Incorrectly labelled photo

[Nigel Sawyer]

Hi all

 

My first query on this forum...

 

When searching for images using the terms "Moths AND Ecuador" I keep coming across shots of butterflies and other insects that really should not be tagged with the incorrect tag of "Moth".  Today I came across a shot of a Robberfly with prey but it was described as "Assassin Bug with fly prey".   It is obviously a Robberfly but has been incorrectly labelled/ tagged by the photographer.  Such inaccuracies reflect badly on Alamy and all those of us who put our images into Alamy.

 

Does Alamy have any means of QA/QC on such tagging (I doubt that given the "described by photographer" get out message)?  Or is there anyway of contacting the photographer to ask them to correct their error?  I am not blaming anyone for being incorrect but there should be a mechanism for correcting such errors and I was guilty of one myself up to this week by labelling my UK "Large Skipper" photos as Ochlodes venatus which it is in all my (old) books.  The name was changed in 2000 as I found out recently and therefore I had to change the latin name on all my shots to the now correct Ochlodes sylvanus

 

Nigel Sawyer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[VbFolly]

Alamy don't routinely check tags or do any QC on them as far as I'm aware. There's no way to contact the photographer either. The only thing you can do is email Alamy about it, and see if they do anything.

[John Morrison]

Something wrong, you say?

 

There must be millions of images in the Alamy collection with incorrect captions or inappropriate tags: the predictable result of photographers doing the job themselves...

[Allan Bell]

Ditto.

 

Allan

 

[Jill Morgan]

Don't get me on my teepee and wigwam rant.

 

Jill

[Michael Ventura]

7 minutes ago, Jill Morgan said:

Don't get me on my teepee and wigwam rant.

 

Jill

Do this mean you are too tense or is it two tents? 😅

 

Yes, these badly annotated and captioned photos is super annoying and bad for the business!

[Mr Standfast]

21 minutes ago, Michael Ventura said:

Do this mean you are too tense or is it two tents? 😅

 

Yes, these badly annotated and captioned photos is super annoying and bad for the business!

 

😄

[Mr Standfast]

Plenty of solo Spitfire pictures with the tag Jet.  🙃

[Mr Standfast]

On 26/07/2023 at 19:17, Nigel Sawyer said:

Hi all

 

My first query on this forum...

 

When searching for images using the terms "Moths AND Ecuador" I keep coming across shots of butterflies and other insects that really should not be tagged with the incorrect tag of "Moth".  Today I came across a shot of a Robberfly with prey but it was described as "Assassin Bug with fly prey".   It is obviously a Robberfly but has been incorrectly labelled/ tagged by the photographer.  Such inaccuracies reflect badly on Alamy and all those of us who put our images into Alamy.

 

Does Alamy have any means of QA/QC on such tagging (I doubt that given the "described by photographer" get out message)?  Or is there anyway of contacting the photographer to ask them to correct their error?  I am not blaming anyone for being incorrect but there should be a mechanism for correcting such errors and I was guilty of one myself up to this week by labelling my UK "Large Skipper" photos as Ochlodes venatus which it is in all my (old) books.  The name was changed in 2000 as I found out recently and therefore I had to change the latin name on all my shots to the now correct Ochlodes sylvanus

 

Nigel Sawyer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nice pictures.

[antonsrkn]

The trend of incorrectly labeled nature photos is pervasive on here - probably 90% mistakes by people with no biological background and 10% unethical contributors being too loose with tags hoping to score an extra sale. It's actually laughable, you can do a search for basically any species and on the 1st page of results up to 15% of results are mislabeled. I hope buyers know what they're looking for because incorrectly licensed images look bad for everyone involved when the mistake comes to light. 

[Rebecca Ore]

Search for "cichlid pairs" got someone posting swans with some really erroneous keywords, probably not clearing an earlier session. 

 

https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-shot-of-the-two-swans-afloating-on-the-water-pair-foreplay-20725773.html?imageid=98380F78-C95F-4FBF-967E-B03D25ACA4D1&p=42164&pn=1&searchId=c4bcf287027286f6da31bb3d8acd634f&searchtype=0

 

First page also included one drawing of three different gourami species (not cichlids), one swordtail (not cichlids, either) female labeled as part of a pair (male fish not visible), a couple of singleton fish with fry, not the pair.  And one really good photo of a Convict Cichlid pair with the proper scientific name for the species in Panama.   Second page got a white-tailed deer by accident (tagging cichlids before and not clearing the selection).

 

At least no salt water fish, and nothing that wouldn't be an obvious tagging error.   I think the problem becomes worse with rare species and with animal families with thousands of species.   If Alamy is also picking single words out of captions and keyword phrases, then that's going to lead to problems, but these did have cichlid in the keywords, not false searches for "pair."

 

Should Alamy raise the net to contributor if they put in a button for reporting these errors.   After we report some number of errors, we get bumped up a category.   We'd be helping Alamy by reporting the mistakes in captions and tags.  Win/win for everyone.

 

 

[John Morrison]

13 minutes ago, Rebecca Ore said:

We'd be helping Alamy by reporting the mistakes in captions and tags.  Win/win for everyone.

 

In theory, yes. In practice, policing other people's contributions is definitely above my pay-grade. Literally so. With prices going down, I see no reason to fret about other people's tagging errors. Some photographers are attempting to write in an unfamiliar language. Others are trying (but failing) to game the system by spamming with irrelevant tags. And there are obviously lots of photographers who either don't know what they're doing... or don't care.

 

This is the (fairly predictable) state of play with an unediting collection of images. Image-buyers who want 100% certainty about, say, the identity of animals or plants, will presumably be going to specialist agencies and photographers... and may be prepared to pay a bit extra for knowing that the caption really does match the image...