News

Happy holidays

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:28:00 GMT

© dov makabawWe wanted to let you know that the Alamy Content team will be operating with reduced staff levels over the festive period. Response times on queries sent to Member Services will be longer than usual. QC times will also be longer as per our previous blog.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Here at Alamy we are excited about the future, our News service is growing rapidly and we'll be adding Stock Video in 2012. We continue to grow in an industry that has its challenges but continues to offer up new opportunities for our photographers and picture providers.Thank you for your continued support and for being instrumental in helping us achieve our goals.

We'd like to take this opportunity to wish all of our contributors a very happy holiday season and here's to a great 2012.

Best wishes,

The Alamy Content team

2011 Christmas QC times

Alamy Quality Control team. — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:46:00 GMT

24th - 27th December 2011
31st December - 2nd January 2012

Quality Control (QC) times will take longer than usual. Turnaround times will be back to normal by the 11th January.We apologise for any delays experienced during this period.

A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the QC team.

VMRelease™ now accepted at Alamy

James Allsworth - Video Content Executive — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 14:42:00 GMT

VMRelease™The need to have releases for your content is becoming increasingly important to clients in today's market, but carrying around print outs and pens on top of your camera gear can be an added hassle that you just don't need.

We're therefore happy to announce that we are now accepting releases produced by VMRelease, providing you with a convenient way to add value to your shots via an intuitive iPhone app that lets you produce releases on the go.

Use the app to create your own personal or company profile, capture images of your subject/property, input contact details, obtain signatures, send and store, all in 6 simple steps. Once you transfer your releases from the app, you can upload them to Alamy in the usual way via the "Assign release(s)" tab via image attributes in "Manage Images".

For more information visit the VMRelease website.

Scheduled downtime this weekend

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 15:30:00 GMT

We need to undertake some essential maintenance on Saturday the 26th of November. During this time the entire Alamy site will be unavailable including all the contributor facing elements (upload, manage images etc). The work is scheduled to run from 2.30 am (UK time) through to 7.30 am (UK time).

Please note that we will still be able to receive News images via FTP during this downtime.

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 2.30 am (UK time) on the 26th as they may fail to reach us if they are still uploading during the time that the work starts.

We've reduced our payment threshold

Rob Singer - Contributor Services Executive — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 08:44:00 GMT

This lower threshold, coupled with the continued 60% commission contributors earn with each Alamy sale, means that you now have to make even fewer sales before getting paid.

With this new threshold in place we estimate that the number of contributors we pay will increase by 80% in the next pay run.

Alamy News

James Hall - Head of News — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 09:39:00 GMT

© Paul ConroyToday Alamy launches its dedicated news, sport and entertainment service for contributors and customers. The changes we are introducing today will revolutionise what we can do with our news pictures and how we can generate sales.

We have built a service which makes it hassle free for contributors to get their news, sport and entertainment images to us and enables us to be far more proactive in selling them on to our customers.

We hope that these changes will encourage you to send more news, sport and entertainment images to Alamy. Photographers still keep 60 per cent of any licences which we sell on their behalf. And of course, you don’t have to worry about transferring your news images to stock – we’ll do that for you.

There are ten changes we have made to our news service which I would like to highlight:

A “push” service to customers through which we will send them our best news, sport and entertainment images.
A super-fast FTP upload tool for committed news photographers.
The opening up of the existing web-based upload route to hundreds’ more Alamy contributors who have an exemplary quality control history.
Changes to the Alamy news feed.
New rules and demands on caption and date taken information.
Alamy staff to actively police the news feed.
A clearer definition of news.
A new request for stunning non-live images.
A dedicated Alamy news telephone number for contributors.
Changes to the way we deal with metadata to make life easier for contributors.

Alamy pushing images to customers

We will be pushing news, sport and entertainment images to customers via FTP. We intend to build a reputation for quality and will be selective in what we choose to send. We will be sending our customers the best images with captions that conform to our caption guidelines. The final decision on what is sent will be Alamy’s.

News FTP upload

News FTP upload will give news agencies and photojournalists a more efficient way of sending large quantities of images to Alamy. You can apply for FTP upload through your My Alamy page.

Web upload extended to hundreds more contributors

We have given news web upload privileges to hundreds of photographers we consider to have an outstanding quality control history. Our aim is to help those who want to take the odd news, sport or entertainment picture to be able to upload them quickly to our feed.

News feed changes

We have made some changes to the news feed to make it an effective shop window for our contributors’ news, sport and entertainment images.

Alamy staff will swap the group image which represents a set of images if it believes there is a stronger one in the set. The text under a group image will now be a short headline describing what the images in the set are of. This will be generated from the IPTC Headline field. It can be further edited by Alamy staff if necessary.

New image order rules have been introduced for the feed which will place images which are between 24 hours and 48 hours old behind those which have been taken in the last 24 hours, regardless of when the images are uploaded. If you want your images to be at the front of the feed when you upload them, you must upload them within 24 hours.

Once an image is older than 48 hours, it will regarded as editorial stock and will pass over to the main stock collection.

New rules and demands on caption and date taken information

We want to eliminate bad captioning and wrongly dated images. This means we will expect more from news photographers in the first place (see our caption guidelines). Alamy may ask photographers to improve their captions and correct errors in date taken. We may edit captions ourselves if necessary. We have extended the caption limit to 300 characters for news sport and entertainment images.

Alamy staff will actively police the news feed

The news feed will be actively policed. Alamy staff may edit image caption information, the choice of a group image, the group headline etc. to correct mistakes and improve images’ chances of selling. Images which we believe are not newsworthy will be removed from the news feed and will be placed back in the main stock collection. If contributors repeatedly send us images with poor metadata or images which are not suitable for the feed, they may have their news privileges taken away.

Clearer definition of news

We are interested in any news, sport or entertainment images which could grace the pages of our customers’ publications, whether in print or online. This could be anything from stunning images of a major breaking live news event to a great “picture of the day” type image, which would make a fantastic standalone photo. If it is a really hot day and you have a beautiful image which captures that – send it to us. If you have an amazing image from the festival you have been attending – send it to us. If you have got a picture of a celebrity out and about shopping in New York – send it to us; if you have an amusing picture of an animal in the snow – send it to us.

And non-Live pictures too

In addition, we are looking for less time sensitive standalone type imagery which we can sell to the world’s newspapers and news websites. In these cases, please do not upload the images immediately to the news feed, but email us the details to news@alamy.com. We would like to be able to have full control over how and when to sell this kind of imagery to our customers. We may even have to write a short news story to go with the images to maximise our chances of selling them. What are we looking for? If you have just come back from a safari in Kenya and have an extraordinary set of images of a cheetah fighting off a lion – email us; if you have just come back from a diving trip under the sea ice in Antarctica – email us the details; if you have just completed your almost microscopic study of stick insects and have some great images – email us.

A new Alamy news number

I and other Alamy staff dealing with news images can be reached by contributors on a new number: +44 (0)1235 844 690. This number is for genuine calls about news images you may have taken, or are about to take. Non time-sensitive communications should be made by email to news@alamy.com. Again this is only for news queries or communications. Regular contributor queries should still go to Member Services.

Changes to the way we deal with metadata for news, sport and entertainment images

We have made changes to how we deal with metadata for news images to make life much easier for contributors. More can be found on this in our news image Q&A.

As you can see, we have introduced a large number of changes. The alterations to the site have made it easier than ever for you to file us your pictures and have enabled us to push images to customers for the first time.

So, what would I like from our contributors? Simple really: brilliant, high quality news, sport and entertainment images filed as quickly as you can. Together we can become a potent force in news as we have become in stock.

This is not the end of the changes. Over the coming months we will be introducing more developments to enhance our news offering. I will keep you posted.

Alamy Video: where we're at and how to get involved

James Allsworth - Video Content Executive — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 15:39:00 GMT

You may recall reading a previous blog post we published at the start of the year, looking to hear from potential video contributors. Well, 10 months on and we've got lots of fantastic content on board from some premier suppliers - and we're still looking to increase our contributor base for video as we move into and beyond 2012. With a likely launch to customers arriving in January, we've already processed thousands of videos and are currently very busy developing and testing the best ways to integrate them within our current framework. The test search results look great and we're really excited about the launch. We're taking every step to ensure that video has no negative impact on the workings of the site for the stills side of things.

We're not yet live to customers but we are working with contributors, so what are we looking for? Well, as before, we are still only looking to work with established agencies/collections/individuals who already have a strong collection of motion content. If you're still in the 'experimental' phase of your video production, it's not the right time to be getting involved. We will look to widen the contributor process in due course, but for now we are looking for the experts to get things rolling. In terms of content, we're looking to mirror our popular encyclopaedic approach undertaken with stills and cover subjects of everything and anything. This goes for quirky, rare, non HD material all the way up to full HD studio lifestyle shoots.

On a technical level we're pretty flexible provided your content fits up to the common industry standards. We can accept a number of file formats and codecs, but you will have to submit content via hard drive at this stage. Other upload options for the future are being explored.

If you're interested in contributing, drop me an email (jamesallsworth@alamy.com) and we can discuss further. Please be armed with some detail as to how many clips you have potentially available and some links to a selection of your work.

Changes to our payment system - you can now get paid via PayPal

Rob Singer - Contributor Services Executive — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 10:15:00 GMT

We are now offering PayPal – we can pay you in GBP, USD or EUR via PayPal. If you opt for PayPal we will send your payment so that you do not pay any PayPal fees.

If you do not have a PayPal account or would like to know more please see the PayPal website.
If you already have a PayPal account and would like to be paid this way please enter your PayPal details by logging into My Alamy, selecting Change your Payment and Tax details and then selecting Change details.
To be paid by PayPal in the October payrun you need to update your details by October 2nd.

Because PayPal and funds transfer are faster and more efficient we are no longer supporting cheques. Cheques can get lost in the post and can take days to arrive. Remember, we do not charge any fees for paying you by funds transfer or PayPal.

To save you money we are also removing the option of wire transfer in USD for contributors based in the US. If you are set up for wire transfers you need to opt for transfer via ACH, this means your bank should not charge you for the incoming payments because they will no longer be a wire transfer. For this we need your bank's 9 digit routing code which will be on the bottom of your checks to the left of your account number.

We will also be removing the option of payment in Euros by wire transfer to banks located outside of the SEPA agreement area. Wire transfer payments will now only be available to banks outside of the US or Europe in USD or GBP.

For more information on how we pay you please see the financial transactions page on our website.

As always, if you have any questions please email Member Services.

Search engine will not update on Friday 9th Sept

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 09:05:00 GMT

Unfortunately the Alamy search engine will not update on Friday 9th September. This means that the next update will be Monday 12th September. Apologies for the inconvenience.

‘100% Royalties’ - a new Alamy project for students

Emily Hoskin — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 11:16:00 GMT

Here at Alamy we have engaged with students in the past but we are now taking this one step further. We are proud to launch 100% Royalties, a project which gives student contributors 100% of the money on any sales they make through Alamy for two years. Although at first this might seem like a crazy idea we see this as an investment in the future. We know that it is not easy to get started in this industry and talented students often do not know how to make money from their images. The 100% royalties project is a great opportunity for students to learn about how the business side of photography works, and make money from their images while studying.

Students are the picture buyers and suppliers of the future. This project will introduce stock photography to the next generation. We are proud to be known as a photographer friendly agency, and alongside our work with the YPA we think this will be a great opportunity for emerging photographic talent.

Alamy students signed up to the 100% royalties project will operate under the same contract as all our contributors but will be given 100% of the money for 2 years. Images from participating students will be visible on the site in exactly the same way as those from standard contributors and they will be subject to the same submission, AlamyRank and keywording criteria.

We are initially working with educational institutions in the UK and the US and we are targeting universities who excel in visual media and design. There is a cap on the number of students who can sign up to the project in the first year and there will be a robust verification process when students sign up to Alamy Students, which allows us to be confident that only those eligible can register.

Commenting on the project, Alan Capel, head of content at Alamy, said:

“Choosing to give away 100% represents a bold step, and one which I’m pretty sure has not been taken by anyone in this industry previously. We believe this initiative offers extraordinary benefits to the students and to Alamy. These talented photographers get financial support and learn first hand about the realities of the stock photo world. We are confident that we’ll see fresh exciting imagery and we’ll be engaging with the picture suppliers and buyers of the future. We’ve not been afraid to throw away the rule book in the past and we are doing it again, I’m delighted that this time we are encouraging young photographers who are at the forefront of creative trends. We’ll be using face to face contact and social media to spread the word. We want Alamy to rapidly become synonymous with encouraging student talent and launching photographic careers"

David Carpenter, Senior Lecturer in Photography, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, added:

“This is a brilliant initiative proposed by a forward-thinking company. It should enable the students to realise what’s required of them in the field of professional photography, whilst also offering them the potential to earn some money when starting out in the profession.”

We have launched a new area of the site which is dedicated to the student project. We have also launched @alamystudents on Twitter and will be posting relevant student news on our Facebook page.