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Digital stock is a far more complex and labor intensive pursuit than what I did back in the film era for Tony Stone and others. Now with digital, there's planning which subjects to capture, the shoot itself, image editing, and tagging the snaps. 

 

Which one of these chores is the most difficult and time consuming for you. 

 

Stay safe,

Edo

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16 minutes ago, Michael Ventura said:

For me, it’s the tagging and captioning. Well at least that is the part I least enjoy and find it a real chore!

 

Me too, Michael. Catching up on that chore is what "inspired" me to post this. And I have a lot of catching up to do. poco a poco

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I quite enjoy all aspects of the image production as they involve different skills, but the part that takes me longest is the Image captioning and tagging.

 

I also have a lot more of this to do - several hundred images which have passed QC but not tagged yet....

 

Kumar

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9 minutes ago, Ed Rooney said:

 

Me too, Michael. Catching up on that chore is what "inspired" me to post this. And I have a lot of catching up to do. poco a poco

 

Thinking about, I am a visual person and writing was never my strong suit....it uses a different area of the brain, I suppose, an area that gets pretty rusty.  I do enjoy the post shoot image processing, it can be somewhat like being in a darkroom (without all the messy chemicals).  I loved the darkroom process, back in the day!

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Doc, I do my keywords after my pics pass QC too. And MV, I also enjoy post. I spent a decade doing B&W darkroom before getting into color. Never did any color darkroom. I shot chromes and did what controls were possible in the camera. 

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I detest tagging with a passion, hence why a fair few of my live news (LN) pics are now on sale with no tags.  Captions are done in a couple of minutes before I upload when I'm doing LN and I'm now trying to tag as soon as I upload.  I'm finding what to shoot rather difficult lately, from a news perspective.

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42 minutes ago, Ed Rooney said:

 

 

 

Doc, I do my keywords after my pics pass QC too. And MV, I also enjoy post. I spent a decade doing B&W darkroom before getting into color. Never did any color darkroom. I shot chromes and did what controls were possible in the camera. 

Ed - I also did B&W darkroom stuff for about 10-15 years prior to digital - had a (very) brief fling with colour darkroom work but was not worth the hassle

 

Kumar

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as I like story telling, i generally actually enjoy the captioning, and trying to tell the story in 150 characters or less.  Tagging to me is a pain, and i am way behind in reviews and updating 

 

the one part i am loving as i do totally random subjects is the ongoing research after shoots, and suddenly following totally unknown facts afterwards.

Edited by meanderingemu
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I am happy doing most of the planning, travelling (generally local within an hour or so drive),taking, processing, captioning and tagging in LR before uploading and uploading.

The thing that gets me is the long wait for images to go through QC. I know that it is my fault for slipping up too frequently and letting a bad one through.

 

Allan

 

Must try harder.

 

ITMA

 

 

Edited by Allan Bell
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I agree. 

20 minutes ago, Colblimp said:

I detest tagging with a passion, hence why a fair few of my live news (LN) pics are now on sale with no tags.  Captions are done in a couple of minutes before I upload when I'm doing LN and I'm now trying to tag as soon as I upload.  I'm finding what to shoot rather difficult lately, from a news perspective.

Before lockdown I would get 4 to 6 stories in a day in London, now I am lucky to get 2!  I tag at the point of submission but as a lot of my pics are politicians the tags are limited and easy.

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54 minutes ago, IanDavidson said:

I agree. 

Before lockdown I would get 4 to 6 stories in a day in London, now I am lucky to get 2!  I tag at the point of submission but as a lot of my pics are politicians the tags are limited and easy.

I struggle to get a story daily, although there's a few things I'm gambling on in the next few days which hopefully should yield sales.  I must admit, most of my tags are the same with a few different, dependant on the story/pics.

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I keyword during editing and I have grown to like doing the research for image descriptions, I have learnt more doing that than I did in school. Especially with travel photography, often I’ll photograph an architecturally interesting building than has no indication of what or who it is and then I track it down with internet searches. Google street view and maps has been a great development for stock photo information. So yes I enjoy all aspects of production, it’s like the gift that keeps on giving lol.

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I love to be out in the wilds, watching light chasing shadow, and shadow chasing light, across the upland landscapes of the northern counties. But now that I’m old and knackered, I’m more likely to be shooting pubs, villages and street scenes: the built environment.

 

I still enjoy downloading the pix and seeing if they measure up to what I saw when I pressed the shutter. If that enjoyment went, I’d be worried. PP is minimal, but every shot gets individual attention.

 

Tagging can get tedious, but I tell myself that this represents the difference between making regular sales… and being disappointed. Anyone who can’t be bothered to keyword properly might just as well leave their pix in a shoebox at the back of the wardrobe… ‘cos buyers won’t find them.

 

I go back and review my keywords… though never as often as I should. With nearly 25,000 pix on Alamy, I must have a lot of images which could be augmented with more tags and keywords. I’ll get around to it… some day… 

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I was going to reflexively say that the big time consumer is captioning/keywording and the internet research that goes into it. But after rethinking it, I'd say it's a toss-up between that and all the culling/post-processing that precedes it.

 

But it depends on the shoot. If it's a case of my being rushed, or in an unfamiliar place with a lot of detail, then the research and keywording definitely takes the most time. For me, the best example was being on a tour in Jerusalem. So many things to discover online, a few feet from where you were.

 

As to why it's more complicated and time-consuming than back in the day: the ascendancy of the middleman/aggregator/web purveyor has thrown a lot of these functions onto the image producer. At the same time, the greater ease and efficiency of using digital equipment has lowered the bar to entry into this business, which only reinforces control by those with the biggest piles of images to sell.

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3 minutes ago, Bill Kuta said:

I was going to reflexively say that the big time consumer is captioning/keywording and the internet research that goes into it. But after rethinking it, I'd say it's a toss-up between that and all the culling/post-processing that precedes it.

 

For me, even though culling and PP takes time, more time is often spent on research, keywording, then captions, in that order. It can be frustrating researching the contents of an image, but when it all comes together it's good. I find I absorb lots of info I'm unlikely to ever need again, but success is enjoyable.

 

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54 minutes ago, Normspics said:

I keyword during editing and I have grown to like doing the research for image descriptions, I have learnt more doing that than I did in school. Especially with travel photography, often I’ll photograph an architecturally interesting building than has no indication of what or who it is and then I track it down with internet searches. Google street view and maps has been a great development for stock photo information. So yes I enjoy all aspects of production, it’s like the gift that keeps on giving lol.

 

agree in general, it was great travelling taking in random events or people, and trying to find information at nature of.  It however made me discover that Twitter was a great source of info to find what the local march was about, what was happening etc, when i was just an observer, mainly unaffected by what i found  

 

however now that i am back in Canada, not sure this holds true anymore, and actually think i need to walk away from anything beyond "lighting upon Christmas lights" things for a while for my mental health.   

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55 minutes ago, John Morrison said:

 

I go back and review my keywords… though never as often as I should. With nearly 25,000 pix on Alamy, I must have a lot of images which could be augmented with more tags and keywords. I’ll get around to it… some day… 


I do too especially when I get a zoom it’s tempting to open up the image a take a second look at tags and descriptions 

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17 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

 

agree in general, it was great travelling taking in random events or people, and trying to find information at nature of.  It however made me discover that Twitter was a great source of info to find what the local march was about, what was happening etc, when i was just an observer, mainly unaffected by what i found  

 

however now that i am back in Canada, not sure this holds true anymore, and actually think i need to walk away from anything beyond "lighting upon Christmas lights" things for a while for my mental health.   


Never thought of Twitter thanks for the suggestion will bear that in mind. I’m just gearing up for another season of ”House Christmas Lights Exterior Nighttime Nightime” lol

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3 minutes ago, Normspics said:


Never thought of Twitter thanks for the suggestion will bear that in mind. I’m just gearing up for another season of ”House Christmas Lights Exterior Nighttime Nightime” lol

 

 

twitter is great when you walk by some random event to try and get info, a bit harder when in totally foreign language, but many times i was able to get gist of basis to then explore elsewhere.   also found some people to follow to get heads up on next thing of potential interest, which is good when you are in unknown spot for 2-3 weeks...

 

but again, you might then get into some other weird stuff, and boredom this year has really hurt me on that side....  which is why next month is lights, Ottawa features with Snow (playing on stereotypes) , and developing bird photo skills....

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Not a great lover of caption and tagging either I do sometimes find myself going over possible key words and captions in my head driving back from a shoot or just out and about. How sad is that, anybody else suffer from this affliction.🤨 

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1 minute ago, aphperspective said:

Not a great lover of caption and tagging either I do sometimes find myself going over possible key words and captions in my head driving back from a shoot or just out and about. How sad is that, anybody else suffer from this affliction.🤨 

 

I'm even worse... keywording as I press the shutter...

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14 minutes ago, Normspics said:


I do too especially when I get a zoom it’s tempting to open up the image a take a second look at tags and descriptions 

even more when i get a zoom Not on the image i was expecting, or when I don't get a zoom on image on a narrow search to see why, and if my KW affected placement- for example which i picked for supertag. 

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