Alamy stock photography

Keywording for the future

Permalink Comments (45)19 June 2007 at 14:23 by James West - CEO
Posted under News, Rambling CEO

IMPORTANT: This article describes some changes coming to the Alamy keyword fields later this year. Images already in the system will be unaffected by this change and you will not be forced to re-keyword your existing collection.

Synopsis

Bar graph The number of images available online is increasing dramatically. As a consequence of this picture buyers will spend longer looking for the images they need and image producers will spend more time describing their pictures in order to stand out from the crowd. Alamy, representing the world”s largest collection of stock photography online, is leading this trend.

This article introduces some of the initiatives we are working on to improve the speed and quality of the search experience for the customer and to help our contributors compete.

New search engine

We are preparing to release a new search engine in Q3 2007. The initial launch version will be a minor change compared to our existing system, but it has been built to be compatible with a new generation of products and tools from Alamy. These include a new keywording structure, future versions of AlamyRank, customer search activity reporting tools, greater speed, and stronger relevancy.

New keywording structure

AlamyRank introduced the concept of using views and clicks as a means of assigning a score to a group of images. The system assumes that if a collection of images is seldom clicked or sold in proportion to the number of times it has been seen by customers, it should carry less weight relative to a collection that has a stronger track record of clicks and sales.

“Manage images” screenshot showing new fields
Click to see large screenshot (131Kb) Pyramid diagram
Searchable fieldsThe introduction of AlamyRank means that contributors to Alamy want to be seen when appropriate to the customer and hidden when not. This presents a dilemma for the person keywording an image – should you enter all the words you can think of and risk being seen too often (and thereby reduce your ranking), or should you be more selective and concentrate on a small number of words that are most relevant to your image? The answer is a bit of both.

The new structure enables contributors to be comprehensive in their keywording without penalising their AlamyRank. This works like a pyramid, with the importance of the various keyword fields diminishing as the fields increase in size.

There are two objectives behind this project:

Improving relevancy

The pyramid approach to keywording enables contributors to be thorough in describing their images without damaging their AlamyRank. This will, in the long run, improve the relevancy of search results for customers.
Preparation for the commercial market

We need more information from contributors who are interested in selling their images into the commercial sector, especially on the question of model and property releases.

So as not to disadvantage contributors who keyworded their images under the old system, the new search engine will take into account whether an image was described under the old or the new keywording structure. Both the old and the new structures will be compatible with the new search engine. This system is scheduled for release in Q3 and will be optional for images already on the site.

Customer activity statistics

The next step towards improving the experience for customers is to share with contributors information about what is happening to their images in the search engine. The first version of a new tool, AlamyMeasures 1.0, will share customer search activity with our contributors.

AlamyMeasures screenshot
Click to see large screenshot (153Kb)AlamyMeasures 1.0 will show you how often your images have been viewed and clicked by customers, as well as how your images performed against the rest of the collection. From a summary page that will be available via My Alamy, you will be able to see specific search requests that returned your images. AlamyMeasures also links through to your images so that you can edit any keywords or phrases that are generating an excess of views relative to clicks.

Summary

The projects outlined above mark the start of an exciting time for our company. Giving finer control to our contributors over how their images are seen by the search engine will, in time, improve the quality and accuracy of the customer experience. Of equal importance to looking forward however, is not leaving those who already have images on Alamy behind. The changes you will see over the coming months are designed to open up new opportunities for all our contributors, new and existing, as our business develops.

Keep an eye on this blog for further announcements relating to the plans outlined above.

Add your own commentComments (45)

19 June 2007 at 17:35 Barrie harwood

This looks like a very exciting development and I look forward to it's introduction.

It is good to see that Alamy is recognising the dilemma that us contributors face. Any given image might be relevant to a number of buyers for a variety of reasons not all of them obvious and it is wrong to penalise someone for trying to be all things to all people.

This appears to go a very long way to addressing this issue
19 June 2007 at 21:38 Chuck pefley

Bravo! These refined tools just may make it possible to tread that fine line between too much and too little. Revealing actual search queries and results specific to our individual images will be a huge help in refining technique both in keywording and photographically. Thanks, Alamy.

Chuck Pefley
19 June 2007 at 22:09 Krzysztof gapys

Great! I personally think it is a great idea, even better than Alamy Rank. Keyword revelancy is much more important than number of clicks/views of an image, especially if the collection is growing really fast. Only to mention AlamyMeasures - the so long awaited tool. Thanks!
20 June 2007 at 00:14 Mathew lodge

Great approach... love the concept. Anything that increases relevance to potential customers is a winner.

I see that the structure is based around an online tool. I keyword all my images in advance with other tools... it is going to be so much faster and easier if I can prep my images with structured keywords before submission (IPTC fields) using IMatch, Lightroom, Photoshop or Bridge. Frankly, these are all more efficient for keywording vs. an online web tool. I'd strongly encourage Alamy to add 3rd party tool support for structured keywords -- e.g. through XMP fields in the image.
20 June 2007 at 00:15 Alan Copson

You don't mention whether all the data will be able to be read from IPTC fields.

I hope it is, else many will have problems adding it do their workflow.

That aside, some useful improvements there.

Cheers... Al
20 June 2007 at 00:25 Jack Cox

I think this is a fantastic initiative and Alamy should be congratulated for it. The only refinement I can suggest is to ask for the COUNTRY field to be separate from the LOCATION field as a lot of photographers forget this essential piece of information when keywording.

Even better would be for the COUNTRY field to be in the form of a drop-down menu where photographers are given a limited number of choices. This would ensure that the country name is listed in a standardised way,

At present, in order to find all UK images the customer would need to enter <UK>, <U.K.>, <GB>, <G.B.>, <Great Britain>, <Britain>, <United Kingdom>, and probably <England> as well.

To find images of the USA the buyer would need to search for <USA>, <U.S.A.>, <US>, <U.S.>, <United States of America>, <United States> and <America>.

I am sure people can think of other examples. This means that, to maximise sales, we photographers need to clog up our character allowance with all these possible terms meaning essentially the same thing. By limiting us to just one standard name for each country will make life much easier for both the picture buyers and for us.

Thanks again for this great improvement.
20 June 2007 at 00:30 keith morris

At present, in order to find all UK images the customer would need to enter <UK>, <U.K.>, <GB>, <G.B.>, <Great Britain>, <Britain>, <United Kingdom>, and probably <England> as well.

erm..,and also Wales, and Scotland...and Northern Ireland

Uk and GB are not synonymous with England

keith morris
20 June 2007 at 07:07 Alan Gallery

In “Manage my images” will it be possible to search by keyword. At the present time it is only possible to find an image by its Alamy reference or by the image file name.

This feature would help when we need to update the keyword information and keep it relevant. Eg. When the Alamy Corporation buy the London eye and knock it down to stop photographers sending in any more pointless photos of it.
20 June 2007 at 07:40 Ian murray

Three cheers for Alamy!

I'd love more sophisticated search facilities within MyAlamy to automatically add, change, delete.

Although I add metadata online I agree with the comments made above about IPTC tie in.

I second the 'Country' option box.

What about a theme option box - travel, nature, transport, health etc-

Thanks a lot to the development team at Alamy I can't wait!

Ian Murray
20 June 2007 at 08:35 Jinny Goodman

Hi

I notice in Search History there will be the facility to 'Export to Excel'.

Can I put in a plea for those of us who do not use Excel to make this facility compatible with other spreadsheets eg Mac users with AppleWorks.

Thank you.

Jinny Goodman
20 June 2007 at 08:36 Bob croxford

At present, in order to find all UK images the customer would need to enter <UK>, <U.K.>, <GB>, <G.B.>, <Great Britain>, <Britain>, <United Kingdom>, and probably <England> as well.

Surely keywords are for buyers' convenience, not photographers? How do we know what a buyer is going to type in a search field? Apart from all the above I add a few more.

Much more serious, in my opinion, is the way that comprehensive keywording will get penalised. For instance I have a set of images of a stone age site which are not similars. I have used keywords such as 'sarson', megalith, megalithic, standing, stone, and many other words which are technically correct to describe standing stones. Under the diversity search it seems that my images are now treated as if they are all similars. Images which have no more than 'standing stone' are way ahead of mine in a search.

Bob
20 June 2007 at 08:38 Fabian gonzales

Very clever. I can see how the information provided in this screen will be used to improve search results, and how it can be used to court commercial and advertising clients. I think Alamy did a great job on this!
20 June 2007 at 08:59 Oleksiy maksymenko

For reading the Keywords from IPTC I would suggest this scheme:
It reads the first keywords of an image (5-10) till it reaches 50 characters (not cutting words of course) and put it into the Essential keywords field.
Then it keeps reading the other keywords till it reaches 300 characters and put them into main keywords.
And eventually if there is still more it puts the rest into the Comprehensive keywords.
And we'll try to adjust our keywording to put the most important words first.

In my opinion this future update is a very important and a big step forward even though it will be quite time consuming for contributors. But in a long run it'll pay of for the contributors and alamy and the customers.

Thank you!
20 June 2007 at 09:35 Gary cook

Good news - anything that improves the search and returns more relevant images has got to be good for customers and therefore for Alamy and its contributors.

However, I do have some concerns about the additional workload this will place on the contributors. I agree with the other comments that any scheme must tie in with the IPTC data rather than rely on online input. As far as I am aware there are no field in IPTC for splitting keywords into various categories.

Is it really necessary to have caption, essential keywords, main keywords, comprehensive keywords, description and location? Surely a caption, main keywords and comprehensive keywords would be sufficent.

Also all the tick boxes would be very time consuming to input on an image by image basis on line. Could these be implemented in IPTC?

I like the look of the customer activity stats in AlamyMeasure as well. However it only seems to return info on searches that returned a contributors own images - it would be useful to also have some info on searches that did not return any of the contributors images as it is quite possible that they may have missed an important keyword that customers often use and so do not appear in the search results. It would also help in identifying areas where the contributor (and Alamy) have gaps in their collection.

Many thanks,
Gary Cook
20 June 2007 at 11:03 David kilpatrick

When this system arrives, the first thing to do is to go to all your pictures SOLD TO DATE, and update the keywording manually for these. Sold pictures seem to be best indicator for high ranking and further sales (a search has already found them, so they may be unique, or best in that search).

But I do not like the idea of spending a year doing revisions to 5000 existing images. A batch process would be useful. 99 per cent of my stuff has no model release, maybe 70 per cent has no people - etc. I could easily have a screen of 100 thumbnails and use a tick box beside each one to select, then apply a global change 'no model release'. Same for country, place etc - I could run a search (ideally) within My Images for specific keywords, then apply a global change to the 'place' field or whatever.

Tools like eBay uses - tick the boxes, delete all, etc - only tick the boxes and then change a parameter in a single action to apply to all the ticked files. And to be able to do this in a BIG screen of images, not just 20 per page - and not just findable by reference number or filename either.

David
20 June 2007 at 12:17 Olaf briel

Hello all,

I am a bit disappointed by "AlamyMeasures 1.0". Does a statistic for generic search terms like 'island' (449,000 results) or 'Paris' (71,000 results) provide any useful insights?

Instead I would prefer to know the keywords actually used by a customer who looked at or bought my images (e.g. paris, louvre, sunset).

Also I would like to see a controlled vocabulary like Getty or Corbis have it coming along with all the other changes.

For example if you keyword a studio shot against a white background you have to put in a lot of synonyms for saying just that (e.g. white background, cut out, cutout, knock out, etc.). It would be a great relief if the search engine could handle this kind of synonyms by itself.

Regards
20 June 2007 at 14:18 Ian M Butterfield

I do think this is a good move for Alamy but two things immediately jump out to me from this article.

1. Where does the image caption feature in the pyramid of relevancy? Description is in there but the caption is absent. I know some agencies that simply ignore the caption from a search point of view… I hope Alamy is NOT going down that road.

2. The article says that images keyworded under the old system will NOT be disadvantaged. So why make it "optional for images already on the site" if there is no advantage in moving existing images to the new system why give the option? Noone will do it if there is nothing to be gained. Surely it would be better to give an advantage to images keyworded on the new system and thus encourage people to rekeyword. Better for Alamy, better for the buyers, better for all of us to have all the images on the same keywording system.
20 June 2007 at 17:06 Bill brooks

Good idea, but not if it requires photographers to keyword online. Photographers shooting large numbers of images for more than one library, and using a controlled vocabulary thesaurus software to keyword offline into their master archive file, will have a lot of extra work at online approval time. These are probably your most productive people. How will photo distributors with large numbers of offline keyworded images handle this?
20 June 2007 at 18:57 Steven poe

Fundamentally Alamy’s keywording/search effort is good in theory. All stock business are grappling with how to provide clients better more accurate search. Now that the infrastructure and libraries are built we see accurate timely search as the next wave of business success or failure.

The industry as a whole needs to establish new metadata (keyword) search parameters as - universal standards - rather than fragmented solutions. Photographers and contributers will not endure the burden of customizing keyword data for each individual outlet.

The most efficient current proposal available is *Hierarchical Keywording* as described by Dan Heller and adopted by Adobe.
21 June 2007 at 00:42 Alan Haynes

I use Expression Media (formerly IView Media Pro) to keyword and caption my images. Now, it looks like I'll also have to visit each image online at Alamy to add this information.

I hope Alamy will provide a tool that will work with Expression Media so that I can enter all the info before uploading as I do now. Otherwise, this new keywording is going to slow me down tremendously.

Alan Haynes
www.alanhaynes.com
21 June 2007 at 03:30 Richard

I sure hope our IPTC data is still recognized because no one enjoys having to keyword the same images multiple times!
21 June 2007 at 13:49 Bill Brooks

If Alamy could provide photographers with a "Manage Images" template that we could use in the Metadata input section of our offline keywording software, it would save a lot of work and maybe set an industry standard.
21 June 2007 at 14:47 Oleksiy Maksymenko

Is it possible to make the current and future uploader to read Caption/Title field from IPTC into Caption and Description into Description?

Now it reads just a description and puts it into the Caption if it's small enough or into the Description field if it's big.
21 June 2007 at 22:35 Ben lovejoy

How will this work with the huge number of photographers (myself included) who use Photoshop to enter our keywords? Will there be agreed separators that will be recognised by Alamy (eg: ESSENTIAL:, MAIN:, COMPREHENSIVE:) so that we can continue to keyword offline?
22 June 2007 at 08:31 Craig joiner

Ben, It's not just the users of Photoshop as a keywording tool. I think most of the common IPTC tools out there are going to struggle with this one and many automatically re-organize keywords into alphabetical order so while a good idea, your suggestion isn't going to work for everyone.

The more I think about this the more I am struggling to see how this is going to work for many contributors, myself included. I think this has been mentioned before, but Alamy's most prolific and most successful contributors will undoubtedly submit to multiple libraries and will have a slick workflow in place to ensure proper keywording and other metadata is included in the IPTC fields. Alamy's new keywording will add considerable overhead to the business of submitting to Alamy. Think about it Alamy, are these the contributors that you really want to alienate and ultimately loose?

If it is quality of keywording you are concerned about then this isn't the solution because those same offenders will still put all their keywords in at top level. Perhaps a better way to control poor keywording is to include it in the QC?

While I'm here, I endorse the location details, but please Alamy, can you ensure this is picked up from the existing IPTC fields.
22 June 2007 at 17:21 Joe fox

The Alamy measure looks good - it is what other more exclusive agencies have so you can see what has been viewed and what has been sold.
The thing about having this information is that you can see when a potential customer has viewed your images, downloaded a comp or could have just right clicked and saved for later sale. Its not unusual to see customers downloading a comp having viewed it a dozen or so times only to purchase up to 18 months later (in my experience).
How this affects your alamyrank is anyones guess.

The keywording issue though for me is a complete no-go. From my limited understanding and I might have the wrong end of the stick alamyrank might disadvantage editorial photographers who as a matter of course add certain details (such as time date or place) to the caption of every photo they shoot.(particularly now for agencies or groups that only look at thte caption field).
Splitting the keyword field up from the standard IPTC data will only cause more work and its something I really wont be bothered doing. Its bad enough taking up to a month getting some images online which if they were put up the next day would obviously sell (larger agencies do have the images online in minutes) but sending say even 100 a month to various agencies with different QC and what is a proprietary keywording system is a no go.
Its easy enough for the 10 images a month or whatever to do the online keywording but to go on and have to spend hours changing things around just doesnt make financial sense.

Earning money through Alamy is one thing but for those of us who make a living from photography there is a fine line between the time spent and the money earned.

I know of other agencies who will upload the shots, sell them actively on your behalf, add in extra keywords they think relevant and let you get on with the job of actually taking photos.

I've done and am still doing quite well out of Alamy (and have uploaded my fair share of horrific photos in the early days) but with all the changes you have to keep looking and thinking. 'Is it really worth it'
26 June 2007 at 19:35 Dan white

What Bob Croxford says below is an important concern. Editorial photographers who may have worked thematically on one area.... Environment for instance, or one particular geograhical area.... may use similar keywords for very different images. Refining this keyword approach fails to address the core problem and the core flaw. One size or one solution does not fit all... Specially when dealing with images and not words and even more so when dealing with as varied and diverse collections as one finds on a web site of this size.

"For instance I have a set of images of a stone age site which are not similars. I have used keywords such as 'sarson', megalith, megalithic, standing, stone, and many other words which are technically correct to describe standing stones. Under the diversity search it seems that my images are now treated as if they are all similars."
02 July 2007 at 10:01 Sally @ bill bachman

My first post, and apologies for its length!

Bob (or Dan), could you explain what you mean by the "diversity search" (or point me to the relevant explanation on alamy website). I'm unclear whether images that string similar keywords together (but where images are quite different) will be classified as similars by virtue of the keywords that appear. If so, this would be disastrous, as one of the most efficient methods of keywording efficiently and consistently is via strings of related keywords.

I concur Gary Cook suggestion "Surely a Caption, Main keywords and Comprehensive keywords would be sufficent". The Essential category is overkill – a 50 character limit allows for 9 or 10 words max. (Incidentally this paragraph has a character count of 333 including this sentence – approx 55 words = more than allowed in Main field)

However any division of keywords raises a host of issues (including several technical point already raised here). Our added concern is that whilst the reasoning behind this is to marginalise irrelevant keywords (which occurred through dumping same into old Description field), Alamy's requirement that we now separate our keywords into 3 separate tiers implies we can second guess how a researcher selects one shot over another.

For instance consider a shot of 2 kids playing with a large red ball with a dog joining in. How are we to know whether the researcher selected the shot for : kids, playing, ball, round, circular, circle (useful for maths books); or colour, color, red; or for concepts such as fun, joy, happiness, skills, co-ordination, healthy, activity, playtime, two, 2, family, friends, brother, 8 year old, sister, pets.... the list goes on. (Note: this paragraph already over the Main keyword field limit at 515 characters.)

If the researcher searches on "ball co-ordination skills" but some of those words were in your Comprehensive keywords as distinct from Main, would your image (however accurately it portrays the request) have made it onto an early page in the search returns if someone else had included those 3 words for their image in the Main Keyword field?

What about the maths book publisher looking for geometric shapes that can be illustrated by images of crops in fields (yes, we have sold these more than once) - what level do these keywords go in at? Common sense may suggest the farming words go into Main keywords, yet someone else who has put their shape keywords into this field will be prioritised. Yet another researcher would be searching that shot because of the crop and not the abstracted shapes.

If we are to have any keyword divisions, then perhaps:

The MAIN keywords should only contain literal subject matter as can be viewed in the image. Ex 1: children, boy, girl, dog, pet, red, ball, etc or EX 2: farm, field, crop, paddock, wheat, harvest, golden, tractor, harvester, aerial, horizontal etc. This way researchers can search here if they have very specific subject needs (horizontal child ball) – or could use it to refine their research ie where the children or ball are integral to the search of skills and co-ordination.

The COMPREHENSIVE field could then contain all the other words, including generic and concept/theme words ie speed, strength, wealth, relationships, friends; happy, quiet, peaceful; tourism, transport, agriculture, industry, geology, abstracts (ie shapes, textures, backgrounds). This way, the researcher could research “co-ordination skills” [Comprehensive] and illustrate it with “child ball” [Main].

The Comprehensive field should have maximum count of 600 (not 856) to curtail irrelevancy.

Any remaining/additional information would then be put into Description field (useful for editorial captioning etc)

Regarding the NEW TEMPLATE (above) containing the checklist of image info required (people number etc) : this had better be available as an automatic textfile (ie .xls) upload for those of us working with a large quantity of existing archived material, and not limited to online editing file by file. Fortunately we designed our backend database using Filemaker with multiple information fields which enables us to manipulate the ways we export information – by writing new scripts, but even with this flexibility the proposed changes will be immensely time consuming.

Joe Fox’s wise words should be carefully considered by many – including Alamy: “Earning money through Alamy is one thing but for those of us who make a living from photography there is a fine line between the time spent and the money earned.”

We look forward to further information and posts regarding the the refining of these "improvements".
02 July 2007 at 14:13 Sally @ bill bachman

Another (much briefer) comment.

Regarding AlamyMeasures data, is the purpose of this to be able to analyse clicks, views and sales, thus leading to an understanding of one's AlamyRank?

Perhaps a more useful tool for photographers would be for Alamy to capture and report the keyword string searched for each sale, thus providing instant feedback on the success and relevancy of one's keywording. Overtime, analysis of such data would show what are KEY keywords, and also why the researcher chose the shot: was it for the rectangular shape concept or the wheat harvest aerial??

The above 2 points go hand in hand: what use are the statistics if you don't know what specific criteria has defined the research ("islands", "Japan", house" are all very nebulous)
04 July 2007 at 16:29 Bob croxford

"Bob (or Dan), could you explain what you mean by the "diversity search" (or point me to the relevant explanation on alamy website). I'm unclear whether images that string similar keywords together (but where images are quite different) will be classified as similars by virtue of the keywords that appear. If so, this would be disastrous, as one of the most efficient methods of keywording efficiently and consistently is via strings of related keywords."

When the AlamyRank was first introduced many specialists noticed that their collections had slipped way down the pages. As an example a wildlife specialist who spends as much as 6 months on a trip is now below snapshots taken in zoos because if a photographer has just one image of a subject he will come higher in the rankings. Alamy are making the selection diverse at the expense of photographers who know their subject well.

This can only get worse as more photographers use a greater number of psuedonyms to get higher in the ranking and professional specialists with better things to do than play ranking games go elsewhere.
05 July 2007 at 17:55 John Peter

Here is one for the lawyers amongst you. Did you notice the new field: "Does this picture contain property that needs a release?" As I understand the laws in England and Scotland you are generally entitled to take pictures from a public place even if you are photographing private property. What about other countries? How do you know always you are on public ground? What happens if you say "no" and you are wrong? If you say "yes" and do not provide a property release I guess you will make no sales. I wonder if this field will become compulsory? If it does I guess it will cause a lot of headache for many contributors. Any views amongst UK and overseas contributors?
05 July 2007 at 23:22 Dennis

Is there not differences between the entitlement to "take" a picture of a private property from a public place, and
publishing or selling the picture for either editorial or commercial purposes.

There are plenty of money and chaos (thus even more profits) in legal arguments of word twisting.
13 July 2007 at 10:26 Peter phipp

Property release is a minefield. There should just be an option to add "release available": Very few photographers who submit travel images are ever able to get a property release or have the time to get one arranged. However the lack of property release should definetely NOT cause a lower image search value. It is up to the purchaser to use a bit of common sense if they need to feature and name a specific "property" in an advertisment for example.
27 July 2007 at 14:11 tkent

"Is there not differences between the entitlement to "take" a picture of a private property from a public place, and publishing or selling the picture for either editorial or commercial purposes?"

No, the law is quite clear. Sec.62 of the UK Copyright Act states that the copyright in a building is not infringed by making a graphic work or photograph (or film) of it, nor is the copyright infringed by the issue to the public of copies of such.

The owner of a building is within his rights to prohibit photography inside a building as a condition of entry (as happens in the case of some art galleries, shopping centres, etc.), but anyone is free to take and use images of an exterior without the need for a release.

Thus, the correct answer to the question "Does this picture contain property that needs a release?" is clearly "No" if the picture is of a public building in the UK.
31 July 2007 at 16:16 FOTOLINCS

"...and image producers will spend more time describing their pictures..."
If I were an editor I would go ape at some of the misleading captions. I have just put "Firecrest" into the search engine and sure enough, there are some very obvious GOLDcrests, different species entirely. "BLUE TIT" you would think that would be a safe bet for an accurate description but there again, on page one a picture of two swallow chicks described as Blue Tits. Little Owl, page one, a pic of an EAGLE OWL !!! Jackdaw...and on and on it goes. If an editor uses one of these pics how is he/she to know until it is too late. If you are not sure of your id I would suggest you research subject, it reflects very badly on those of us who have gone to the trouble of checking.
12 August 2007 at 09:50 Jim laws

In common with Fotolincs, I appeal to all Contributors to produce accurate captions. I guess, in common with many other Contributors, I research stock taken from around my area to avoid duplication of similar subject matter. This action has thrown up some instances where captions describing landscape images have been incorrectly stated, ie, wrong place names. I cringe! Please, more care, this does indeed reflect badly on all concerned.
31 August 2007 at 18:08 ian reynolds

I hope that there is some sort if keywording structure we can download to iview and image info toolkit or something like that, ths first attept at this 4-5 years go, was very bad. But things move on and I's sure there will be some problems cheers ian
23 September 2007 at 22:36 maciek

"tkent" "Thus, the correct answer to the question "Does this picture contain property that needs a release?" is clearly "No" if the picture is of a public building in the UK. "

But please tell me how is situation with private building? Do I need release if I took picture from public place ( street ) of somebody house ( private building) ???
25 September 2007 at 23:37 marc wilson

So with the new keywording hierarchy...can we relate the alamy list of keywords: Literal/subject, broad subject, attributes, location, interaction, concepts, style/techniques, to be an order of relevance also?
I.E. should our 'essential' keywords be coming from the literal keywords, the 'main' from say broad to concept, and the 'comprehensive' from the style keywords?

If not is there some guide or general train of thought of what type of keywords are essential, etc?

Thanks.
27 September 2007 at 19:15 Don pels

Photographers do not need releases. Publishers need releases. http://www.danheller.com/model-release-primer has a great overview of releases. I would recommend every photographer read it.
20 October 2007 at 16:07 andrew parker

The new Alamy keywording hierarchy works from the most important downwards to the least important.

The editorial keyword hierarchy that I follow works from the most general downwards to the most specific.

Big, big problem.

It's a huge undertaking to change systems for any of us with large numbers of editorial images, and even then we will have to have one system for Alamy, and another for our other customers working from our own locally stored archive.

Does anyone know of DAM software that mirrors the Alamy system? Or of any way it can be embedded as IPTC data?

It's entirely unclear to me whether the search engine will or will not start to ignore images keyworded under the old system.

I wonder if Alamy will remember as it becomes more successful that goodwill towards the contributor was the origin of its success.

Andrew Parker
25 October 2007 at 18:40 Paul Collis

Dear Alamy,
what we are telling you here is not only in the contributors' interest, it's in your interest, because our interests are one and the same: sell more photos.
Please listen carefully:

IPTC IPTC IPTC IPTC IPTC IPTC IPTC IPTC IPTC IPTC IPTC IPTC IPTC IPTC IPTC IPTC

'Editorial' button 'Editorial' button 'Editorial' button 'Editorial' button 'Editorial use only' button 'Editorial use only' button 'Editorial use only' button 'Editorial use only' button

Model / Property Release Necessary? Publisher decides.
Model / Property Release Necessary? Publisher decides.
Model / Property Release Necessary? Publisher decides.
Model / Property Release Necessary? Publisher decides.
10 November 2007 at 00:28 Roger

Spot on, Paul.

Alamy has created an absolutely ridiculous situation. How do I know if an image needs a model/property release? It depends on the use to which the publisher intends to put it. The rules are different from country to country but Alamy's guidance and requirements are plainly based on the US position which which might be entirely irrelevant.
10 November 2007 at 01:00 Roger

Further to my last post, I set out my message to Alamy after last year's contributor forum. I was promised a reply but never heard anything more.

"I am still puzzled by the model and property aspects of 'Alamy Safe'. I
understand exactly what you are saying and why you are saying it but I fail to understand how it can possibly work. Apart from photos of the sky, every image will include people, property or both and to qualify for 'Alamy Safe' you are seeking releases. When you consider that every area of land, and every tree & blade of grass and every stone & every brick on it, belongs to
someone, no photograph will qualify without a release. It is not
practicable, even if remotely possible, to obtain releases on this scale.

I know that the USA is a litigious country and that we [in the UK] are rapidly catching up but it is going beyond the bounds of reason for Alamy customers to require releases for general views of people and places, as used in travel brochures or postcards for instance.

Something else worthy of mention is section 58, Terrorism Act 2000. This
makes it an offence, punishable by up to ten years in prison, for any person to collect or make a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a terrorist, or for any person to possess such a record. This expressly includes a photographic record. There are reported incidents of photographers being challenged by the police, albeit in a friendly way, when taking pictures of the Thames and its bridges at night, for example. OK, it is a defence for a person charged to show that he had a reasonable excuse for his action or possession and if he raises a sufficient argument it is for the prosecution to disprove his case, but this law has to be interpreted and enforced sensibly or we'll all end up in prison.

So too must the need for model and property releases be interpreted
sensibly.

I am not suggesting that your policy for 'Alamy Safe' is flawed and, of
course, it is for the customer to decide whether he needs releases or not.I am just pointing out that if the over-zealous American practice catches on to a great extent commercial photography will become a thing of the past. If I shoot a general view of Piccadily Circus, I will inevitably include buildings whose owners will doubtless decline to give a release but, in this
country [UK], I do not believe a property release is always necessary. English Heritage includes many photographs of listed buildings on its web site and they are there with or without the owner's permission provided they were taken from publicly accessible land, subject to the possibility of a 10-year exemption for residential buildings only.

Quite where all that takes us I don't know but it raises issues which I was
unable to pursue fully at Friday's presentation. Food for further thought, perhaps."

Any further thought by Alamy has made the situation hopeless for the photographer. The new Does This Picture Needs a Property Release field is mandatory but impossible to complete for the reasons previously expressed.

Roger
06 February 2008 at 11:09 VP Online

Interesting article, thanks.

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25 October 2007 at 18:40 Paul Collis

10 November 2007 at 00:28 Roger

10 November 2007 at 01:00 Roger

06 February 2008 at 11:09 VP Online