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difference between Normal alamy sale and "reportage / archival" sales


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hi guys, 

 

im currently building up mt portf, and have looked at the archival / reportage section, as i think my items depict a certain historical theme.

 

one question is though, i have already uploaded some in the normal way. and assigned RM etc to them

 

if i upload them under the archval scheme (if accepted), will this affect what rights i can assign them? eg are the archival scheme images likely to sell for much less, or can these only be royalty free or whatever.

 

 

 

thanks

 

 

 

 

 

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I have something like 5 or 6 hundred archival/reportage images on my portfolio. They are all RM. When searched, they do come with a health warning that they might not be quite up to scratch (!) as far as quality is concerned but I don't get the sense that clients are put off. They account for a good slice of sales. Some of them are scans from film stock dating back a good few years and might just struggle a little to make QC but certainly nothing to worry about at most repro sizes.

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thanks!

 

thats pretty much the answer i was looking for!

 

as my items also would number the hundreds / thousands for use in archival, and also that they would be coming from film formats, of various sizes.

 

thanks again

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The warning about the quality is a bit of a downer as really it should be enough to identify the images as reportage/archive - many of my images in these fields come from historical events or are of people now long dead - the quality is not an issue - the rarity of the image is.

 

They'd mostly pass QC especially as the size has been reduced and come from a variety of media - even glass plates. Some are scanned prints, some 35mm colourneg, trans and even old mono film scanned on a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 which produced excellent large scans. Sales are pretty good - but that warning is a bit negative.....your cars look good but you'd have to run the "No property Release" route to use them RM - and for safety I'd put Editorial Use Only in the description field.

 

Good luck....

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thanks for the comments,

 

im currently digistising a few thousand car / motoring history items, long process but hopefully it will work out in the end!

 

so you think the editorial use only is the way to go for my subject matter?

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Unless you have property releases for the cars you could have a problem in commercial usage - it is always down to the end user but legal weasels are a greedy lot and are only just really getting their heads around copyright - for safety sake I'd put that Editorial Use Only tag in the description field - others may be braver.....

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Reportage/Archival images have different size minimums - images only have to be at least 5mb - which explains the QC warning. I have some images of a historic news event, shot on ISO 400 color negative film, that could never make it pass QC due to Film Blemishes. So I cleaned them up as best I could and submitted them via the archival route. They've been some of my best sellers.

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I would still argue that a client is warned of limitations by virtue of an image being reportage/archive - the 'warning' is an unnecessary negative which could put some customers off.

 

One of my best seller originated as a glass plate !

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thanks for the comments and guidance guys,

 

i must admit, being new to film (having to learn as i go, after acquiring them), as im a digital generation lol. and also i have learnt photo "tidying up" too, it was a bit daunting having to wait for the QC nod!

 

then i saw the application of archival, which seems to fit my photo's. i acquired a few thousand car photo's but also take my own shots, so i think i'll start on the getting releases for my images from now on. obviously i would have a near impossible task getting releases for them many years after the fact.

 

so its good to know that people have had good sales from film, and that the archival system still generates interest!

 

 

 

really impressed with the helpful'ness of the contributors on here, some forums can be elitist to new posters, or people who are on the "bottom rung" of a business as i am.

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An alarm bell started to ring when I read that you had 'acquired' your film images.

 

Buying a box of transparencies does not give you the copyright on the images - it belongs to the guy who pressed the camera shutter - you would need to have the © legally assigned to you. 

 

This could be a minor problem - but equally it could present you with a whole mess of problems - the © owner might have already sold a version of an image with rights and restrictions already in place - alternatively he might have been working for someone else at the time, and they might hold the ©.

 

Tread very carefully my friend.......you would not want to cause difficulties for yourself or Alamy.

 

i must admit, being new to film (having to learn as i go, after acquiring them), as im a digital generation lol. and also i have learnt photo "tidying up" too, it was a bit daunting having to wait for the QC nod!

 

then i saw the application of archival, which seems to fit my photo's. i acquired a few thousand car photo's but also take my own shots, so i think i'll start on the getting releases for my images from now on. obviously i would have a near impossible task getting releases for them many years after the fact.

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 In particular the rally images could be problematic. It's quite likely they were published at the time.

 

Unless you have an assignment of copyright Alamy may not be the right place to sell them as the contract requires that you own the copyright or are an authorised agent of the copyright holder. If you just bought a file of trannies, full stop, you are neither.

 

Some picture libraries do sell archive images without owning the copyright- I'm thinking of all those old b/w news photos bought by the lorryload from defunct agencies- but they're not licenced on the same terms as Alamy images are. As I understand it a 'facility fee' is charged which doesn't purport to be a licence in the Alamy sense. Whatever, they no doubt have legally watertight contracts.

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