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Ok so I had a polite e-mail to say that a weather image that I submitted was not what Alamy required. In other words the correlation between weather and my image was non existent. Now quite how to illustrate a slightly cold, dry, still, overcast day in Glasgow I'd be first to say I haven't worked out yet but my image of an artist/busker carving a dog from a pile of sand in a city centre street, well... made a fist of it. My thought being that he couldn't have attempted it in rain, or hot, or windy days. I thought wrong and it was rejected, fair enough. But then tonight I'm browsing the live news feed and I come across two submissions which left me a little disgruntled. A small group of weather images images for a cold day which showed starlings taking a bath and a second group for a rainy/showery day with seven close-up images of a squirrel raiding a bird feeder with not a drop of rain in sight. I'm feeling slightly hard-done-by at the moment but give it time and it will pass :angry::mellow:

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 I have been reluctant to submit weather images,  because of the vague nature of the possible subjects. However, following a rare snowfall  where I live, I have recently made 15 sales from one 20 minute shoot. 

 

 Encouraged by this, I made a submission of 12 images yesterday which you will see on the news feed under Irish weather and a related shot is the subject of another post. 

 

 From your description of the photograph you took, I would also find it difficult to class it as a weather shot. My view is that you really have to be able to 'show' the weather in the photograph and not assume the viewer will accept that it is cold, or wet or sunny or whatever.  

 

The images you described that were accepted  are perhaps ones that people can relate to, and in someway 'feel' a sense of the conditions.  They can possibly psychologically relate to the weather - and nature and the weather are closely connected in some people's minds; hence another reason for your image rejection (as you didn't make that connection as others did.

 

That's just my view and I may be pushing it somewhat,  but my advice is that you try to show the weather in your photograph in either an explicit or implied way. 

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1 hour ago, kay said:

Hi Douglas - a grey nothingy kind of day did for me a couple of weeks ago too - I got the same email for the first time ;)   

Very tricky to show and to make interesting enough without just looking dull and flat.   At least we get lots of practice here in Glasgow :)   

 

 

We certainly do Kay. :D

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I had a live news shot bounce some while ago. There was to be a charity auction of a series of dog sculptures and one was stood outside the Sage concert hall. My shot of the dog was not considered newsworthy, even though it was something of a one off. It certainly ain't there now! Been reluctant to push live news since, but no harm done, the photo passed QC.

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Personally I wouldn't let the occasional knock-back from the news team put you off so long as yur images would get through normal QC.

What did your caption/headline read? Did it make it obvious that this was a weather picture? I also think that weather pictures need to show some element of the weather.. quite often the sky.

 

As it happens, I submitted a weather image myself on Sunday with the headline "UK Weather: Cloudy skies and Union Jack bunting six days before the royal wedding in Windsor"

Windsor, UK. 13th May 2018. UK Weather: Cloudy skies and Union Jack bunting six days before the royal wedding in Windsor. Matthew Ashmore/Alamy Live News Stock Photo

 

I guess I had a second 'hook' in terms of the forthcoming royal wedding this time but I do often push similar images on a regular basis even without a royal wedding. Ironically, 15 minutes after I took and uploaded this image, the clouds have broken and there was blue sky and bright sunshine between them.

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4 minutes ago, Sultanpepa said:

I've also noticed that the image wasn't put across for stock QC. Is this the norm now? I resubmitted for stock this morning.

 

I get the impression that this is something that they are tinkering with. I had also noticed recently that old news images (i.e. the news images once they are older than 2 days old) no longer seem to go on sale automatically if you haven't provided keywords in the IPTC data.

 

Personally this is a change that I welcome as I want to control which images I push to QC and which images I add to my portfolio as stock. A 'news' image isn't necessarily good enough to get through QC as stock if it is taken quickly and upload form the field using a phone and there's a good chance that I am going to edit the images at home and push stock versions of the same images too.

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7 minutes ago, funkyworm said:

Or... if you have to get up early to take the dog for a walk anyway and you can get some shots of the sun rising on the shore with some human interest... it costs little effort... and you had a nice walk.

 

I've been a press-card-carrying (NUJ) photographer since 1981. Until recently (see my post above) I have shied away from "weather news" images on Alamy, because, in my view, the parameters are far too wide and open to abuse. My view is that the sun rising (with or without human interest) is not news - it's the old press photographer's equivalent of "dog bites man", actually. The sun will always rise. If you can get a shot of it not rising, you'll make a fortune.

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1 hour ago, funkyworm said:

 

That's as may be.

 

Card carrying (I carry a few too) opinions or not, for some reason the British press thinks it is news. From past experiance I know that the news team will prioritise a British sunset over anything I send them from here in Holland... because that's where the money is for their market.

 

 

 

I know one of the people you mentioned in my capacity as associate editor of a UK camera magazine and I realize that he does well with weather news images, sunsets especially. 

 

I’m now based in Ireland, and so my outlets are limited for weather shots, although The Sun (ironically) has an Irish edition, and I sold 15 weather images to it last week, from the same shoot. 

 

My point was that I think weather is being interpreted too broadly and that may account for some news rejections. I made the same point above, with some helpful suggestions to the OP but as of now my reply has not received a response. 

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1 hour ago, Steve Valentia said:

 

I know one of the people you mentioned in my capacity as associate editor of a UK camera magazine and I realize that he does well with weather news images, sunsets especially. 

 

I’m now based in Ireland, and so my outlets are limited for weather shots, although The Sun (ironically) has an Irish edition, and I sold 15 weather images to it last week, from the same shoot. 

 

My point was that I think weather is being interpreted too broadly and that may account for some news rejections. I made the same point above, with some helpful suggestions to the OP but as of now my reply has not received a response. 

 

I'm sorry, I didn't know you required a response. I don't disagree with your comments about the broad interpretation of weather submissions but my point is that the parameters have no logic when starlings having a bath and a squirrel at a bird feeder are considered weather 'news' but a man carving sand is not? In my view it's inconsistent. It may just be down to the Alamy news adjudicator on the day. Your suggestions are also fair but then they are fairly obvious and I could see me saying the same. On the slightly more humorous side I think that getting a shot of the sun not rising would be easy but maybe not topical. In Scotland it's called summer. ;) 

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1 hour ago, Sultanpepa said:

 

I'm sorry, I didn't know you required a response. I don't disagree with your comments about the broad interpretation of weather submissions but my point is that the parameters have no logic when starlings having a bath and a squirrel at a bird feeder are considered weather 'news' but a man carving sand is not? In my view it's inconsistent. It may just be down to the Alamy news adjudicator on the day. Your suggestions are also fair but then they are fairly obvious and I could see me saying the same. On the slightly more humorous side I think that getting a shot of the sun not rising would be easy but maybe not topical. In Scotland it's called summer. ;) 

 

I just wondered if my comments were helpful, as I saw that you responded to a joke about the Scottish weather, made shortly before my own original post. I agree with you that the parameters seem illogical, and the decision on whether (or weather) you get an image rejected or not, may be bordering on arbitrary.

 

I would say though (as per my previous post), that there could be a psychological association between weather and nature, and this may account for the animal images you cited being accepted. I'm not saying that is right, I'm just suggesting that the news feed editors may have deemed it more likely to "fit" than the image you submitted. Like most things, being successful in stock photography is knowing how to play the game.

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6 minutes ago, Steve Valentia said:

 

I just wondered if my comments were helpful, as I saw that you responded to a joke about the Scottish weather, made shortly before my own original post. I agree with you that the parameters seem illogical, and the decision on whether (or weather) you get an image rejected or not, may be bordering on arbitrary.

 

I would say though, that there could be a psychological association between weather and nature, and this may account for the animal images you cited being accepted. I'm not saying that is right, I'm just suggesting that the news feed editors may have deemed it more likely to "fit" than the image you submitted. Like most things, being successful in stock photography is knowing how to play the game.

 

Indeed, it can be a bit of a dark art at times. I think I'll pray for snow on the summer solstice then I'll maybe get a sale..... if I can get my image in first. ;)

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1 minute ago, Sultanpepa said:

 

Indeed, it can be a bit of a dark art at times. I think I'll pray for snow on the summer solstice then I'll maybe get a sale..... if I can get my image in first. ;)

 

Forget "here comes the sun..." snow's the way to go! As mentioned, my first ever weather news submission (of snow), about a month ago, nabbed 15 sales (with a range of fees from $120 to $10) and I'm hopeful of more from them. Unless I'm frozen out of the running.

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On 5/14/2018 at 18:04, Steve Valentia said:

 

Forget "here comes the sun..." snow's the way to go! As mentioned, my first ever weather news submission (of snow), about a month ago, nabbed 15 sales (with a range of fees from $120 to $10) and I'm hopeful of more from them. Unless I'm frozen out of the running.

I sold a snow photo of a road in Scotland to the Irish Sun :) . The article didn't say where it was, naturally.

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On 5/14/2018 at 13:05, Matt Ashmore said:

 

I get the impression that this is something that they are tinkering with. I had also noticed recently that old news images (i.e. the news images once they are older than 2 days old) no longer seem to go on sale automatically if you haven't provided keywords in the IPTC data.

I noticed that recently too.  It's much better.

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 I reported an issue to the news editors, at the weekend, that at least one contributor,  A stock agency, is using a future date stamp on their news images.  

 

When I noticed it,  at least two images that arrived on the feed had a date of 5th December 2018.  This meant that those images stayed at the top of the feed.

 

 I haven't looked in the last few days to see if they are still there, but it is something to watch out for as it detracts from all the correctly dated images arriving. 

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4 hours ago, Steve Valentia said:

 I reported an issue to the news editors, at the weekend, that at least one contributor,  A stock agency, is using a future date stamp on their news images.  

 

When I noticed it,  at least two images that arrived on the feed had a date of 5th December 2018.  This meant that those images stayed at the top of the feed.

 

 I haven't looked in the last few days to see if they are still there, but it is something to watch out for as it detracts from all the correctly dated images arriving. 

 

Could they have  used a US format date (MM/DD/YYYY- 5/12/2018) that should have been 12 May 2018 (12/5/2018)

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1 hour ago, Martin P Wilson said:

 

Could they have  used a US format date (MM/DD/YYYY- 5/12/2018) that should have been 12 May 2018 (12/5/2018)

 

Yes, that could definitely explain it. But, I'm guessing there must be a 'fail-safe' for this, otherwise the feed would surely be flooded with US date-stamped images stuck at the front for weeks.

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2 hours ago, Steve Valentia said:

 

Yes, that could definitely explain it. But, I'm guessing there must be a 'fail-safe' for this, otherwise the feed would surely be flooded with US date-stamped images stuck at the front for weeks.

 

One would hope that Alamy news team would pick it up. They certainly did with one of my mine where the camera data had been misset and was showing as too old for news, they called me and we fixed it.

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On 5/13/2018 at 01:32, Sultanpepa said:

Ok so I had a polite e-mail to say that a weather image that I submitted was not what Alamy required. In other words the correlation between weather and my image was non existent. Now quite how to illustrate a slightly cold, dry, still, overcast day in Glasgow I'd be first to say I haven't worked out yet but my image of an artist/busker carving a dog from a pile of sand in a city centre street, well... made a fist of it. My thought being that he couldn't have attempted it in rain, or hot, or windy days. I thought wrong and it was rejected, fair enough. But then tonight I'm browsing the live news feed and I come across two submissions which left me a little disgruntled. A small group of weather images images for a cold day which showed starlings taking a bath and a second group for a rainy/showery day with seven close-up images of a squirrel raiding a bird feeder with not a drop of rain in sight. I'm feeling slightly hard-done-by at the moment but give it time and it will pass :angry::mellow:

I had that a couple of years ago which put me off doing live news, funnily enough, I guess they were right, it was Rangers stadium on a sunny day, I didn't think Glasgow had sunshine, so to me it was newsworthy :-)

 

I'd previously seen a lot of what I thought were poor live news photos uploaded, but they were probably kicked out too, or Alamy has changed it's policy, although afterwards, I realised it had to be slightly saleable or relevant to news events of that day, if Rangers had been getting taken over that day, maybe it might have worked, otherwise it was just stock.

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3 hours ago, ChrisC said:

I had that a couple of years ago which put me off doing live news, funnily enough, I guess they were right, it was Rangers stadium on a sunny day, I didn't think Glasgow had sunshine, so to me it was newsworthy :-)

 

I'd previously seen a lot of what I thought were poor live news photos uploaded, but they were probably kicked out too, or Alamy has changed it's policy, although afterwards, I realised it had to be slightly saleable or relevant to news events of that day, if Rangers had been getting taken over that day, maybe it might have worked, otherwise it was just stock.

 

The sun hasn't shone at Ibrox in a long time.

I still think my image (MN3HMX) showing an overcast, cool, dry, windless day is implied by my image and a squirrel on a bird feeder is no more relevant. That's life though. Some you win some you don't. :)

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