Alamy Contributor Blog

Who do they think we are?

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Tue, 21 May 2013 10:19:00 GMT

BBC Four game show 'Only Connect'. First broadcast BBC Four, 8:30PM Mon, 20 May 2013.

We were delighted to be part of the answer to a quiz question on the BBC recently. We were in illustrious company, and I’m sure Corbis, Magnum and Getty felt the same way.

Disappointingly however, the contestants who unravelled many more taxing (well they were to me) conundrums during the course of the programme failed to find the link that connected us together.

This highlighted something I discovered when I joined this industry many moons ago and has been pretty constant ever since. People, lay people and Joe Public, do not know who we are or what we do.

How many parties have you been to where someone asks you what you ‘do’? You take a deep breath, you know this isn’t going to be easy unless a) they are a photographer or b) they buy pictures or c) it’s a work do! You explain you work at a ‘picture agency’ and they look at you as if you’d told them you were a phlebotomist (precisely! look it up).

Victoria Coren, the presenter of the programme falls into the same trap. ‘They are all photo agencies... picture agencies’ she feels the need to give two names for the same thing. I’ve done this so many times myself, which of the words that I can put together will work this time... Photo, Stock, Picture, Photographic, Agency, Library. Still nothing. So I have to explain, and no we don’t ‘sell’ the pictures, we ‘licence’ them and trust me you really don’t want to understand the difference between Royalty Free and Rights Managed.

Back to the Quiz show, sure enough, 21.03 minutes in, one of the contestants says ‘Alamy... it doesn’t mean anything?’ While that’s true and that’s why we picked it, it’s infuriating that the mysterious world of the picture agency remains an unintentionally closely guarded secret.

Our product is everywhere; TV adverts, newspapers, books, on billboards, all over the web, Alamy even sold an image for a mural on toilet walls. You can’t avoid our output. People see our photographers’ pictures all the time. ‘We’ are everywhere, yet we remain largely anonymous.

And I’ll venture that this is not an Alamy problem. I’ve worked at Getty, I know! Occasionally you may find someone who has heard of one or two agencies, but even Getty is still more synonymous with oil, art galleries or museums (Quiz contestant 22.26) than photos, despite appearing on every front page around the world.

Magnum to these three is a detective with a big moustache, nothing else entered their heads.

On a more serious note, greater awareness may lead to reduced image theft and more crediting of images but that’s a blog for another day.

Maybe appearing on national TV will help raise our profile? Then again I hadn’t heard of this quiz show before we appeared on it, so maybe we’ve all got some way to go before we are truly mainstream.

The Private Jet Photography Awards 2013 are now open for submissions

Rob Singer - Contributor Services Executive — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:30:00 GMT

© Blend Images / AlamyWe’re excited to announce we’re sponsoring an aviation photography competition launched by PrivateFly.com. So if you specialise in transportation or aviation it’s time to prepare for take off!

The Private Jet Photography Awards 2013 will be judged by an expert panel from the world of aviation and travel photography including our very own Head of Content, Alan Capel.

The five categories include: In the Air, On the Ground, Detail, Aircraft Crew and Speed. The competition is open to both amateur and professional photographers based anywhere in the world.

A cash prize of £250 (or equivalent local currency) is up for grabs to the winner of each category, with the overall winner receiving an additional £1,000 from PrivateFly. If the winning photographer submits 10 images or more (including the winning picture) to Alamy they will receive 100% commission for the first sale and be promoted as a featured photographer.

More information, including full terms and conditions can be found on the PrivateFly website. The closing date for entries is 31st August 2013.

Good luck!

The all new Alamy forum

James Allsworth - Social Media Manager — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:59:00 GMT

Why are we moving?

You may remember us mentioning that the recent website redesign was just the beginning of a whole series of planned changes and we also said that contributor-facing elements of Alamy would be improving - this is one of many improvements due to go live this year. We introduced the old forum all the way back in early 2007 and the poor old software is starting to strain under the weight of it all and needs to be retired. It's lacking many useful features that are commonplace in modern forums and it does little to promote a community feel. Also, there are very few features on offer to users and the overall design is now dated, so it's time for something new.

What we liked about the old forum...and what we didn't like.

The old forum was great for bouncing questions around your fellow photographers and discussing the pros and cons on a variety of themes within our industry. Unfortunately, at times, it was also a hot-bed of negativity and anonymous name calling. We thought carefully about how we could introduce a stronger community feel to the redesign and move away from the negative aspects seen in the old forum. With this in mind, we've now made it compulsory to be a registered Alamy photographer before you can post. Although you'll be able to pick a forum alias the first time you log in, you'll need to log in using your existing Alamy website credentials and your profile on the new forum will contain a link to your image collection on Alamy. We believe this will promote a more honest and less hostile environment. Also, users are now able to give (or take away) reputation points on posts and users. Again, we hope this will promote a more positive and overall constructive place for discussion. There are a whole bunch of features available, but rather than list them all here, it's best if you just scan through the help documents linked to at the bottom of this post.

Open to ideas

Here at Alamy, we're focusing more on social media than ever before. It's allowing us to interact with contributors and clients in a brand-new way and we very much see our contributor forum under the social media umbrella. We therefore have decided to include a feedback section of the forum where you can offer your general suggestions for Alamy overall as well as have your say on the structure of the forum itself. We can't promise to respond to every suggestion, but we can promise to read every post made.

We'll be moderating the forum as we do now and as usual will ask you all to play by the rules and adopt the right spirit. We're very much looking forward to seeing how this new community develops!

Links

Looking good...

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:39:00 GMT

© YAY Media ASWe've been telling you we had plans to develop the Alamy brand, improve our site and raise awareness amongst all customers. Well, we've taken the first steps on that journey. We've kicked off with some great design and functional changes that have gone live today.

These enhancements bring benefits for both our customers and our contributors. We've gone for a phased approach, focusing on the most frequently used pages first. For the first time at Alamy we brought in an external team of designers and combined their creative flair with our internal expertise.

See what Alamy CEO James West says about these changes and read the official press release.

This is good news for contributors:

Your images look even better and are displayed more effectively

We are now featuring just one large image across our entire homepage
We've uncluttered the search results page
The lightbox functionality has been completely overhauled
The pop-up image is now up to 100% bigger

We've made it easier for customers to buy your images

We've introduced simplified, popular RM pricing options
We've made live news images easier to find
The 'Best Of' search filter has been renamed to 'Creative'
A 'recent searches' feature has been introduced

Do you want to know more about the Alamy story? We've introduced some new pages explaining who we are, why we are different and how we work.

The new Creative button also replaces the old 'creative collection'. We are constantly improving the selection of images under 'Creative'. We have a mass of data on how our customers work and we are putting that intelligence to good use as we continue to modify our site and our search results. It's a movable feast and images will come and go depending upon a number of factors including how they perform.

This first phase of activity has focused on the customer-facing pages, however we already have a spec for a new version of the My Alamy page with our designers. This is just the beginning, watch this space for further changes.

If you have any questions about the new site you can tweet us or email Member Services.

Renovation not reinvention

James West - CEO — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 09:45:00 GMT

As you know if you read this blog we have been working on lots of stuff lately to make buying from Alamy a better experience for more people. Stuff like Alamy iQ for larger corporations - a whole new way to manage and purchase visual media, new ways for searching via the new search buttons as well as expanding what we offer by building video and live news services.

The latest, but not the last stage in this project is the website itself. At the risk of sounding like a TV home improvement programme – we’re renovating. The good news is we have left the solid foundations in place and kept the things you love. You’ve been telling us, and we’ve known for ages, that our website needs some TLC.

As in any well-managed renovation project, the key is to offer ‘service as usual’ and improve things incrementally which is what we have been doing with each step in this process.

So, what’s new in 2013? We’ve given the homepage a fresh new look and some of the pages behind it have been smartened up too, including the search results, image pop-up and lightbox tool. The key changes are outlined here.

We aren’t finished yet and in the coming months we will continue to release exciting updates, including a remodel of the purchase path and a new ‘My Alamy’ dashboard for contributors.

As we evolve the Alamy brand it’s important to hold on to our values – if you want to know more about how Alamy came about and what our ethos is (including the unusual way we donate to charity), visit our new about us section.

All of these changes have been done to make your experience on Alamy a better one. So if you like what we’ve done or have a suggestion, please leave a comment.