passes the usual QC queue and is available immediately, but whether such images are highlighted to the news agencies in any way, shape or form,  is unclear. It would be helpful if Alamy explained just how the reportage route might function in the aftermath of Live News limitations, so that we second-class news submitters might know how best to make use of such  news images as we produce.

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Reportage/Archival

We have an additional upload route for collections of reportage or archival images which might not meet our technical standards for regular stock imagery.

  • What do we mean by reportage images?
    Photojournalistic images illustrating a story but captured under difficult circumstances and might not pass our standard QC checks. Examples include photo essays or features.
  • What do we mean by archival images?
    Images that are historically or culturally significant, examples include film stills, press archives and specialist collections.

Alamy

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6 minutes ago, Matt Ashmore said:

 

What does this actually mean? Are these images on sale immediately? There still seems like little point pushing a picture of a beautiful sunset like I sold via Live news fairly recently... at the moment, a different agency seems like a better option.

Looks like the soft/topical news access proposed somewhere earlier in this very long thread. It has the benefit of being quicker than going through qc saving a day or so and getting images to the top of the "new" search. IMHO cost's nothing may get more images sold.

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5 minutes ago, Joseph Clemson said:

 

I've got the same email. I am guessing that reportage by-passes the usual QC queue and is available immediately, but whether such images are highlighted to the news agencies in any way, shape or form,  is unclear. 

 

I'm thinking not as Alamy state:

 

22 minutes ago, Alamy said:

but it won’t end up on the news feed to be pinged to the news desks.

 

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4 minutes ago, Alamy said:

Reportage/Archival

We have an additional upload route for collections of reportage or archival images which might not meet our technical standards for regular stock imagery.

  • What do we mean by reportage images?
    Photojournalistic images illustrating a story but captured under difficult circumstances and might not pass our standard QC checks. Examples include photo essays or features.
  • What do we mean by archival images?
    Images that are historically or culturally significant, examples include film stills, press archives and specialist collections.

Alamy

What is the format of IPTC data required as it is not live news?

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3 minutes ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

Read what it says:

Plain for all to see!!!

 

I fully understand that the reportage images are not being actively  promoted to the news agencies. That being the case, the only difference I can see with reportage is that the images by-pass QC and, I assume, enter the normal library.

 

If the image I am submitting (typically a regional/local event) is time -sensitive, to the extent of being mainly of possible interest to the publishers of the next day's newspapers, then simply bypassing QC and entering the normal library is not going to be terribly helpful. What I would be hoping for is, if you like, a secondary news stream which is not actively pinged to the news agencies, but to which they can refer to if they choose to see what current secondary editorial is being submitted that day.

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1 minute ago, Joseph Clemson said:

 

I fully understand that the reportage images are not being actively  promoted to the news agencies. That being the case, the only difference I can see with reportage is that the images by-pass QC and, I assume, enter the normal library.

 

If the image I am submitting (typically a regional/local event) is time -sensitive, to the extent of being mainly of possible interest to the publishers of the next day's newspapers, then simply bypassing QC and entering the normal library is not going to be terribly helpful. What I would be hoping for is, if you like, a secondary news stream which is not actively pinged to the news agencies, but to which they can refer to if they choose to see what current secondary editorial is being submitted that day.

 

Yep.. that's pretty much my thoughts!

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37 minutes ago, Matt Ashmore said:

 

What does this actually mean? Are these images on sale immediately? There still seems like little point pushing a picture of a beautiful sunset like I sold via Live news fairly recently... at the moment, a different agency seems like a better option.

Absolutely agree. Sorry, Alamy, but this is absolutely pointless. Why would someone who has been denied access to the news feed want to attend a news event in order to upload images for archive / reportage (possibly of lower quality - bypassing QC)? I'm not going out of my way to do this and I can't for the life of me understand why anyone else would want to do so!

 

If someone is covering news, then they are more likely to seek other outlets.   If anyone is going to cover something in passing, then surely they will just upload to normal stock?

 

Am I missing something here? 

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18 minutes ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

Nobody is stopping you formatting the caption as if it was live news! Get creative so you don't reach the 150 character limit. 😉

 

reportage/archive has a 600 character limit, just like LiveNews

 

km

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For me this makes sense.

I do `a lot of live music that stuff that would not pass standard QC due to noise but that isn't of instant interest to news desks. The reportage route is perfect for that. Obviously bigger bands and festivals will be worth uploading to live news, but Level 42 playing Wickham Festival is unlikely to be worth a push unless something unusual happens.

It's the same with a couple of protests I covered recently. They were small, peaceful and were not going to get any interest from the nationals so reportage would have been perfect for them.

While I now understand what happened and why and think the end result will be a good one, I still think that it was not well communicated. Unfortunately from what I hear that is not uncommon amongst editorial photo agencies.

So for me, it's a question of a few minor changes to my workflow and just get on with it.

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I received the email as well, and I'm glad to now have archival/reportage access.  It is timely because I just prepped a couple of images yesterday based on a recent customer's search. A couple of my live news images from 2015 had been zoomed several times.  There are almost no other images in alamy's library on that topic so I decided to go back to my files and work on a couple more from that shoot.  But I was hesitant to submit them to QC because the sharpness is reduced because of the conditions at that time.  Now I have a way to submit them without worrying about QC.

 

Maria

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1 minute ago, MariaJ said:

I received the email as well, and I'm glad to now have archival/reportage access.  It is timely because I just prepped a couple of images yesterday based on a recent customer's search. A couple of my live news images from 2015 had been zoomed several times.  There are almost no other images in alamy's library on that topic so I decided to go back to my files and work on a couple more from that shoot.  But I was hesitant to submit them to QC because the sharpness is reduced because of the conditions at that time.  Now I have a way to submit them without worrying about QC.

 

Maria

I hadn’t thought about that use of this route. Good idea. 

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8 minutes ago, Bigjimh71 said:

For me this makes sense.

I do `a lot of live music that stuff that would not pass standard QC due to noise but that isn't of instant interest to news desks. The reportage route is perfect for that. Obviously bigger bands and festivals will be worth uploading to live news, but Level 42 playing Wickham Festival is unlikely to be worth a push unless something unusual happens.

It's the same with a couple of protests I covered recently. They were small, peaceful and were not going to get any interest from the nationals so reportage would have been perfect for them.

While I now understand what happened and why and think the end result will be a good one, I still think that it was not well communicated. Unfortunately from what I hear that is not uncommon amongst editorial photo agencies.

So for me, it's a question of a few minor changes to my workflow and just get on with it.

 

As soon as I saw the reportage route being opened up I remembered your previous post about focus issues and still getting a picture into the Times. Concert pictures are the definition of "captured under difficult circumstances ".  Good luck.

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2 hours ago, Alamy said:

Just a quick update on this from us.

 

Firstly - there is no cover-up/conspiracy here.  As previously mentioned, we took the decision to remove automatic access to the news feed to all as this past year we’ve seen a dramatic increase of imagery that isn’t suitable, either due to the content itself or from  incorrectly formatted captions. Dealing with this was taking up a considerable amount of time that would otherwise be spent pushing the best content to our Live News clients. For this reason, news access was limited to those who used news upload regularly and had made live news sales. If you didn't use it regularly or didn't make many live news sales, then access was removed. Applications are open if you lost access but want it returned. As you can imagine, demand has been high for this and we're working through the applications as quickly as possible. 

 

As this process involved tens of thousands contributors, we took the decision to only email those who had used the live news service since January 2018, as anyone not uploading since then were effectively not active. We're sorry this has not been welcomed by some of you who didn't get the email notification. 

 

We also recognise that some of you had uploaded images as live news that later had sold as secondary stock, so you were concerned that without news upload then these images would not have been available. As a result of this, as from today, if you are someone who has uploaded news imagery that has later sold as secondary stock, we’ve given you access to the archive / reportage route which means you can upload similar work for secondary sales, but it won’t end up on the news feed to be pinged to the news desks. This means you should still be able to benefit from those stock sales of "news style" imagery, even if it's not live news. This does not affect your live news application if you have already submitted one.

 

For those who don't have access to the archive / reportage route, as with Live News, applications are open and are available via your contributor dashboard.

 

Alamy

Yeah and for murders appearing on the front pages of national newspapers?  You know the sort of thing that should be pinged to newsdesks and which you, Alamy, would have had exclusives on,  if you had not closed live news to your photographer who lives 15 miles from it, who was informed about the incident 2 hours after it started (about 12 hours before its importance became known and the nationals started chasing it)  and who decided that as there was no live news access it was pointless chasing after local live news when there was nowhere to send it.

The lesson I have taken from this is next time I am informed on local live news I will go and chase it and I will find an agency who is not concerned I only do 3 or 4 stories a year who are prepared to take my stuff fast so next time I do not miss a big story.

 

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It’s been mentioned several times that images uploaded as Live News often go on to make sales at a later date and I assume these sales are usage that’s more like general stock rather than news that’s being published late. It should be fairly straight forward to shoot secondary news type images of things like events, weather and people doing things and then upload via archive/reportage and not have to worry about passing the regular QC for general stock. Without the time urgency for Live News uploads then it also gives us chance to edit and process the images properly too.

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2 hours ago, Alamy said:

 

We also recognise that some of you had uploaded images as live news that later had sold as secondary stock, so you were concerned that without news upload then these images would not have been available. As a result of this, as from today, if you are someone who has uploaded news imagery that has later sold as secondary stock, we’ve given you access to the archive / reportage route which means you can upload similar work for secondary sales, but it won’t end up on the news feed to be pinged to the news desks. This means you should still be able to benefit from those stock sales of "news style" imagery, even if it's not live news. This does not affect your live news application if you have already submitted one.

 

For those who don't have access to the archive / reportage route, as with Live News, applications are open and are available via your contributor dashboard.

 

Alamy

 

 

Hi Alamy

 

Should this be available now - I don't seem to have access to Reportage, or received an email -  yet I do have Live News sold as stock - N00Y31

 

(There is a local event I plan to attend this weekend that I would be able to submit via Alamy if Reportage is available and more suitable than Live News)

 

Regards

 

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7 minutes ago, AndrewP said:

It’s been mentioned several times that images uploaded as Live News often go on to make sales at a later date and I assume these sales are usage that’s more like general stock rather than news that’s being published late. It should be fairly straight forward to shoot secondary news type images of things like events, weather and people doing things and then upload via archive/reportage and not have to worry about passing the regular QC for general stock. Without the time urgency for Live News uploads then it also gives us chance to edit and process the images properly too.

 

I think whether this is useful depends on the event or images. I think it's probably not useful for many topical 'weather' shots. But if you are at a concert, a carnival or a marathon or something like that, then it's probably a good option.

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