NYCat Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 I posted about the Wildlife category on the homepage but didn't mention my belief that these categories are a real change from Alamy's policy of only editing for technical aspects of images. There are more Wildlife images on Alamy than are included in that category on the homepage. All of those categories are, I think, edited for content. It has gone beyond featuring the "Creative" images to a more traditional stock agency approach. Am I wrong? Paulette Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Endicott Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 I don't think so but I'm willing to bet it has to do with a change on how a search is performed. I clicked on the pet category then did a search within that category for "dog over white" and clicked on the relevent tab. I found one of my images. I think it's just another way Alamy is offering to sort through the 48 million+ images in the database. I kind of like this change....it gives a buyer more ways to search and narrow things down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYCat Posted May 29, 2014 Author Share Posted May 29, 2014 Yes, I did add to my "Doomed" post to say that I had found the way to search within the results and I did see my images. I don't usually appear early on when someone searches for "Wildlife" so perhaps the search order is the same. I wonder though about categories like "Book Cover". Also, the images included just under "Wildlife" are definitely somewhat fewer than a normal search with that term. Paulette Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gabbro Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 My question is, do we contributors have to assign our pictures to one or more of the categories, or Alamy assign them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jill Morgan Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 What categories? I have been begging for categories. Edited to say I just noticed them on the bottom of the home page. Totally missed them as the search is at the top. Shouldn't the category section be up there too? Jill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jill Morgan Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 Yes, I did add to my "Doomed" post to say that I had found the way to search within the results and I did see my images. I don't usually appear early on when someone searches for "Wildlife" so perhaps the search order is the same. I wonder though about categories like "Book Cover". Also, the images included just under "Wildlife" are definitely somewhat fewer than a normal search with that term. Paulette Just noticed that the Wildlife category only comes up with shots with no people, that is why the category has less pics than if you just search wildlife. Jill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 My question is, do we contributors have to assign our pictures to one or more of the categories, or Alamy assign them? Most of the more generic categories contain images with "travel," "food," "wildlife," etc. in their keywords. That might have something to do with how images are assigned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYCat Posted May 29, 2014 Author Share Posted May 29, 2014 I just went to the Blog to see if Alamy has something to say about this. Nothing yet. I hope they will give us an overview. Paulette Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gabbro Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 Just did a quick study of the "Category" search. It is really just a glorified "add-on" keyword. You have to have exact keyword in your photo to be picked up in the category search. For example, I clicked "Landscapes" in Category search, it had 314k photos. Then in "Search within results", I typed in "Yellowstone", now the search terms became "Landscapes Yellowstone", with 1816 results. Now in "Search within results", I typed in "winter". The search terms became "Landscapes Yellowstone winter", with 313 results. None of them were mine, even though I have a few hundred Yellowstone in winter pictures. Now if I just change the "Landscapes" to "Landscape", 1518 photos showed up, with all my Yellowstone in winter landscape photos. So to be included in the "Category" search, please key word exactly as in the Category names. Forget about your Family, it has to be "Families". All those great "Concept" photos, sorry, we only take "Concepts". You got the idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 Just did a quick study of the "Category" search. It is really just a glorified "add-on" keyword. You have to have exact keyword in your photo to be picked up in the category search. For example, I clicked "Landscapes" in Category search, it had 314k photos. Then in "Search within results", I typed in "Yellowstone", now the search terms became "Landscapes Yellowstone", with 1816 results. Now in "Search within results", I typed in "winter". The search terms became "Landscapes Yellowstone winter", with 313 results. None of them were mine, even though I have a few hundred Yellowstone in winter pictures. Now if I just change the "Landscapes" to "Landscape", 1518 photos showed up, with all my Yellowstone in winter landscape photos. So to be included in the "Category" search, please key word exactly as in the Category names. Forget about your Family, it has to be "Families". All those great "Concept" photos, sorry, we only take "Concepts". You got the idea. Sounds like it might be an opportune time for Alamy to add the "amend keywords" feature discussed elsewhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Phillips Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 I suspect that the presentation of category pages work like this. Alamy put together a lightbox of images from that category, images that they have curated from the whole collection. That lightbox may consist of several pages of images, and they are the first images that are presented to you if you just scroll down. And then when you keep scrolling and get to the end of the lightbox images, you get images that are ranked well for the category keyword, all presented seamlessly. And of course you can also search by keyword within the category. This is just a guess, but it's what I assumed when I saw this. I have one or two images in Alamy lightboxes and when I look at the categories for comparison, that's how it looks to me. So, curated and edited for content, to a certain extent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panthera tigris Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 Its keywords, I just did a search within "wildlife" and externally on a subject I have pictures of - its the keyword "wildlife" that makes it show in the so called "category". As wildlife is a keyword I don't use (it has had no actual meaning as a search term for me) none of my pictures show up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYCat Posted June 1, 2014 Author Share Posted June 1, 2014 There is some sort of selection going on. Not all the images in Wildlife have that word in the keywords. If you click on "See More" you will see a lot of categories -- some are Curated and Book Covers. Not things in the keywords. I think it does present a lot of very impressive imagery and perhaps it will help us all in the long run to improve the reputation Alamy has for outstanding imagery. I'm just afraid of being somehow lost at the bottom of the presentation. They have always showcased some photographers and I think this is a more obvious putting forward some terrific work. I do think it reflects some editing for content. Paulette Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jill Morgan Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 There is some sort of selection going on. Not all the images in Wildlife have that word in the keywords. If you click on "See More" you will see a lot of categories -- some are Curated and Book Covers. Not things in the keywords. I think it does present a lot of very impressive imagery and perhaps it will help us all in the long run to improve the reputation Alamy has for outstanding imagery. I'm just afraid of being somehow lost at the bottom of the presentation. They have always showcased some photographers and I think this is a more obvious putting forward some terrific work. I do think it reflects some editing for content. Paulette I think Alamy has a large set of keywords they use for each category. i myself was wondering how they chose the ones for book cover, as that is such a subjective decision. And what criteria for filtering them? Down the road, will we be getting a category choice in manage images? I hope so. Jill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MariaJ Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 I have seen those categories before, not on the homepage, but on some other page on Alamy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pearl Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 These categories have been around for a while, at least a year and possibly a lot longer but they were accessed via a link on the homepage such as "latest imagery". They are just much more obvious now. I am sure Alamy are selecting images for them as I found one of mine in the everyday category. If I just search "everyday" a different image of mine comes up first. Pearl Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Robinson Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 When I click on the Book Covers category, 'concept' appears in the search box and the 'portrait' format filter appears as ticked. Maybe that's what makes a good book cover - a vertical concept. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin P Wilson Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 When I click on the Book Covers category, 'concept' appears in the search box and the 'portrait' format filter appears as ticked. Maybe that's what makes a good book cover - a vertical concept. But I see many book covers that wrap round; single landscape image for front, spine and back Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allan Bell Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 Is Alamy now editing for content? Not going on what they are accepting in my portfolio. Allan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Robinson Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 Not editing, possibly filtering. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Julie Edwards Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 It is obviously a selection of images from a certain type, maybe keywords come in first but seeing as all the categories seem to have a similar number of pages and that which images (analysing mine for example - which are all key worded similarly) appear, I would say it's a manual showcase selection... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYCat Posted June 1, 2014 Author Share Posted June 1, 2014 Yes. I did find one of my wildlife images on page 11. It's one that was previously deemed Creative. So they are presenting a showcase of images in a more obvious way than before. Paulette Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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