Live News - really?!

[mickfly]

The late great Keith Morris would post murmurations of starlings every night of the week, sunsets over the pier every night of the week and other similar (news?) images... and they would always sell.
In the UK, soft news and pretty, or odd weather pictures sell as live news every day.
The picture editors decide what is news to them, we can only guess, shoot and upload.

[Matt Ashmore]

8 minutes ago, mickfly said:

The late great Keith Morris would post murmurations of starlings every night of the week, sunsets over the pier every night of the week and other similar (news?) images... and they would always sell.
In the UK, soft news and pretty, or odd weather pictures sell as live news every day.
The picture editors decide what is news to them, we can only guess, shoot and upload.

 

And Alamy regular tweet that weather is news.

https://twitter.com/AlamyNews/status/1217801453559042049?s=20

[Matt Ashmore]

On 31/01/2020 at 23:59, Chuck Nacke said:

how an average automobile accident or house fire qualifies as Live News? 

 

I think it probably depends on whether or not it's a "slow news day" or not. If a family dies in that house fire (morbid example but...) then it might well be published by the UK tabloid media if they have nothing better to fill their column inches with. If Donald Trump or Boris Johnson does something stupid on that day however, I guess the unfortunate family in the house fire doesn't get printed. I guess Alamy "Live News" is essentially a mechanism for getting half-topical/current images/stories in front of picture editors fast and the more "important" the story and unique your image, the more likely they are to run with it. And as said above, Keith Morris seemed to make a good income with pictures of starlings and orange sunsets via Alamy Live News.

[Starsphinx]

38 minutes ago, Pete Snelling said:

 

I have on occasion posted accidents and fires, The only reason is that it gives my local papers and TV sites the option to pick and choose the images they wish to use as well as saves me the hassles of haggling a price and invoicing them. I'll only post if I know they're liable to use as it's a big enough local story.

 

To be honest it is difficult to tell what will grab the national interest.  The ones that sold were on a story I felt was pretty much gone - the locals were using  stuff they scraped from Facebook during the actual event - mine were the next day cordons and I hung around to get some shots of a fire investigation dog which I intended for plain stock.  There was a touch of interest nationally using the same facebook stuff as the locals so I emailed I had the stuff did they want it - they activated my live news for it, and 10 of the shots went national.

This is why I do not get the shutting off of Live news to contributors who have made sure to use it properly.  You cannot tell in advance what local incident is going to become big news - and if Alamy dont have it because their contributor is stuck using normal upload channels both Alamy and contributor lose out.  If I had been tired I would not have bothered emailing because I expected to get told no,  I just would have uploaded to stock the following day which would have been too late (it would have taken another half day minimum to get stuff through QC)

[Chuck Nacke]

2 hours ago, Matt Ashmore said:

 

I think it probably depends on whether or not it's a "slow news day" or not. If a family dies in that house fire (morbid example but...) then it might well be published by the UK tabloid media if they have nothing better to fill their column inches with. If Donald Trump or Boris Johnson does something stupid on that day however, I guess the unfortunate family in the house fire doesn't get printed. I guess Alamy "Live News" is essentially a mechanism for getting half-topical/current images/stories in front of picture editors fast and the more "important" the story and unique your image, the more likely they are to run with it. And as said above, Keith Morris seemed to make a good income with pictures of starlings and orange sunsets via Alamy Live News.

 

2 hours ago, Starsphinx said:

To be honest it is difficult to tell what will grab the national interest.  The ones that sold were on a story I felt was pretty much gone - the locals were using  stuff they scraped from Facebook during the actual event - mine were the next day cordons and I hung around to get some shots of a fire investigation dog which I intended for plain stock.  There was a touch of interest nationally using the same facebook stuff as the locals so I emailed I had the stuff did they want it - they activated my live news for it, and 10 of the shots went national.

This is why I do not get the shutting off of Live news to contributors who have made sure to use it properly.  You cannot tell in advance what local incident is going to become big news - and if Alamy dont have it because their contributor is stuck using normal upload channels both Alamy and contributor lose out.  If I had been tired I would not have bothered emailing because I expected to get told no,  I just would have uploaded to stock the following day which would have been too late (it would have taken another half day minimum to get stuff through QC)

To all,

 

I come from a background of "International News."  There are times when an image might have a use in a national or international story, but only if it was well photographed, well processed and very well captioned and keyworded. My Opinion: Anyone who is just "throwing stuff against the wall" in the hope that it will find usage is doing a disservice.  The problem that has been created with "social media" and the internet in general is that there are too many people that think that taking a news photo is easy and they have no training or general understanding of what the media is or communications in general.  This all started with "point and shoot" cameras in the late 70's and early 80's and it has become worse with modern Digital camera's and camera phones.  Do not misunderstand what I am saying, some epic and important photos have been taken by untrained amateurs who witnessed an event or person, but those are rare.

 

Getting back to the original point, it might be a good idea for Alamy to have further sections for Live News?

 

Chuck

[Matt Ashmore]

1 hour ago, Chuck Nacke said:

 

Getting back to the original point, it might be a good idea for Alamy to have further sections for Live News?

 

 

We'll have to agree to disagree on the speculative nature of softer news images. But the suggestion of having different streams for Live News (if this is what you mean) is something that I have suggested before myself. I think most of us know when we are being a bit speculative with some of our news images ("weather news" for example) and would happily upload it to a "Soft News / Human Interest" upload channel rather than mixing it up with the same news which we know for certain is important news like images of important world events.

Edited February 3, 2020 by Matt Ashmore

[meanderingemu]

54 minutes ago, Matt Ashmore said:

 

 But the suggestion of having different streams for Live News (if this is what you mean) is something that I have suggested before myself. I think most of us know when we are being a bit speculative with some of our news images ("weather news" for example) and would happily upload it to a "Soft News / Human Interest" upload channel rather than mixing it up with the same news which we know for certain is important news like images of important world events.

 

 

but is that something the customers want?  if categories were that important your would think people would get in trouble just for the 3 existing ones, many Sports end up in News for example and are never corrected.   Even the Alamy news requirement to put "UK weather" only applies to UK.  If reporting about Weather elsewhere with same format, it gets changed by the news desk.  

[Matt Ashmore]

10 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

 

 

but is that something the customers want?  if categories were that important your would think people would get in trouble just for the 3 existing ones, many Sports end up in News for example and are never corrected.   Even the Alamy news requirement to put "UK weather" only applies to UK.  If reporting about Weather elsewhere with same format, it gets changed by the news desk.  

 

I don't think this would be so much for the customers as contributors and the Alamy news team.

With a 2-tier news upload (so-to-speak), the Alamy news desk team could decide whether or not to look at the 2nd tier stream or not based on how busy they are and what's happening in the world. If it's a slow day, they might decide to spend time looking at the 2nd tier and push some of those images to new desk editors for consideration. If it's a very busy day with 2 or 3 major headline events, they might ignore the 2nd tier altogether and just priorities the top tier.

 

Something else i didn't think to mention earlier is the one thing that Alamy Live News does is supply a certain "providence" that images on it are very recent. So pictures that appear on it of people wearing masks are today's pictures of people wearing face masks and are people genuinely worried about coronavirus rather than being some recycled images form 2 years ago.

[Starsphinx]

13 hours ago, Chuck Nacke said:

 

To all,

 

I come from a background of "International News."  There are times when an image might have a use in a national or international story, but only if it was well photographed, well processed and very well captioned and keyworded. My Opinion: Anyone who is just "throwing stuff against the wall" in the hope that it will find usage is doing a disservice.  The problem that has been created with "social media" and the internet in general is that there are too many people that think that taking a news photo is easy and they have no training or general understanding of what the media is or communications in general.  This all started with "point and shoot" cameras in the late 70's and early 80's and it has become worse with modern Digital camera's and camera phones.  Do not misunderstand what I am saying, some epic and important photos have been taken by untrained amateurs who witnessed an event or person, but those are rare.

 

Getting back to the original point, it might be a good idea for Alamy to have further sections for Live News?

 

Chuck

How many single fatality fires are there every day that do not make national news?  How many are there that do?  When taking photographs is there some magic formula I am unaware of that dictates which ones are going to make national news and which ones arent?   What do you suggest I do next time I attend such a scene?  Obviously I am able to capture process caption and keyword news photos - because I have sold - so if I upload am I "throwing stuff against the wall" in the hope that it will find usage" or am I intentionally documenting an event which may or may not be of national interest and making it available if it is?

Obviously you have far more experience but have there not been times you were sent to cover something and did not know in advance how big or important it was going to be?  Have you never found yourself doing shots while thinking "this isnt going anywhere" only to find it does?  Or taking fantastic spot on shots totally catching the moment only to have them passed over because something else broke and took up the majority of attention? 

Also what about learning?  Alamy is effectively a freelance club when it comes to news.  I am in my mid 40s and five years ago I was still getting to grips with using the camera properly with no thought as to doing any sort of news work.  Before Livenews was closed to most contributors I did upload stuff that was news - I made sure I was following all the rules on subject keywording captioning etc.  No it didnt sell.  Looking at it now I can see a hundred places to make improvments.  But I learned.  I got better.  I have now done stuff that has sold.  What does this mean for newbies coming in right now?  They may cover news stuff - but as they cannot do live news it will go ordinary stock so they will not have to check rules on captioning etc.  Their stuff is unlikely to sell as news even if wonderful because it will be 24 hours late being published and will not be pushed onto newseditors desks.  They will get better at doing stock.  They will not learn to get better at Live news - so in 10 or 20 years time where is Alamy going to be getting its live news shooters from?

There should be a way to let contribuors who follow the rules contribute livenews without having to jump through hoops - because otherwise the danger of missing borderline stories (like the fire I did) is too great, and there is no way for newbies to learn and improve.

Maybe the answer is to split news into "soft/topical" and "live" - but make it the soft/topic that is more limited to proven submitters (maybe have a box "consider for news" that can be ticked when submitting through ordinary QC) and have live news something everyone starts with - but much clearer defined rules including on subject matter - and which is withdrawn to abusers who fail to follow the rules - but not withdrawn just because their stuff has not sold.

[meanderingemu]

2 hours ago, Starsphinx said:

How many single fatality fires are there every day that do not make national news?  How many are there that do?  When taking photographs is there some magic formula I am unaware of that dictates which ones are going to make national news and which ones arent?   What do you suggest I do next time I attend such a scene?  Obviously I am able to capture process caption and keyword news photos - because I have sold - so if I upload am I "throwing stuff against the wall" in the hope that it will find usage" or am I intentionally documenting an event which may or may not be of national interest and making it available if it is?

Obviously you have far more experience but have there not been times you were sent to cover something and did not know in advance how big or important it was going to be?  Have you never found yourself doing shots while thinking "this isnt going anywhere" only to find it does?  Or taking fantastic spot on shots totally catching the moment only to have them passed over because something else broke and took up the majority of attention? 
 

 

 

I agree with what you said, however i'm not sure why National News would be a requirement for something to be Newsworthy.  So the lives of woman of Oaxaca, and the 20 femininicide in January alone are not Newsworthy because the rest of the world doesn't pay attention?   

My job as a photographer is the report the reality of what is happening, not to decide what the world will or should care about, but of course i went to a different school.

Edited February 4, 2020 by meanderingemu

[Starsphinx]

3 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

 

 

I agree with what you said, however i'm not sure why National News would be a requirement for something to be Newsworthy.  So the lives of woman of Oaxaca, and the 20 femininicide in January alone are not Newsworthy because the rest of the world doesn't pay attention?   

My job as a photographer is the report the reality of what is happening, not to decide what the world will or should care about, but of course i went to a different school.

I think to a point it will depend on whether your locals are likely to use Alamy - unfortunately I live under a Newsquest  blanket and have developed the expectation that the local news is not going to want anything it has to pay for - to the point it is trying very hard not to pay its own photographers as photographers.  Their use of stock is limited to the buying of generic full commerical stock images that they use to illustrate as many stories as possible.  So for me personally I do not bother uploading stuff I know will only be of local interest because I know there is no market.  This has obviously warped my perspective and of course if you have locals that will use agencies for news photos then it being national is not a requirement.

[MizBrown]

If I understand correctly, if I photograph something that might be of international interest here in Jinotega, Nicaragua, I get in touch (Skype, email) with Alamy news and ask if they're interested.  If not, not.  If it's the one in 2,000 year explosion of a volcano near Managua that's killed everyone closer, probably yes, but I won't have phone or internet service.  Anything less is going to depend.  Our troubles in 2018?  Most if not all the photos I saw used came from Managua or Masaya.  What happened in Jinotega wasn't unique.  If we have a freak winter and there's snow in the higher elevations (hasn't happened since 1912 or so), then that might be of interest, but Guatemala has had snow more frequently, so would anyone other than weather geeks care that Nicaragua had snow again?   Volcanic activity less than major catastrophies -- I'd have to be where the volcanos were, and those aren't in my area.   Someone else got the first eruption of Momotombo since the early part of the 20th Century.   Someone else is going to get the guy walking on a tightrope across Volcan Masaya's active crater because that's a bit of a trip to do on spec and the competition will be out in force, too.

 

 

[Chuck Nacke]

9 hours ago, Starsphinx said:

How many single fatality fires are there every day that do not make national news?  How many are there that do?  When taking photographs is there some magic formula I am unaware of that dictates which ones are going to make national news and which ones arent?   What do you suggest I do next time I attend such a scene?  Obviously I am able to capture process caption and keyword news photos - because I have sold - so if I upload am I "throwing stuff against the wall" in the hope that it will find usage" or am I intentionally documenting an event which may or may not be of national interest and making it available if it is?

Obviously you have far more experience but have there not been times you were sent to cover something and did not know in advance how big or important it was going to be?  Have you never found yourself doing shots while thinking "this isnt going anywhere" only to find it does?  Or taking fantastic spot on shots totally catching the moment only to have them passed over because something else broke and took up the majority of attention? 

Also what about learning?  Alamy is effectively a freelance club when it comes to news.  I am in my mid 40s and five years ago I was still getting to grips with using the camera properly with no thought as to doing any sort of news work.  Before Livenews was closed to most contributors I did upload stuff that was news - I made sure I was following all the rules on subject keywording captioning etc.  No it didnt sell.  Looking at it now I can see a hundred places to make improvments.  But I learned.  I got better.  I have now done stuff that has sold.  What does this mean for newbies coming in right now?  They may cover news stuff - but as they cannot do live news it will go ordinary stock so they will not have to check rules on captioning etc.  Their stuff is unlikely to sell as news even if wonderful because it will be 24 hours late being published and will not be pushed onto newseditors desks.  They will get better at doing stock.  They will not learn to get better at Live news - so in 10 or 20 years time where is Alamy going to be getting its live news shooters from?

There should be a way to let contribuors who follow the rules contribute livenews without having to jump through hoops - because otherwise the danger of missing borderline stories (like the fire I did) is too great, and there is no way for newbies to learn and improve.

Maybe the answer is to split news into "soft/topical" and "live" - but make it the soft/topic that is more limited to proven submitters (maybe have a box "consider for news" that can be ticked when submitting through ordinary QC) and have live news something everyone starts with - but much clearer defined rules including on subject matter - and which is withdrawn to abusers who fail to follow the rules - but not withdrawn just because their stuff has not sold.

I would suggest that you go back and read again "Everything that I have written on this thread," or as one has written, "It is a waste of his time (LOL)."  While I only speak for myself, I would say that Alamy is not a 'camera club.'

 

P.S. The very first pictures I had published were of my neighbor's house on fire, published in a local daily, I was 14 years old.  BUT I would NEVER upload one of those images to a "Professional, commercial photo site"  Nor call them "Live News."

 

Chuck

[Starsphinx]

13 hours ago, Chuck Nacke said:

I would suggest that you go back and read again "Everything that I have written on this thread," or as one has written, "It is a waste of his time (LOL)."  While I only speak for myself, I would say that Alamy is not a 'camera club.'

 

P.S. The very first pictures I had published were of my neighbor's house on fire, published in a local daily, I was 14 years old.  BUT I would NEVER upload one of those images to a "Professional, commercial photo site"  Nor call them "Live News."

 

Chuck

I have never said Alamy is a camera club - I presume you are suggesting that once a person has reached a standard considered to be professional they stop learning and improving?

While your 14 year old efforts of your neighbours fire may not be what you would not consider professional commercial quality perhaps you would like to explain your logic as to why they were not Live News? 

And again the proof of the pudding is in the eating - the photos I submitted sold and were national.  Whether you think they were good enough, whether Alamy think I am good enough, the customer did think they were what they wanted.

[Chuck Nacke]

2 hours ago, Starsphinx said:

I have never said Alamy is a camera club - I presume you are suggesting that once a person has reached a standard considered to be professional they stop learning and improving?

While your 14 year old efforts of your neighbours fire may not be what you would not consider professional commercial quality perhaps you would like to explain your logic as to why they were not Live News? 

And again the proof of the pudding is in the eating - the photos I submitted sold and were national.  Whether you think they were good enough, whether Alamy think I am good enough, the customer did think they were what they wanted.

First, I never said anything about the images you have on Alamy.  It is not a question of "are they good enough" and I have no idea of how you have submitted the images that you speak of?

You wrote: "Alamy is effectively a freelance club when it comes to news."  I would call that very close to calling Alamy a camera club?  For me Alamy is a library or vehicle for the licensing of images.  I have no use for clubs and I consider News Photography a profession.  PS I never wrote the you said or wrote that "Alamy is a camera club." 

 

RE the pictures of my neighbors house, They were not, nor will they ever be "national or international NEWS" and I would suggest that you or anyone who is trying to contribute NEWS images learn the difference.

 

PROOF is in the image.  It really is that simple.

 

Chuck

[Starsphinx]

2 hours ago, Chuck Nacke said:

First, I never said anything about the images you have on Alamy.  It is not a question of "are they good enough" and I have no idea of how you have submitted the images that you speak of?

You wrote: "Alamy is effectively a freelance club when it comes to news."  I would call that very close to calling Alamy a camera club?  For me Alamy is a library or vehicle for the licensing of images.  I have no use for clubs and I consider News Photography a profession.  PS I never wrote the you said or wrote that "Alamy is a camera club." 

 

RE the pictures of my neighbors house, They were not, nor will they ever be "national or international NEWS" and I would suggest that you or anyone who is trying to contribute NEWS images learn the difference.

 

PROOF is in the image.  It really is that simple.

 

Chuck

You and I must interpret "freelancer" differently.  To me a freelancer is a professional who earns their money self employed.  I do not use it to apply to serious hobbiests doing a bit on the side.  When it comes to live news Alamy does not have contracted professionals - it has a stable of self employed employed professionals who collect news and sell through them.  Newspapers will have both employed professionals and deal with freelancers direct - again professionals plying their trade self employed.  As for the word club - use it to mean gathering of people with similar intentions.  So to me Alamy live news is a gathering of self employed professional news photographers.  Different words same meaning (intended meaning - language can be a bitch)

As for the pictures of your neighbours house - just because something is not national or internation does not mean it is not Live News (I was pulled up on that by someone else - my local news provider is er awful and I do not bother with them).  And yes I do know the difference between local live news and national live news - I did have another fire last week that resulted in more dramatic footage than the ones I sold - but nobody was hurt, the biggest part of the story was a neighbour going in and waking the elderly resident and helping them out.  So it was local interest only and I did not bother uploading.     The problem is that like it or not there is a grey area - single fatality may make national news it may not.  Attempted murder may make national news it may not.  Full hazmat team response to white powder in package resulting in irritation to skin may make national news - it may not.  Now maybe with a lot more years experience a person becomes better able to tell what will and will not be picked up - but they do not get that experience if they choose to only submit things they are certain sure are going to be picked up.  As I asked before have you never attended a story  not knowing in advance if it would be picked up?  Even when you were sparkly new and just starting out? 

 

[Colblimp]

10 hours ago, Chuck Nacke said:

 

RE the pictures of my neighbors house, They were not, nor will they ever be "national or international NEWS" and I would suggest that you or anyone who is trying to contribute NEWS images learn the difference.

 

Chuck

Maybe not national, but certainly local...

[Philip Game]

On 20/08/2019 at 05:29, John Richmond said:

Entirely possible.  There are reports of wallabies living in the wild in Ashdown forest in Sussex, not a million miles from Maidstone, and there are other colonies known in England.

We may even need to ship a few back here to their native land, to replenish the populations devastated by forest fires (stranger things have happened: feral camels from Central Australia have been exported back to Saudi Arabia). 

 

In the meantime, cutesy pics of Koalas and other marsupials, in the context of the bushfire emergency across much of Australia, definitely have news value.

[Chuck Nacke]

Snowing in Moscow, RU..... Now that is NEWS  LOL

[meanderingemu]

10 minutes ago, Chuck Nacke said:

Snowing in Moscow, RU..... Now that is NEWS  LOL

 

From Alamy

 

What images can I send to Alamy Live News?

If you want to sell news photos you need to recognise what makes a good news, sport or entertainment picture: it should stop us in our tracks when flicking through our newspaper, but it is difficult to define. A news image could be a shot of a momentous event, an arresting image of a politician at an otherwise boring press conference, a celebrity in a marathon or of a beautiful sunrise. You will know it when you take it. The images all need to be of the moment and submitted to us within minutes of the event taking place.

 

Quote

 

Alamy News@AlamyNews

·

4h

Top Tip: Weather is always in the news #Alamynewstips

 

 

 

 

 

So maybe the agency is the one that doesn't fit Your values.

[Sultanpepa]

Can a composite image be live news?

 

[Matt Ashmore]

16 minutes ago, Sultanpepa said:

Can a composite image be live news?

 

 

I wouldn't have thought so.. but the individual images maybe..

[Sally]

I think it depends. Thee were composite images of wreaths on New Town doors at Christmas, for example.

[meanderingemu]

4 minutes ago, Sally said:

I think it depends. Thee were composite images of wreaths on New Town doors at Christmas, for example.

 

 

and one sold if i remember well.

 

and there has been composite of phases of Eclipses which Alamy didn't seem to remove. 

[Chuck Nacke]

12 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

 

From Alamy

 

What images can I send to Alamy Live News?

If you want to sell news photos you need to recognise what makes a good news, sport or entertainment picture: it should stop us in our tracks when flicking through our newspaper, but it is difficult to define. A news image could be a shot of a momentous event, an arresting image of a politician at an otherwise boring press conference, a celebrity in a marathon or of a beautiful sunrise. You will know it when you take it. The images all need to be of the moment and submitted to us within minutes of the event taking place.

 

 

 

 

 

So maybe the agency is the one that doesn't fit Your values.

You really don't get it or me for that matter.  I lived in Moscow for ten years

and snow in early February, unless it is truly catastrophic, is not NEWS.  And I was joking anyway.

 

Chuck

 

Just to be clear, my response was to Meanderingemu concerning snowing in Moscow, RU, not about the generalities of "what makes a Live News Photo."

Edited February 7, 2020 by Chuck Nacke
clarification