I am absolutely furious

[Steve F]

25 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

making tons of money

 

who's that then?

[Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg]

will you veterans bloody get off me new online mate, Phillip;

he will come thru this QC newbie sucker punch, he will;

he's learnin' fast how to duck & dodge;  💪  💪  💪 

and be better than ever on the other side;

[Marianne]

The only QC fail I've had in roughly the past decade was of the Churchill Downs racetrack. With a 42mp camera, you could distinctly see the mix of light colored sand and black dirt on the track. It failed for "noise"  Taken at ISO 100 on a beautiful sunny day. It was incredibly annoying and I'm sure at the time I bemoaned the failure, but I removed it and resubmitted the rest from Louisville again, which included a batch taken at night at ISO 2500. They passed, have sold the ISO 2500 images here. The racetrack image, uploaded elsewhere, has done well because I composed it to have a lot of copy space and to give you the feeling of being right there on the track itself. 

 

In fact, sales of both the night images and racetrack are relatively brisk this time of year with the run up to the Kentucky Derby. For images that are more likely to sell due to an annual event (the Derby is run in early May), those images need to be online months before the event (particularly for magazines, which usually  go to bed 60 days before release). I took them in January 2019 originally and uploaded them shortly thereafter. They tend to sell best in February and March, though for websites they could sell closer to May (I'm discussing sales here and elsewhere. With average prices being lower these days, I upload to a few sites, not just here). 

 

I had a lot of frustrating QC failures when I started in 2008. I came here and learned from many experienced photographers, some of whom are still active today. I had only read about stock photography on the internet and was eager to learn as much as I could. Now, with nearly 15 years' experience, I still turn to this forum for advice. Ignoring the offer of advice is the OP's loss. 

 

[Brian Yarvin]

Jeff, there's nothing to worry about Phillip-wise. He seems to be learning the ropes faster than his mind can sense it. While I doubt he will ever post in Pirate, he'll make it.

[Brian Yarvin]

Jeff, there's nothing to worry about Phillip-wise. He seems to be learning the ropes faster than his mind can sense it. While I doubt he will ever post in Pirate, he'll make it.

Edited April 24, 2023 by Brian Yarvin
Double post

[Phil]

4 hours ago, Steve F said:

 

Alamy QC is not checking for the artistic merits or subject matter (other than glamour and illegal images) or how hard the shot was to take - it is purely the technical elements,

 

++1

 

Being a pretty picture or better than another does not help pass QC

 

[Betty LaRue]

I find sometimes it’s best to not post something or fire off an email to someone while I’m furious. Give it a day, think on it a bit, first.
Phillip, I failed so many times when I first joined that I gave up submitting for a long time. And that was in the days of 6 mp cameras, whose images we had to upsize to around 48mb. Think about what faults an image now, unneeded to upsize, might have upon mega-enlarging. We actually can downsize to 17mb now to make a borderline soft image appear sharp enough.

Plus failures then caused us to be unable to upload again for…forum? Was it 3 or 6 weeks? Seemed forever & for awhile I had to submit on CDs sent from the U.S. to the UK. If the images passed, it still was a 10 day minimum after mailing one off before I got a pass or fail. The penalty time started when you got the fail notice.

That I’m still here is somewhat of a miracle. One has to grow a thick skin, and never fall so in love with your image(s) that you are blinded to faults. I made that mistake with more than a few one-of-a-kind images with slight faults that could never be shot over. And Photoshop did not have the magical ability to fix noise, CA & other faults LR &PS have now. So I got a lot of FAIL. QC didn’t care about content, just technical perfection.

Betty
 

 

[Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg]

2 hours ago, Brian Yarvin said:

there's nothing to worry about...

oh Brian my longtime old-time online time buddy-budster,

now I'm wondering if its still possible to submit huge

quantities of JPGs via shipped external hard drive &

whether QC reserves the right to gut punch it...?
you know, my very first submission in 2004 was

that way, 5600+ (TIFs back then).....  🤪=== 🤪=== 🤪

Is this a newbie QC loophole...one ponders.

A way to jump right into weekly or daily sales...

[Brian Yarvin]

Jeff, in 2004 we were both young and handsome. Not anymore. 

[gvallee]

11 hours ago, wiskerke said:

There are 6,707 images of bush fires in Australia on Alamy and some are really good.

While some only depict a camper in the bush with a camp fire of course. That cannot be avoided.

(We recognise a certain Toyota Coaster Motorhome here 😁)

 

Oh yes it can. ah ah! If the correct spelling is used, 'bushfire' in one word, my trusty Hughie is not there. Simples!

As for 'campfire', I have both spellings in tags, just in case it gets misspelled... I just made it one word in the caption. 😁

 

[wiskerke]

32 minutes ago, gvallee said:

 

Oh yes it can. ah ah! If the correct spelling is used, 'bushfire' in one word, my trusty Hughie is not there. Simples!

As for 'campfire', I have both spellings in tags, just in case it gets misspelled... I just made it one word in the caption. 😁

 

 

Not a whole lot of searches for bush fire. Indeed quite a bit more for bushfire. I have one image with fire and Australia as keywords, and I did not have bushfire nor bush fire as keywords.

You'll see some more fire keywords when you do a search for %Australia%fire% and %fire%Australia%.

Now where's that sucking eggs emoji.

 

wim

[Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg]

6 hours ago, Brian Yarvin said:

in 2004 we were both young and handsome. Not anymore.

Brother Brian I asked

Our Mother about this

Mother said we were

never not ugly.

Edited April 25, 2023 by Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg

[gvallee]

2 hours ago, wiskerke said:

 

Not a whole lot of searches for bush fire. Indeed quite a bit more for bushfire. I have one image with fire and Australia as keywords, and I did not have bushfire nor bush fire as keywords.

You'll see some more fire keywords when you do a search for %Australia%fire% and %fire%Australia%.

Now where's that sucking eggs emoji.

 

wim

 

Thank you Wim, will do. Have a greenie.

[Cal]

Having a QC fail doesn't mean the end of the world. In fact I think if you never fail QC you are either very lucky or aren't pushing your luck enough, potentially risking not uploading saleable images for fear of being QC failed. In the past I have uploaded photos which I believe are saleable but maybe borderline on the technicals, often as single uploads, to see what happens. It's a risk worth taking IMO and after a while you get a feel for what each agency tolerates. Some are extremely stringent on noise (I've had ISO 200 photos taken on a good camera in broad daylight failed) whereas others appear to evaluate the merits of the photo as a whole.

[Steve F]

33 minutes ago, Cal said:

Having a QC fail doesn't mean the end of the world. In fact I think if you never fail QC you are either very lucky or aren't pushing your luck enough, potentially risking not uploading saleable images for fear of being QC failed. In the past I have uploaded photos which I believe are saleable but maybe borderline on the technicals, often as single uploads, to see what happens. It's a risk worth taking IMO and after a while you get a feel for what each agency tolerates. Some are extremely stringent on noise (I've had ISO 200 photos taken on a good camera in broad daylight failed) whereas others appear to evaluate the merits of the photo as a whole.

 

Agree it's not the end of the world, learn from it. I don't think it's so difficult to pass QC if you're aware of the failure reasons (and this not not aimed at you, more for anyone new to Alamy). Main ones would be camera shake, blur on a fast moving subject (where it's not deliberate blur you want) and noise. Easy enough to avoid camera shake with lower aperture, higher ISO or stabilising yourself or the camera. Fast subject again, higher ISO or shutter speed. Most modern cameras deal with noise quite well, as does LR and PS. Take plenty of images if you're in difficult to shoot situations, hopefully a few are keepers.

[nicepix4u]

On 24/04/2023 at 13:10, Steve F said:

"Q. Why do you reject my whole submission if you find a problem with one of my images?
A. We receive over 100,000 images a day so it’s simply not possible for us to check every image. We check a small sample of your images and if all images in that sample are ok then we’ll pass the whole submission. If we find one failure then all images awaiting QC will fail.

We take the view that every image you submit should meet our QC standards so when we look at a random sample we expect it to represent the quality of all images submitted. Our top tip is to check all images at 100% (actual pixels) before you submit."

https://www.alamy.com/contributor/faqs/quality-control/?section=4

So i send you 200 images you check 2 and reject then all? I also have quite a lot of times rejections because of noise, i use the best possible equipment (nikon Z9 70-200 2.8) but if there is no light inside the venue then there will be noise. i

[Steve F]

2 minutes ago, nicepix4u said:

So i send you 200 images you check 2 and reject then all? I also have quite a lot of times rejections because of noise, i use the best possible equipment (nikon Z9 70-200 2.8) but if there is no light inside the venue then there will be noise. i

 

1. I'm not Alamy. 

2. Does Alamy sell similar pictures to your ones that get rejected? And do you see much noise in them? Otherwise, you could potentially have a look at Topaz denoise.

[Jill Morgan]

35 minutes ago, nicepix4u said:

So i send you 200 images you check 2 and reject then all? I also have quite a lot of times rejections because of noise, i use the best possible equipment (nikon Z9 70-200 2.8) but if there is no light inside the venue then there will be noise. i

 

I see almost all your images are through news, covering events.  I forget if news uploads are subject to QC after the are put into the general stock images.  Been a long time since I did any news images. Alamy will tolerate some grain, but colour noise is not usually tolerated.

 

Jill

[Allan Bell]

On 25/04/2023 at 11:44, Cal said:

Having a QC fail doesn't mean the end of the world. In fact I think if you never fail QC you are either very lucky or aren't pushing your luck enough, potentially risking not uploading saleable images for fear of being QC failed. In the past I have uploaded photos which I believe are saleable but maybe borderline on the technicals, often as single uploads, to see what happens. It's a risk worth taking IMO and after a while you get a feel for what each agency tolerates. Some are extremely stringent on noise (I've had ISO 200 photos taken on a good camera in broad daylight failed) whereas others appear to evaluate the merits of the photo as a whole.

 

Thank heavens for that otherwise I would have been the responsible element back in 2009.

 

Allan

 

[Rebecca Ore]

5 hours ago, nicepix4u said:

So i send you 200 images you check 2 and reject then all? I also have quite a lot of times rejections because of noise, i use the best possible equipment (nikon Z9 70-200 2.8) but if there is no light inside the venue then there will be noise. i

 

New very good noise reduction in Adobe products these days.   I've resubmitted at least one picture that was rejected for noise, then reprocessed.   DxO's most recent releases also have great noise reduction options.

[Phil Robinson]

(deleted - changed my mind, what's the point)

Edited June 5, 2023 by Phil Robinson

[Chuck Nacke]

On 24/04/2023 at 14:26, Brian Yarvin said:

Jeff, in 2004 we were both young and handsome. Not anymore. 

Hey Brian what about me?

 

Hey all it is sort of entertaining to see a little spark on the forum......

 

I was going to say something to the OP about the door and the way out, but I am old and mellow....

 

Chuck

[Ace]

4 hours ago, Chuck Nacke said:

Hey Brian what about me?

 

Hey all it is sort of entertaining to see a little spark on the forum......

 

I was going to say something to the OP about the door and the way out, but I am old and mellow....

 

Chuck

Have a green one on me Chuck 😎

[Brian Yarvin]

Chuck, in 2004, I was spending much of my leisure time on boards like this one and Jeff was there too. Had you been there alongside us, you would have gotten a nod. 

 

I suspect that in the hierarchy of stock photographer cool, you would have been at the top in 2004. Commercial stock shooters were always that the bottom of the cool scale until we all vanished from the scene. 

 

It's a very different business/subculture now and I doubt it will be long before Phillip will have the whole thing down. We old-timers should salute him.

Edited June 6, 2023 by Brian Yarvin
Improving my prose

[Chuck Nacke]

20 hours ago, Ace said:

Have a green one on me Chuck 😎

Thanks Ace.

Chuck