Personal Use PLUS opportunity

[geogphotos]

I've just had an image licensed of an isolated semi-derelict building that I know has been worked on for at least the last year or so. My guess is that it is now occupied and the proud owners have been looking around for images of the area for home decoration purposes.

 

In my imagination they are thrilled to have found that a wonderful, professional quality image of their very own property in its ruinous condition is available to them for just $10 ( a whopping $4 for me!) An almost miraculous find, what a stroke of luck that some enterprising Alamy photographer happened to have passed by......

 

Couldn't Alamy take advantage of this sort of situation and help the customer by offering options for them to buy prints, cards, gifts?

 

 

Country: Worldwide
Usage: Personal use, Personal prints, cards and gifts. Non-commercial use only, not for resale.
Media: Non-commercial, one time, personal/home use
Start: 11 August 2023
Duration: In perpetuity

 

 

Edited August 11, 2023 by geogphotos

[Harry Harrison]

1 hour ago, geogphotos said:

Couldn't Alamy take advantage of this sort of situation and help the customer by offering options for them to buy prints, cards, gifts?

It definitely grates with me that both Personal and Presentation Use buyers get the full high-res file, Alamy could help us by giving tiered pricing on file size as they do with RF. Although getting Alamy to offer those kind of options seems tempting if someone has the high-res file then it's so easy to get anything done with it from murals to greetings cards and the buyer will just shop around anyway.

Edited August 11, 2023 by Harry Harrison

[geogphotos]

I see Personal Use licences as a growing market.

 

Does the PU licence allow the user to upload the image to a photo print site or are they supposed to make their own print from their own computer system?

 

My bet is that what the buyer wants is a finished product not a digital file. Alamy could make money for themselves and us by arranging for this.

Edited August 11, 2023 by geogphotos

[Harry Harrison]

1 hour ago, geogphotos said:

Does the PU licence allow the user to upload the image to a photo print site

How would Alamy know if they did?

Edited August 11, 2023 by Harry Harrison

[geogphotos]

1 hour ago, Harry Harrison said:

How would Alamy know if they did?

 

Alamy wouldn't know. But when you upload a picture to buy a print I'm fairly sure that you have to declare that you own copyright or have permission from the copyright owner. If Alamy organised the prints that would be assured. It would be a service to the buyer.

[Harry Harrison]

3 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

It would be a service to the buyer.

I'm not sure Alamy want to go the FAA/Red Bubble/Etsy route, I get the impression they are under-staffed as it is. I suppose they would link to a third-party for fulfilment as those do but I think it would undermine their image as a serious photo agency. It could make sense for personal use, especially if they only sold products and didn't allow direct download at all.

[geogphotos]

The licence says PU can be usde for gifts - how about giving a high res file as a gift to everbody in your school or college? 🙃

[Harry Harrison]

I think that peronal use means "Usage: Personal use, Personal prints, cards and gifts. Non-commercial use only, not for resale." so it's not going to matter how they obtain those, I dont think that the buyer would think that there was any retriction anyway. I picked up a flyer from Snappy Snaps, a huge range of merchandise available, same with Boots Photo (Cewe), Photobox etc.

Edited August 11, 2023 by Harry Harrison

[Harry Harrison]

1 minute ago, geogphotos said:

The licence says PU can be usde for gifts - how about giving a high res file as a gift to everbody in your school or college? 🙃

Yes, precisely, I see from Google that this topic (Personal Use) has been discussed a lot on here over the years, though possibly not your merchandising solution. I'd be for it if they stopped giving high res downloads for Personal Use.

[David Fowler]

Alamy do have a curated collection available for print sales on Fine Art America. No idea what the selection criteria is for these as the (Alamy) blog post about this new exciting and thrilling (their words) partnership appears to have been deleted. Just do an internet search for Alamy Fine Art America partnership and you should get a search result with a preview of the post. Here's the link to their FAA page: https://prints.alamy.com/shop/framed+prints

Personally, I already sell on FAA so wouldn't want any of mine included to compete against my direct uploads. 

[geogphotos]

I would have thought that in this day of internet wizardy it would be fairly easy to offer all images to anybody that wants them and have it all done through a few links and clicks. 

 

Surley there is a better way than individuals laboriously uploading images one after another to these POD sites?

[DJ Myford]

5 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

... I suppose they would link to a third-party for fulfilment as those do but I think it would undermine their image as a serious photo agency. ...

I think that ship sailed long ago. Alamy is - or at least was - obsessed with quantity rather than quality, and they've ended up with a bloated, unmanageable catalogue containing a significant amount of garbage.

They've said several times that they will start accepting video again, but nothing has happened. You get the impression that they are struggling to keep the existing system stable, and if they were to bolt on additional functions/services the whole thing could fall apart. An example is contributors being erroneously charged submission/storage fees. That suggests that the coders are reusing flags: something you only do if the system is critically short of resources.

[geogphotos]

1 hour ago, DJ Myford said:

I think that ship sailed long ago. Alamy is - or at least was - obsessed with quantity rather than quality, and they've ended up with a bloated, unmanageable catalogue containing a significant amount of garbage.

They've said several times that they will start accepting video again, but nothing has happened. You get the impression that they are struggling to keep the existing system stable, and if they were to bolt on additional functions/services the whole thing could fall apart. An example is contributors being erroneously charged submission/storage fees. That suggests that the coders are reusing flags: something you only do if the system is critically short of resources.

 

 

Could you explain what that means. Thanks.

Edited August 11, 2023 by geogphotos

[Harry Harrison]

1 hour ago, DJ Myford said:

You get the impression that they are struggling to keep the existing system stable, and if they were to bolt on additional functions/services the whole thing could fall apart.

Yes, the IT Team do often seem over-stretched, I suppose they could be working on some visionary new features, AI perhaps. Just one example, there was that list of blocked words that prevented anyone not logged in from finding pictures of a Morris Minor, anyone called Dick, anything with 'bare', anything with 'glamour' but 'glamor' is OK etc. etc. This according to Alamy was to save "searchers from seeing something they might not want to see".  Instances involving images that mysteriously couldn't be found had been reported on here over many months but seemingly the IT Team had no idea why, we had to work it out for them eventually. None of the big photo library competitors do this, Alamy are still doing it though.

Edited August 11, 2023 by Harry Harrison

[DJ Myford]

 

1 hour ago, geogphotos said:

 

 

Could you explain what that means. Thanks.

(This may not be exactly how the Alamy database works: things have no doubt evolved since I was doing process control coding, but the basic principle should still be the same.)
A flag is usually a bit that is used to tell the system when to perform a function. So for example if the database was told a contributor was on Alamy Red it would set a flag telling the system to run the code that calculated and applied storage fees when a licence was issued. Each contributor record will have multiple flag bits associated with it, indicating different things. If you introduce a new option, such as opt in to print sales, you need to use another flag bit in each contributor record. If there are no more bits available, you have to allocate more memory to each record to provide them. If that isn't possible due to system limitations, you can reuse a redundant flag that no longer serves a purpose, but that is potentially dangerous. You need to strip out all the old code that used that flag, otherwise it could be triggered along with the new code associated with the flag's new function. Reusing a flag could explain why some people were incorrectly charged storage fees when they had never been on that type of membership plan. Alamy has made a lot of changes over the years: unless the code has been carefully cleaned up, there will be a lot of redundant routines scattered around that could be triggered if flags get reused rather than allocating new ones.

[sb photos]

On 11/08/2023 at 22:25, Harry Harrison said:

Yes, the IT Team do often seem over-stretched, I suppose they could be working on some visionary new features, AI perhaps. <snip>

 

More likely continuously fire fighting.

[geogphotos]

On 11/08/2023 at 23:55, DJ Myford said:

 

(This may not be exactly how the Alamy database works: things have no doubt evolved since I was doing process control coding, but the basic principle should still be the same.)
A flag is usually a bit that is used to tell the system when to perform a function. So for example if the database was told a contributor was on Alamy Red it would set a flag telling the system to run the code that calculated and applied storage fees when a licence was issued. Each contributor record will have multiple flag bits associated with it, indicating different things. If you introduce a new option, such as opt in to print sales, you need to use another flag bit in each contributor record. If there are no more bits available, you have to allocate more memory to each record to provide them. If that isn't possible due to system limitations, you can reuse a redundant flag that no longer serves a purpose, but that is potentially dangerous. You need to strip out all the old code that used that flag, otherwise it could be triggered along with the new code associated with the flag's new function. Reusing a flag could explain why some people were incorrectly charged storage fees when they had never been on that type of membership plan. Alamy has made a lot of changes over the years: unless the code has been carefully cleaned up, there will be a lot of redundant routines scattered around that could be triggered if flags get reused rather than allocating new ones.

 

 

Thanks for the clear and helpful explantion.

[Harry Harrison]

11 hours ago, sb photos said:

More likely continuously fire fighting.

I was trying to be positive 🙂

[Mr Standfast]

Mention of fire fighting prompted me to look at my keywords on a 2009 fire engine image.

 

Found the local fire service keep a public spreadsheet of all their kit, all very helpful and informative.

 

Just sayin...

 

🚒🚒🚒!!!!

 

 

 

Edited August 13, 2023 by Mr Standfast
Tidy up

[imageplotter]

On 11/08/2023 at 16:25, geogphotos said:

 

Alamy wouldn't know. But when you upload a picture to buy a print I'm fairly sure that you have to declare that you own copyright or have permission from the copyright owner. If Alamy organised the prints that would be assured. It would be a service to the buyer.

No, with most services you don't. You can also easily remove the meta data, of course. Plus in many countries, you also have the option of just going to a  physical terminal where you upload your images from usb or similar media and then either get a cheapy direct print out or a high quality print where you wait a few days. Those terminals never seem to ask any rights questions, you just upload, choose a format/paper and pay. But I agree, a print on demand from Alamy wouldn't be a bad idea.

[geogphotos]

5 hours ago, imageplotter said:

No, with most services you don't. You can also easily remove the meta data, of course. Plus in many countries, you also have the option of just going to a  physical terminal where you upload your images from usb or similar media and then either get a cheapy direct print out or a high quality print where you wait a few days. Those terminals never seem to ask any rights questions, you just upload, choose a format/paper and pay. But I agree, a print on demand from Alamy wouldn't be a bad idea.

 

 

I see that Alamy already has a selection of POA offers with Fine Art America. Given Alamy's 'no editing, let the buyer decide' philosophy they might think of broadening this?

 

At the moment the selection is IMHO very conservative and traditional.

Edited September 15, 2023 by geogphotos