Motion Blur and QC?

[Bergie]

Hi!

 

I am worried about submitting images with motion blur for QC, both intentional and unintentional.  I've consulted the QC guide PDF, but it only lists "camera shake" or "blurred or soft image giving the impression that the camera moved when the photo was taken."  This is still unclear for me as I know there are many images on Alamy that have blur and motion and have passed QC.  What passes and what doesn't?  I break it down further:

 

Intentional Motion Blur

 

What are the QC standards for acceptable blur and motion that is intentional?  Things like sports, cyclists, cars, anything fast or in motion but the rest of the image is in focus, or if you pan the camera while shooting for a motion effect?

Unintentional Motion Blur

 

What are the QC standards for acceptable blur and motion that is unintentional?  Things like arms and hands that are blurry on a walking person for example due to a slower shutter speed, but the entire rest of the image is in focus?

 

Thanks.

[Mr Standfast]

 

If the picture is telling a story which has movement then motion blur may be part of that story. Experienced QC people will be able to make a judgement if the blur is in context or not, this is more relevent than trying to quantify the amount of blur.

 

So when doing your 100% check  if you ask yourself the question, "Is this part of the story",  and reject the picture  if it isn't you should be OK.

 

Good luck.

 

 

 

 

[Alan Beastall]

 

Bergie, here are three examples of my intentional blue effects, what I call my Monet images which is a technique of very selective focusing to represent impressionism very simular to the French painters. No problems passing Q.C.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or again, three further example of intentional blurred images from the Great Noth Run

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[John Mitchell]

1 hour ago, Alan Beastall said:

 

Bergie, here are three examples of my intentional blue effects, what I call my Monet images which is a technique of very selective focusing to represent impressionism very simular to the French painters. No problems passing Q.C.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I like your "Monet images" very much, especially the one of the woman (I think) in the garden. Just wondering, have you had any luck licensing them on Alamy?

[NYCat]

I think one of the guidelines is that the blur should be apparent in the thumbnail size so a buyer knows what they will be getting.

 

Paulette

[Niels Quist]

- and further to Paulette's comment - that at least some point or (small) area in the image should be in focus and sharp - at least my understanding.

As only a small number of the submission is checked by QC, some images may not have been looked at. So making a rule from a single pass can be dangerous.

Edited December 29, 2019 by Niels Quist

[Simon]

I sent in a deliberate motion blur - picture was on tripod everything in the background was razor sharp but the person was blurred.  It was the only QC failure I had in a looooong time. I felt so strongly that I ran it past my main ( news ) contact at Alamy, everyone that looked at the picture agreed it should have passed and it was clear that there was no camera shake .. in the interest of getting on with life I just let it go.

[Harry Harrison]

It does make me wonder how the new instant QC for '5 star' users might deal with it.

[John Mitchell]

8 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

It does make me wonder how the new instant QC for '5 star' users might deal with it.

 

That's a good point as it seems that initial checks of images might now be (?) done by some kind of automation. If so, chances are that deliberately blurred images would be flagged or failed outright. Unfortunately, there is only one way to find out...

[Harry Harrison]

1 minute ago, John Mitchell said:

there is only one way to find out...

After you!

[John Mitchell]

11 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

After you!

 

Very noble of you. 🧐

[Bill Brooks]

Alan here is my attempt at a Monet.

 

The shot is a reflection in a still pond that is flipped to read as a right side up shot. Then I did some colour correction to the reflection and boosted the saturation. There was no blurring added, the reflection in the water did that.

 

Monet is interesting because he devised new methods of painting fast outdoors to capture fleeting light and emotion. Very much influenced by photography, in trying to capture the landscape's decisive moment.

 

[Bergie]

thanks for all the input everyone, much appreciated!

[Alan Beastall]

Bill, I love it. Great image.

[TABan]

I'm 5 star and uploaded this Friday. Passed in under an hour.

 

[meanderingemu]

this was submitted as 5Stars, and went through instantly

 

[Harry Harrison]

Lots of great motion blur and impressionistic blur pictures here, interesting to see those passed by the 5-star route.  We still don't know if Alamy are testing an Artificial Intelligence (AI) method for this or just relying on  spot checks. I think that a machine-learning system could identify out-of-focus images and sideline them for human appraisal, I can't imagine it could be relied upon for the final decision though. This article describes how a business card company developed a system to identify photos of business cards taken in the field that had out-of-focus photographs on the layout in order to better help it to 'read' the text:

 

Article

 

Looks pretty complex to me so I like the quote "Using scikit-learn, it becomes ridiculously easy to train a support vector machine on our data set".

 

 

 

[MizBrown]

This passed.  I sent it in as a single submission.   It was one of those photographs that was not the typical three to five flashes on a hummingbird sufficient to freeze its wings.   Don't know if it ever will be chosen over the ones that do freeze the birds, but I was curious about this motion blur.  And it looks more like a live bird.   Violet Sabrewing Hummingbird.

[John Mitchell]

The few motion blur images that I have in my collection are pretty tame, like the ones below. None of them has licensed as far as I can remember. I'd think that with increasing concerns about having recognizable people in images, there may be more demand for these types of shots. But then maybe not... ?

 

 

 

I was a bit concerned about the one below because the blur isn't obvious at small sizes, but QC didn't seem to mind.

 

 

 

Edited January 2, 2020 by John Mitchell

[Bergie]

Thanks for the images everyone, it definitely seems like motion blur and out of focus images can definitely pass QC depending on subjective artistic intent and/or if one or more parts of the otherwise blurry image is in focus.  It certainly feels as humans are still making the QC decisions.

 

I am curious, would anyone be willing to share a motion blur or out of focus image that DID NOT pass QC for comparison?  

[AM Chang]

Few examples of motion blur images:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[spacecadet]

This has licensed. The text is sharp.

This too, though it's  less obvious.

This

I'd no idea I had so many!

And this from archive