News

Manage Images v2.2 issues

James Allsworth - Content Executive — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:26:00 GMT

We are currently investigating user issues with Manage Images v2.2.

We can confirm there is a known issue with the latest update of firefox (3.6) being used on Mac.

We are investigating a number of other possible issues but for now we can only suggest trying an alternative browser.

Many thanks for your patience.

The British Wildlife Photography Awards 2010

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:54:00 GMT

The British Wildlife Photography Awards 2010

Please see below for the press release announcing the British Wildlife Photography Awards.

Please note that Alamy do not benefit financially from your participation.

The British Wildlife Photography Awards 2010

A competition celebrating the diversity of the natural history of the British Isles
Call for entries as the competion opens
Win a prestigious award, up to £20,000 worth of prizes and exposure in a nationwide touring exhibition and accompanying book

After a successful first year and widely acclaimed photographic exhibition celebrating British wildlife, the BWPA announced the launch of its second competition, now open for entries.

To reflect that 2010 has been declared International Year of Biodiversity by the United Nations, the competition includes a special award for conservation photography and a new category dedicated to British biodiversity and native species under threat. In the year when the UN Convention on Biological Diversity is highlighting the unprecedented global loss of species, these two new additions will focus attention on how our native species are coping.

This year‘s British Wildlife Photography Awards are sponsored by Natural England.

Dr Helen Phillips, chief executive, said: “In the International Year of Biodiversity, this competition is a great way of inspiring people to really appreciate the wonders of this country’s wildlife. I hope photographers of all ages will pick up their cameras and get outside to enjoy the fantastic array of animals and plants living all around us.”

There are ten categories to excite the imagination, as well as two special awards to encourage participation by young people, schools and youth community groups.

Animal Portraits
Animal Behavior
Urban Wildlife
Hidden Britain
Coast and Marine
Wildlife in my Back Yard
Habitat
British Seasons
International Year of Biodoversity
The 2020VISION Special Award

The competition is also supported by: WWF, The Wildlife Trusts, RSPB, Countryside Council for Wales, Outdoor Photography Magazine, Scottish Natural Heritage, The National Trust and The National Trust for Scotland.

With a prize fund of up to £20,000 and the overall winner receiving a cash prize of £5,000, the images receiving judges’ commendations will be included in a series of nationwide exhibitions throughout 2010/2011, including a prestigious launch and awards event in London in October.

For more detailed information about the competition, how to enter, a full description of categories, shooting tips, and terms & conditions, please visit: www.bwpawards.org

The closing date is Friday 4 June 2010.

Scheduled downtime this weekend

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:50:00 GMT

We need to undertake some essential maintenance on Saturday the 6th of March and Sunday 7th March. During this time the contributor facing elements (upload, manage images etc) of the site will be unavailable. The work is scheduled to run from 4.00 am (UK time) on Saturday through to 7.00 am (UK time) on Sunday.

The entire site will also be down on Sunday 7th from 1:30 am (UK time) to 7:00 am (UK time).

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. We'll be making sure the site is back up and running as soon as possible but we cannot guarantee that it will not take longer.

To avoid any possible complications for any uploads during this time, we recommend for you to not start uploading any images close to 4.00 am (UK time) on the 6th as they may fail to reach us if they are still uploading during the time that the work starts.

2009 summary by Alamy CEO James West

James West - CEO — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:22:00 GMT

Quarter 4 2009 wraps up last year with a 13% drop in revenue from 2008 for the Alamy group, resulting in a better than expected figure from our 15-20% forecast.

Our financial position remains strong however, with a 6.5% operating profit last year - just a couple of percentage points below our 'business as usual' number.

Despite the challenging year we have been investing in new infrastructure, product, and putting marketing plans together for a suite of new services coming online later this year. Our US sales operation is also continuing to grow. To support the sales team we have added a US customer service division (handling inbound calls and emails).

We think it is sensible to remain cautious about the near term - there's too much uncertainty to make bold statements about returning to growth anytime soon. However, we are still optimistic about the long term. Alamy has come through the first year of the worst recession in living memory with a healthy cash balance and a healthy operating profit.

£8 Million to contributors in 2009 plus Alamy's top earners

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:41:00 GMT

© Larry LilacOccasionally we'll read blogs and forums where the relative fortunes of photographers on Alamy and other sites are discussed. It's impossible to ever get a feel for reality from these anecdotal snippets, so we wanted to share some key facts with our contributors.

In 2009 we paid out over £8 Million to our contributors with around £5 Million of that going to individual photographers.

Our three top selling contributors earned (after Alamy has taken its commision) the following rounded sums from Alamy:

£130,000 ($210,000)
£90,000 ($150,000)
£75,000 ($120,000)

We feel it’s even more important than ever that we return the largest share of the sale to the creator of the image. We hope that this can in turn lead to the production of a steady supply of high quality imagery.

It has certainly been a tough year but we have a number of initiatives planned for 2010 for both customers and contributors alike.

Keep an eye on the blog for updates and if you don't already do so follow AlamyContribs on Twitter.

Forum issues - UPDATE - fixed

James Allsworth - Content Executive — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:00:00 GMT

Some of you may be experiencing some issues whilst trying to log in and view the forum in the form of a message saying your account has been suspended. We have not applied these bans to accounts and are currently investigating the issue.

We appreciate your patience whilst we resolve the problem.

Update - this should now be fixed.

New York office update

James Allsworth - Content Executive — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:36:00 GMT

© Robert Harding Picture Library LtdIt's been just over a year since our office in New York opened so although we do not have figures to share, we would like to give you a general update of how things are going.

Moving into a new market and making an impact is not a short term thing, but we are already well established and have steadily grown the team with currently 14 staff working from the US office.

We have already managed to place ourselves as the top (and sometimes sole) supplier to a number of large organisations which we would have found more difficult to do before the office was open.

We are building new business steadily, especially in the ad/design/consumer product and book publishing areas. Our UK mentors (who were in place to provide continuity and training) will be returning home over the next few months and we are very positive about the future outlook for this part of our business.

Uploading Releases to Alamy

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:29:00 GMT

We will shortly be releasing a new version of Manage Images to support model and property release upload. For new images, if you say you have a model or property release, you will be prompted to upload the release before the image is made available for sale.

To keep things simple the process will be integrated into the Manage Images tool with the following features:

Flexible formats - we will accept both JPEGs and PDFs.
Batch upload facility - attach releases to single images or multiple images at a time.
Upload once - access previously uploaded releases and apply them to other images in your collection.

This does not prevent you submitting Rights Managed non-released people or property pictures, these will still be relevant for the editorial market.

Attaching releases to your images will help to increase your reach and appeal to our growing customer base in advertising and design. We recommend you also upload and assign releases to images you already have on Alamy.

We are in the final testing phase of this project and we'll keep you updated on the blog as we roll it out.

Soft or Lacking Definition

QC team — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:11:00 GMT

When Quality Control (QC) applies failure reasons to images we try to be as specific as possible, giving reasons as to why a particular image has failed QC. Sometimes images fail for a combination of reasons, or quite simply the image looks unacceptably soft but there are no obvious indications as to why this is. On the occasions where it isn’t possible to pinpoint a definitive reason(s) for softness we will still use the failure reason ‘soft or lacking definition’.

We understand that contributors who failed QC for this reason may require more clarification so we have updated our explanation for ‘soft or lacking definition’, which can also be read below:

Soft or lacking definition rejection explanation

The image may appear soft and/or lacking definition for one or more of the following reasons:

The image has been interpolated beyond its limitations or an unsuitable camera has been used.
The image is slightly out of focus/a long exposure and lens with image stabilisation has been used while the camera is mounted to a tripod.
The image has been over-manipulated (such as overuse of noise reduction) causing degradation in image quality.
There is slight camera shake/shake that was not evident before the image was upsized.
A lens with poor optics has been used resulting in loss of fine detail.
A dedicated film scanner hasn’t been used/poor quality film scanned/image scanned poorly.

Longer QC times over the festive period

James Allsworth — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:06:00 GMT

Processing and QC times will take longer than usual, with some submissions taking up to 14 days to go through QC. Turnaround times for submissions will be back to normal by the 8th of January, and we apologise for any delays experienced during this closure.

Member Services support over this period will also be effected. We will not be able to respond to telephone queries from Wednesday 23rd of December until Monday the 4th of January. Email support will be available during these dates but response times may be longer than usual due to reduced cover.

From all the Content team here at Alamy, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.