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Ultimate Collection


Stephen D

Question

Can anyone explain the "hand selected" choice of images for the Ultimate Collection.

As I specialise in images of the Cotswolds I idly did a search for images of the Cotswolds in the Ultimate Collection following the advice -  "If you’re fed up with run-of-the-mill search results, try hand-selected images like no other, sourced by creative experts".

The result was underwhelming. Six of them frankly could be anywhere and one isn't even of the Cotswolds at all.

I'm really not sure how Alamy imagine that such a selection of images will excite a picture researcher looking for the best Cotswold images.

Please try it at https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/cotswolds.html?collectiontype=ultimate&sortBy=creative

 

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37 minutes ago, Brian Yarvin said:

Mark, most of the picture buyers I've known would have been able to easily decode the choices without looking at the words describing them. Alamy is making it clear that it's speaking directly to them and in a language that's specifically for them. Seeing this is something that I actually find encouraging. It means that Alamy is promoting itself to a broad range of markets and in a way that's meaningful to the people who are doing the spending. 

That's reassuring to hear - thanks.

 

38 minutes ago, Brian Yarvin said:

I for one get it and appreciate his effort.

 

1 hour ago, M.Chapman said:

James, thanks for taking time to give an insight into some of the thinking behind the new Website front end and how it works with your existing customer base.

Mark

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15 minutes ago, Martin L said:

how we, as contributors, can annotate our images effectively

 

I thought James had been clear that we should continue to accurately caption and keyword as previously, and there's a lot of guidance on that. 

 

I think everyone is getting too worried about Alamy exploring new clients / marketing strategies. I also see that as beneficial. A company can be very successful for a long time doing something well, but consumers and markets change (Kodak anyone?) Change or die! (too much change can also be bad, but that's another story)

Edited by Steve F
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6 minutes ago, Steve F said:

 

I thought James had been clear that we should continue to accurately caption and keyword as previously, and there's a lot of guidance on that. 

 

I think everyone is getting too worried about Alamy exploring new clients / marketing strategies. I also see that as beneficial. A company can be very successful for a long time doing something well, but consumers and markets change (Kodak anyone?) Change or die! (too much change can also be bad, but that's another story)

If it's clear I would like your help then on the 'Optional' tab?

What constitutes 'recognisable' property for example. This to me is still unclear and as James advised 'complex' but is important in relation to the new categories.

Correct captioning and keywording is a given, it's the extra fluff that is still confused.

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3 minutes ago, Martin L said:

If it's clear I would like your help then on the 'Optional' tab?

What constitutes 'recognisable' property for example. This to me is still unclear and as James advised 'complex' but is important in relation to the new categories.

Correct captioning and keywording is a given, it's the extra fluff that is still confused.

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/16140-just-realized-when-i-should-use-for-editorial-use-only/#comment-327786

 

I'm sticking with the pragmatic line for property - if a company or owner wouldn't be able to recognise it, I mark as no property. I would assume this widens the licensing possibilities for an image.

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33 minutes ago, Steve F said:

I thought James had been clear that we should continue to accurately caption and keyword as previously

Are you therefore confident that you understand why a proportion of your images are in Vital, and similarly why the bulk of the remainder are in Uncut? Can you see which metadata rules are governing this? To me it's not entirely clear and yet I think it's a reasonable question to ask and so it's a pity that so far there is no explanation for Paulette or Jean-Francois for their 'mystery' images that they posted, I hope it will be explained to them at a later date. Perhaps you don't see it as relevant to your sales and indeed it may not be.

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8 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Are you therefore confident that you understand why a proportion of your images are in Vital, and similarly why the bulk of the remainder are in Uncut? Can you see which metadata rules are governing this? To me it's not entirely clear and yet I think it's a reasonable question to ask and so it's a pity that so far there is no explanation for Paulette or Jean-Francois for their 'mystery' images that they posted, I hope it will be explained to them at a later date. Perhaps you don't see it as relevant to your sales and indeed it may not be.

 

Maybe I'm not getting excited about it because it's Friday night 🙃

I don't know..., everyone's images still appear under 'ALL' = which is where the vast majority of searches still occur. A few images also appear in a new marketing line Alamy are trying out - even Alamy won't know how it's going to work out yet. Que sera sera. Not to say we won't potentially need to change our workflow at some point, but I don't see anything to worry about at the moment.

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5 minutes ago, Steve F said:

I don't see anything to worry about at the moment.

No I don't see anything to worry about either, my images are unlikely to directly appeal to these new markets I think so it hardly matters which are in Vital and which are in Uncut. It's just that I seem to remember that you were pleased that the changes to the new Creative collections coincided with an uptick in your sales so I was wondering if you thought that might be more than a coincidence and that you might be a beneficiary of how these new Collections work, perhaps because you were actively targeting them. None of my business though obviously.

 

I must admit that I am interested in what determines whether wildlife, plants, flowers & generic pictures of food ingredients go into either Vital or Uncut for no particularly obvious reason given that they must surely not be marked as Property and certainly don't contain People but it looks as if I'll have to wait for an answer to that. Rules are rules, but I like to know them. I am wondering if it is because the contributor hasn't attended to the Model & Property fields in Optional but that remains to be seen.

 

It's Friday night, I'm not anticipating a reply!

 

 

 

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6 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

It's Friday night, I'm not anticipating a reply!

 

 

I normally play squash, but I've injured my foot, so I'm enjoying a bitter at home (and keywording)!

 

6 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

It's just that I seem to remember that you were pleased that the changes to the new Creative collections coincided with an uptick in your sales so I was wondering if you thought that might be more than a coincidence

 

It wasn't that, I was trying to say that I hadn't seen any negative impact on sales, but rather a continual improvement - but only as a result of my portfolio getting bigger I believe.

 

I'm not targeting them, but I am thinking of doing more lifestyle shots moving forwards.

Edited by Steve F
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5 hours ago, Alamy said:

 

When I say "lifestyle" I'm referring to images containing people (from ALL backgrounds) doing things - this is the sense of what "lifestyle" means as a subject within stock photography. It's not about a literal definition of the word, more in how it relates to a stock category. 

 

We absolutely do not assume lifestyle is mostly about the ethnic groups of the UK, far from it.

 

Best

 

James A

 

James, thank you for the clarification of the meaning of lifestyle. I always had a dilemma 'is leisure = lifestyle?'.

For example, my image of a cruise ship T0CCWT. Because there are no close people, should I delete 'lifestyle'?

 

Thank you in advance.

 

Edited by gvallee
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1 hour ago, gvallee said:

 

James, thank you for the clarification of the meaning of lifestyle. I always had a dilemma 'is leisure = lifestyle?'.

For example, my image of a cruise ship T0CCWT. Because there are no close people, should I delete 'lifestyle'?

 

Thank you in advance.

 

I may have done mine all wrong, Gen, but I would probably have listed it in transportation, maybe wrongly! I think if you see people, even from a distance on a cruise ship it would be lifestyle. But the categories have often been confusing other than food, animals and plants.

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3 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

Are you therefore confident that you understand why a proportion of your images are in Vital, and similarly why the bulk of the remainder are in Uncut? Can you see which metadata rules are governing this? To me it's not entirely clear and yet I think it's a reasonable question to ask and so it's a pity that so far there is no explanation for Paulette or Jean-Francois for their 'mystery' images that they posted, I hope it will be explained to them at a later date. Perhaps you don't see it as relevant to your sales and indeed it may not be.

 

I trust James and I'm sure I will get an answer when there has been time to investigate. Since my images were appearing in Vital or Uncut without it making sense to me I had assumed that either someone was choosing Vital or some kind of AI was choosing. When James said it was ONLY the metadata about property and people I knew something wasn't right. I tried to give examples of very similar images that appeared in different collections. Presumably they will tell us the results here and if they don't I will post here.

 

Paulette

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11 minutes ago, Betty LaRue said:

I may have done mine all wrong, Gen, but I would probably have listed it in transportation, maybe wrongly! I think if you see people, even from a distance on a cruise ship it would be lifestyle. But the categories have often been confusing other than food, animals and plants.

 

Thank you for the heads up Betty, I have now added 'transport, transportation'.

With this shot, my target market is the cruise business, leisure, travel, etc. 

 

I'm not overly worried about categories in the optional screen if that's what you mean. I used to be meticulous about that screen but I've become slack with the drop in fees. 

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27 minutes ago, Betty LaRue said:

I may have done mine all wrong, Gen, but I would probably have listed it in transportation, maybe wrongly! I think if you see people, even from a distance on a cruise ship it would be lifestyle. But the categories have often been confusing other than food, animals and plants.

 

I had thought lifestyle was people doing recreational thing, not work things.  If choosing that as a category and having released people and property would qualify things for Vital, then that makes the most sense, but I didn't know if Alamy is using the type categories yet in searches.   I have one photo that a search for "lifestyle" pops up with that being a keyword.  People with no releases,so it doesn't appear in Vital.   The other lifestyle search result is gamers in St. Louis, which does have lifestyle as a keyword and a category, but since this photo has property and people, but no releases, it also doesn't show up in Vital.

 

Unreleased people won't show up in Vital.   Possibly adding lifestyle to photos with people for whom one has releases would put photos in the Vital category.   I'm removing that keyword from the photo of a man and his daughters.

Edited by Rebecca Ore
correction.
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9 minutes ago, Rebecca Ore said:

 

I had thought lifestyle was people doing recreational thing, not work things.  If choosing that as a category and having released people and property would qualify things for Vital, then that makes the most sense, but I didn't know if Alamy is using the type categories yet in searches.   I have one photo that a search for "lifestyle" pops up without that either being a category or a keyword.  People with no releases,so it doesn't appear in Vital.   The other lifestyle search result is gamers in St. Louis, which does have lifestyle as a keyword and a category, but since this photo has property and people, but no releases, it doesn't show up in Vital.

 

Unreleased people won't show up in Vital.  

 

Categories in the optional screen are only used by the Sales team when a customer has asked for a manual search. 

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1 hour ago, meanderingemu said:

 

as of now.  as we are now seeing with other "Optional Information" we can't predict how they will be used tomorrow in some algorithm 

 

Exactly. It's been frustrating that new categories have been added after reviewing my whole portfolio. There was a limited choice to start with, with some images not fitting anywhere. For some I chose the closest fitting category. Then new categories appeared. With 24k pix or so, I am unlikely to go through them again.

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On 18/11/2022 at 15:19, Alamy said:

Regarding "editorial" - this is "editorial" more in the sense of a news definition, or something very specifically articulated as for editorial use only. It's not "editorial" as in just "non-commercial". Again, this is based from expectations from what that customer profile expects. General stock buyers who want editorial (non-commercial) imagery search in ALL. 

Hi James,

 

So wouldn't it be better to rename the tab as "News" (instead of Editorial) because at the moment many of the images that Alamy hosts that are suitable for Editorial use are hidden when the customer selects the "Editorial" tab and the images that are shown are mainly those submitted via Live News (+PA media) route with others where contributors have marked them as "Editorial only" to prevent commercial use.

 

Mark

Edited by M.Chapman
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On 20/11/2022 at 08:27, M.Chapman said:

Hi James,

 

So wouldn't it be better to rename the tab as "News" (instead of Editorial) because at the moment many of the images that Alamy hosts that are suitable for Editorial use are hidden when the customer selects the "Editorial" tab and the images that are shown are mainly those submitted via Live News (+PA media) route with others where contributors have marked them as "Editorial only" to prevent commercial use.

 

Mark

 

Not necessarily, because when a stock customer needs images for a non-commercial use they usually don't want News, so they would typically search in All anyway.

 

Many customers who buy "News" are actually interested in "News / Sport / Entertainment (NSE)" but refer to it collectively as "Editorial", so would be looking for that Editorial search option.

 

Now, if we find (via data analysis) that the tab being named "Editorial" in it's current form is not working as we would like, we could and would change it after doing some A/B testing to find a suitable alternative.

 

James A

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2 hours ago, Alamy said:

 

Not necessarily, because when a stock customer needs images for a non-commercial use they usually don't want News, so they would typically search in All anyway.

 

Many customers who buy "News" are actually interested in "News / Sport / Entertainment (NSE)" but refer to it collectively as "Editorial", so would be looking for that Editorial search option.

 

Now, if we find (via data analysis) that the tab being named "Editorial" in it's current form is not working as we would like, we could and would change it after doing some A/B testing to find a suitable alternative.

 

James A

 

 

thanks, So we should make sure that images that customers who buy "News" would be interested find themselves in "Editorial" categories, and vice-versa? 

Edited by meanderingemu
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On 19/11/2022 at 00:31, NYCat said:

 

I trust James and I'm sure I will get an answer when there has been time to investigate. Since my images were appearing in Vital or Uncut without it making sense to me I had assumed that either someone was choosing Vital or some kind of AI was choosing. When James said it was ONLY the metadata about property and people I knew something wasn't right. I tried to give examples of very similar images that appeared in different collections. Presumably they will tell us the results here and if they don't I will post here.

 

Paulette

 

Not forgotten about this, just testing a couple of scenarios and will confirm back. :) 

 

James A

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26 minutes ago, Alamy said:

 

Not forgotten about this, just testing a couple of scenarios and will confirm back. :) 

 

James A

 

Thank you, James. Busy getting ready for Thanksgiving here. Best wishes to all.

 

Paulette

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4 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

I seldom choose the "Lifestyle" category

I think you can forget about the lifestyle category but I've noticed that 'lifestyle' is often used as a keyword in the images that appear in blog posts etc. I suspect the influence of professional keyworders who have a different perspective, or at least that's what I remember from attending a short course for a morning way back when.

Edited by Harry Harrison
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