Alamy Contributor Blog

Recent problems with AlamyUpload

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:51:00 GMT

AlamyUpload is the tool you use to upload images to Alamy.

You may experience occasional problems of lost connections or delays whilst using this service, we are aware of this issue and we are working on a solution. We have developed and are currently testing, an alternative system and are hopeful that it will prove to be much more reliable.

We may have to occassionally take AlamyUpload down whilst we are looking into these problems. Please accept our apologies for any frustration and inconvenience caused.

Earth Day poster opportunity

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:18:00 GMT

Alamy is pleased to publish the letter below:

Dear Global Photographers,

Earth Day Network is seeking your help to create an official poster for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, an event that will reach over 1 billion people in more than 180 countries.

In 1970, Earth Day brought 20 million people into the streets in a protest against industrial pollution and the impacts that unfettered industrialization had on our children and society. That effort launched of the modern environmental movement, a movement predicated on the health and well being of people and the sustainability of our incredible but fragile earth. Now Earth Day is the largest secular event in the world, bringing people of all ages into the environmental movement and supporting their involvement over a lifetime.

One of the most important images of the 1970s was Robert Rauschenberg’s arresting and now classic photographic montage that he donated to Earth Day Network. It painted a truly honest portrait of western industrial development, telling a story of endangered species, dying landscapes, and children at risk. But most important, this poster helped stir people into action and it is now viewed as one of the reasons that the U.S. government immediately passed the world’s most comprehensive Water, Air, Endangered Species, and Rights of Citizens’ laws.

The interceding decades have not been kind to our world and now we face a truly cataclysmic event—global warming. Our 40th anniversary campaign seeks to mobilize broad public support for a global agreement on climate and for large-scale investments in renewable energy, climate change mitigation for the poorest nations, and a transition to a new green economy. With a comprehensive deal in Copenhagen almost certainly unattainable at this time, Earth Day’s 40th anniversary poster will bring a message to people worldwide that a billion people working together through individual actions as well as civic engagement will convince governments and industry to invest in our future.

We seek to build even broader and deeper public support for a strong global effort, to generate at least one billion acts of service through our Billion Acts of Green™ campaign, and to create broad public enthusiasm for a new global green economy.

We are asking photographers around the world to submit photographs that tell a story of a world that can be, not the world as it looks today. Our campaign is partly aspiration, and the poster should inspire people to join a bold new Green Generation™ and to take action. If your image is selected, your work will be distributed throughout the world—through our extremely active website, through paid and earned media in 180 countries, and displays at our large scale events on the National Mall, and our other major event locations. The rights with respect to the winning photograph will be negotiated with the artist. Non winning entries will not be used in any way unless agreed with the photographer.

Deadline for your work is Monday, November 30th, 2009. We welcome your submission to Earth Day. We are also available to speak to you about the campaign by email. Please contact Nate Byer at byer@earthday.net or Lisa Swann at Swann@earthday.net for more information.

Best,

Kathleen Rogers

President

A chance to share your thoughts

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:16:00 GMT

Fast media magazine, an online site dedicated to our industry and associated media stories, is asking for feedback from photographers.

They are simply asking: What is the single most important thing you have done that made you a better and/or more successful photographer?

If you are interested in sharing your thoughts, go to Fast Media Magazine.

If a sale is 'uncleared' we are still chasing

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:18:00 GMT

We often get calls and emails from contributors asking us to chase up payments on sales that are in their accounts but still uncleared.

We are currently investing a lot of time and effort in seeing where the sale is in our chase cycle and then responding to these queries to explain that we are still chasing.

This doesn’t really seem to be a particularly beneficial exercise, yes it might reassure you as a contributor that we are ‘on the case’ but it doesn’t speed up the process as we take all outstanding debt equally seriously.

It may help to explain our process and current performance. We have varying credit terms for different customers and this flexibility makes sense for us.

The average length of time a customer takes to pay their account with us is currently 49 days. We consider this to be pretty good in today’s climate. We are also happy to share our bad debt statistics with you. Bad debt for the last full year (2008) was below 0.05%, or to put it another way, if you make a sale today you've got a 99.95% chance of getting the money from it.

We vigorously pursue late payments, 99% of our debt is recovered within 90 days of it going overdue. In very rare circumstances, we may have to pursue a legal course of action and this can take a long term, sometimes years even.

If a sale remains uncleared on your balance of account (marked with an x) this means we are still pursuing the money using all the tools at our disposal.

It’s important that we dedicate our time to activities that will bear fruit for us all so please try to avoid sending emails that can only be met with the honest response that we are still chasing the payment.

e-books

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:42:00 GMT

We have made a change to our online calculator so e-books are now included alongside conventional print books. Due to the practicalities with the way in which this was implemented the change does show on all old retrospective sales. We took the decision to implement it in this way to simplify the process and enable us to make this change quickly.

Customers are bound by the terms of the licence at the point at which the image was purchased, there is no retrospective granting of rights.

We also wanted to make it clear that e-books are seen as simply another mechanism that a publisher can use to make their book available to be read. It should not be confused with any 'online' uses.