Captions are provided by our contributors.

[NYCat]

This is new. It appears on the sales (or zoom or preview) page. A good idea, I guess. Some people are, unfortunately, very inaccurate and/or incomplete with their captions. It might be an even better idea to at least let us give them heads up when we see particularly poor captions.

 

Paulette

Edited March 23, 2022 by NYCat
Nobody seems to know what the official name is of the page that you get to when you click on a thumbnail.

[wiskerke]

???

Sales history?

What does it look like?

 

wim

[Robert M Estall]

I have some sympathy for those struggling with English as a second (or third) language doing captions and tags, but there are still a lot of contributors who really don't get how vital it is. On the other hand, I do notice the occasional tog who writes a short essay. Doing excessive tags seems pointless, but there are those who are determined to turn that bar green

 

[wiskerke]

Ah I found it. It's underneath a caption on every zoom page:

Captions are provided by our contributors.

 

wim

Edited March 23, 2022 by wiskerke

[Martin L]

Or if I was being cynical, distancing themselves further if there is a dispute

[meanderingemu]

1 hour ago, Martin L said:

Or if I was being cynical, distancing themselves further if there is a dispute

In fairness I would say " setting expectations"

[Rebecca Ore]

Not sure it's anything that cynical -- just saying that the captions shown are provided by the photographers.

[John Mitchell]

2 hours ago, wiskerke said:

Ah I found it. It's underneath a caption on every zoom page:

Captions are provided by our contributors.

 

wim

 

I still can't find it. What's a "zoom page"?

 

Just found it. Probably a smart thing to do. There are a lot of inaccurate captions out there.

 

 

Edited March 23, 2022 by John Mitchell

[NYCat]

4 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

I still can't find it. What's a "zoom page"?

 

Just found it.

 

 

 

I added "zoom page" because "sales page" wasn't doing it. What should I call it????? Preview page was another possible choice. I'll add it.

 

Paulette

[spacecadet]

15 minutes ago, NYCat said:

 

I added "zoom page" because "sales page" wasn't doing it. What should I call it????? Preview page was another possible choice. I'll add it.

 

Paulette

Have to admit I call it the sales page as well.

[John Mitchell]

1 hour ago, NYCat said:

 

I added "zoom page" because "sales page" wasn't doing it. What should I call it????? Preview page was another possible choice. I'll add it.

 

Paulette

 

Those descriptions work. I missed the new addition at first because of the light lettering.

[Chris Burrows]

It does seem to me that Alamy does have quite a few incorrectly captioned pictures and perhaps they have had some complaints.  I tend to specialise in garden plants and over the years have noticed quite a few on the site ( and occasionally published in magazines ) with the wrong names.  For example search for Lilium regale and mixed in you will find several Asiatic and Oriental lilies some white others different colours, Easter lilies, "Triumphator" lilies, Hemerocallis, Fritilaria, Cardiocrinum, Crinum, and even a Tulip.

[Michael Ventura]

Very early in my career, I captioned a photo I took of dune grass with animal prints in the sand, I wrote that they were fox prints (with very little research) and it was published in a magazine, with my caption.  Well some of their readers knew better and they got letters.  I got a call asking me how I came to call them fox paw prints.  I said I asked a park ranger and he said that they could be fox prints and I went with it.   The experts said they were from a raccoon.  I have been much more careful ever since.

Edited March 23, 2022 by Michael Ventura

[Avpics]

5 minutes ago, Chris Burrows said:

It does seem to me that Alamy does have quite a few incorrectly captioned pictures.....

I sometimes search serial numbers of aircraft - letters and numbers -  to see whether it's worth uploading my images of same and they'll sometimes return images with captions that are total gobbledegook. Example 2CRYC4N, and that contributor's million plus images many in foreign languages.

[Betty LaRue]

30 minutes ago, Michael Ventura said:

Very early in my career, I captioned a photo I took of dune grass with animal prints in the sand, I wrote that they were fox prints (with very little research) and it was published in a magazine, with my caption.  Well some of their readers knew better and they got letters.  I got a call asking me how I came to call them fox paw prints.  I said I asked a park ranger and he said that they could be fox prints and I went with it.   The experts said they were from a raccoon.  I have been much more careful ever since.

Bless you. We do all learn from an embarrassing experience. I have mine and I ain’t tellin’.

[John Mitchell]

51 minutes ago, Michael Ventura said:

Very early in my career, I captioned a photo I took of dune grass with animal prints in the sand, I wrote that they were fox prints (with very little research) and it was published in a magazine, with my caption.  Well some of their readers knew better and they got letters.  I got a call asking me how I came to call them fox paw prints.  I said I asked a park ranger and he said that they could be fox prints and I went with it.   The experts said they were from a raccoon.  I have been much more careful ever since.

 

Back when I was doing a lot of travel writing, I sold a feature on a local bird sanctuary to a newspaper in Washington state. In one of my photo captions, I mistakenly called a crane a heron. The photo was published with my article, and the newspaper got all kinds of letters from irate bird-lovers. The editor was not very happy with me. Every so often, I find errors in my Alamy captions. It pays to go back and check them. 🔎

[DJ Myford]

There are a lot of incorrectly identified electronic components too. Encapsulated transformers are not solid state relays, and capacitors are not transistors. And that's just from the first pages of two searches.

[sb photos]

40 minutes ago, DJ Myford said:

There are a lot of incorrectly identified electronic components too. Encapsulated transformers are not solid state relays, and capacitors are not transistors. And that's just from the first pages of two searches.

 

I have seen similar too. Another area with many incorrect captions and tags is mobile phone / cell phone towers where the contributor can't be sure if the towers antenna's are 4G or 5G so they apply tags for both.

[Chuck Nacke]

I spend more time researching my caption information then I spend on retouching and spotting an scan.

In the "old days" I had stacks of reference books, now with Google it is not difficult.  

 

I am appalled with the captions that I see.  There is too much emphasis on speed and not enough emphasis

on accuracy, our world in 2022...

 

Chuck

[sooth]

I'd like to see a  disclaimer on the detail pages of its alamy.es and alamyimages.fr sites that the captions have been auto translated. they already have the "captions are provided by our contributors" disclaimer translated into the native language, but no auto translation disclaimer.

 

captions containing factual place names, addresses, proper names, mercilessly auto translated into fictional places, and persons.

[IanDavidson]

I have a couple of takes on this and yes, I have incorrectly captioned photographs.  I was recently talking to a veteran news photographer.  He told me that the standard of staff on picture desks has fallen over the past few years. They do not have the education or current affairs knowledge to spot obvious errors.  This is compounded by big agency togs who speak the caption as a voice note that then goes to another country for the photograph to be captioned before being published.  
 

secondly the world is both more complex and litigious.  I am most careful with crime scenes and court cases.  If you don’t use the correct wording you can be guilty of both slander and contempt of court.  I suspect that only a few photographers have had training on these issues.  
 

I do not publish photographs unless I am sure of the identity of the individual.  However, under time pressure mistakes will be made andAlamy we’re right to add the caveat to our photographs.

[Joseph Clemson]

The implication of putting 'Captions are provided by our contributors' is that purchasers use them 'as is' at their own risk. If Alamy have reached the point where they have to put such a warning on their images, is it not time they took action to clean up their collection? They may not have the resources to devote to such a task, but it could be crowdsourced. A facility to allow other contributors to highlight inaccurate captions and trigger an automatic suspension of such images until corrected might shake up a few errant contributors. Vindictive highlighting of such images could be prevented by suspending the right of a contributor to identify incorrect  captions if they persistently get it wrong.

 

I know Alamy won't do this, but they really ought to.

[spacecadet]

12 hours ago, Avpics said:

 Example 2CRYC4N, and that contributor's million plus images many in foreign languages.

That's out-and-out insulting to those of us who spend time and money captioning properly. Shameful.

The only consolation is that they are unlikely to appear in searches, let alone license. But that won't stop PAlamy trading on the numbers.

Edited March 24, 2022 by spacecadet

[geogphotos]

The statement is accurate but it provides zero reassurance that the captions are accurate or that Alamy has any system to check on them. 

 

We are all bound to make accidental mistakes but there is no straightforward way of informing each other. A forum Private Message option would be something. Or an online means to 'Like/Unlike' captions to flag up problems for scrutiny by Alamy staff.

 

The other thing is that some of the newer 'community' suppliers are much worse than most diligent individual contributors. 

 

And as mentioned above the PD scrapers are just taking the Mickey. 

 

So, this is a true statement but it raises many questions. 

Edited March 24, 2022 by geogphotos

[geogphotos]

Alamy could provide an additional general statement about the quality of captions from the individual contributor?

 

Edited March 24, 2022 by geogphotos