Archive search

[geogphotos]

It seems that there is no option for customers to search specifically for Archive images - or am I missing this?

Edited May 6, 2020 by geogphotos

[geogphotos]

It seems that I am not missing anything so I'd like to suggest that Alamy offers an Archive image option asa search filter. 

 

For example, somebody looking for images to show what a place was like in the past.

 

Contributors will have used all sorts of 'tags' but nothing consistent - so how to cut through the tens of thousands of present day images to find the ones that you want? I realise that there will be some old film images that have not gone down the Archive route but assume that most old  pictures ( pre 1980s) will be Archive. 

 

Alternatively what about a search option by date/decade?

Edited May 6, 2020 by geogphotos

[zxzoomy]

I just did a search for 'Manchester 50's' and 'Manchester archive' and it produced quite a lot of relevant items. When I tag archival I include something like '1974, 1970's 70's'. Hopefully contributors will at least include the decade currently. Extra ways of searching are great, if they're doable. I've been scanning loads of old negatives I took in 70's and 80's but have nearly run out of decent stuff. 

[geogphotos]

10 hours ago, zxzoomy said:

I just did a search for 'Manchester 50's' and 'Manchester archive' and it produced quite a lot of relevant items. When I tag archival I include something like '1974, 1970's 70's'. Hopefully contributors will at least include the decade currently. Extra ways of searching are great, if they're doable. I've been scanning loads of old negatives I took in 70's and 80's but have nearly run out of decent stuff. 

 

 

Thanks.

 

I'll have to remember to add tags such as 'vintage' to mine. But it seems hit and miss to leave it down to the contributor's tagging. I realise that some of the older images on Alamy will have got there before Archive existed but looking at the quality of some of my old film scans they would certainly fail QC these days. Equally I accept the some old film images can pass QC - just that probably most wouldn't.

 

An 'Archive' search would be do-able because they have all been identified at the upload stage. Pics of mine from a no longer accepted camera could all go into Archive and I wouldn't much mind if the old film scans went too. Or maybe offer the option to re-allocate some older pics to Archive so that they don't clutter up the main searches and drag down CTR?

Edited May 17, 2020 by geogphotos

[spacecadet]

I put my scans into a separate pseudo. Which, incidentally, outperforms my main one by a huge margin. Wish I'd taken more pictures back then.

[geogphotos]

1 hour ago, spacecadet said:

I put my scans into a separate pseudo. Which, incidentally, outperforms my main one by a huge margin. Wish I'd taken more pictures back then.

 

 

That's my reasoning.

 

Given how over saturated we are with present day images ones from the past seem an attractive option.

[M.Chapman]

On 05/05/2020 at 14:12, geogphotos said:

It seems that there is no option for customers to search specifically for Archive images - or am I missing this?

 

Customers can search by date taken using the custom date field. But if you want that to work for your images you will have to change the "Date taken" (and enter a date in format DD-MMM-YYYY) in AIM to the date when the original image was taken, and not the date the slide or print was recently digitised. Partial dates (e.g. just YYYY) don't seem to work (which is a shame as the exact date of the slide or print is usually not known).

 

Mark

Edited May 18, 2020 by M.Chapman

[spacecadet]

41 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

 

Customers can search by date taken using the custom date field. But if you want that to work for your images you will have to change the "Date taken" (and enter a date in format DD-MMM-YYYY) in AIM to the date when the original image was taken, and not the date the slide or print was recently digitised. Partial dates (e.g. just YYYY) don't seem to work.

 

Mark

I find that searches intended to find archival images tend to include a year or decade, which I put in tags and captions. But then I would find that, I suppose.

I usually have the date taken, except when I forget to change it.

Edited May 18, 2020 by spacecadet

[geogphotos]

Just coming back to this topic. The essence of the problem is perhaps that with so-called 'Archive' images we are using Caption and Tags to describe both the subject of the image and the medium and age of the image - and this is bound to lead to confusion. We don't tend do that with new images - or at least I don't add tags such as 'modern', 'new', digital photograph', '2020', '2000s', '21st century' etc

 

It might be helpful to have an optional search filter for the decade in which the photo was taken. Not sure. But I think that something more is needed, the bigger the collection gets, to help slice and dice what is on offer.