Alamy news

iView Collaboration

We are pleased to announce an exciting new collaboration with iView designed to ease the process of submitting images to Alamy. We helped iView create the 'Alamy Wizard', a free plug-in to be used with iView's MediaPro 3 software for photographers.

The wizard enables you to validate your images and output a file containing all the metadata we need to add your images to the site.

We are delighted that iView are offering Alamy photographers a 15% discount on MediaPro 3. iView's website provides more details about this offer.

How the wizard helps your workflow

Edit your images ensuring your files meet our technical criteria, and then:

1. Use the Alamy Wizard to validate your images and check they meet our technical criteria. It will collate your photos for submission and create a text data file named "Package Index.txt".
2. Burn the collated images to disc, using your preferred software, and send it to us.
3. When you see your images displayed under Prepare images for sale in Manage my images, email the Package Index file to memberservices@alamy.com.

We will apply the data in the Package Index file to the images and send you a report, before your images go on sale.

Yan Calotychos, Managing Director of iView Multimedia said, "By listening to and understanding the needs of pro photographers, we know that they want a more efficient way to sell their images via online stock photography services. The Alamy Wizard is another tool in MediaPro 3.0 that empowers professional photographers to manage their creativity, working smarter and more efficiently. Alamy is a perfect partner for us because they share our philosophy of enabling photographers the freedom to work the way they want to."

Alan Capel, Head of Content at Alamy said, "We want Alamy to be the largest and fastest search engine for stock photography. Providing pro photographers with an easier and faster way to place images with us increases our catalogue and widens our appeal to customers. MediaPro is a very effective cataloguing solution, and now fits technically as well as philosophically with Alamy."

Please note that this collaboration offers you an alternative route to allocating metadata to images, of course the online method still remains in place.

Who reads contracts anyway?

We want to emphasise to you the importance of being familiar with the Alamy Contributor Agreement (your contract). From time to time we are contacted by a contributor about a particular issue and when we refer them to the contract they are genuinely surprised by what they find. Our intention is to be as photographer friendly as possible and we hope that you find the agreement transparent and straightforward.

We have had a small number of cases recently where images submitted to us had incorrect model release information. Similarly, some image captions have proved to be incorrect. It is vital to ensure the accuracy of this information as customers may purchase an image based on this data.

In such cases, we try to avoid any legal repercussions for the contributor, but please be familiar with clauses 10 f, g and h.

By ensuring that the metadata you supply is correct you help us maintain the integrity of Alamy's collection in addition to preserving our strong reputation with clients and protecting yourself against legal action.

London College of Communication and Alamy

We continue to collaborate with the London College of Communication. In January, Alan Capel, Alamy's Head of Content, visited the college and gave a talk to the photography students. The session included an overview of the Stock Industry in general and an explanation of how Alamy fits into this bigger picture. Alan also emphasised how all photographers can take advantage of Alamy's model, from the experienced stock shooter to the talented student. Many photographic courses tend to deal with the technical and aesthetic aspects of photography and don't address the business end; Alamy's work with The London College of Communication and others seeks to fill this gap.

© Alistair Dove

Congratulations

Congratulations to Alistair Dove who received an honourable mention in the 2005 Nikon Small World competition, with the image shown here.

Alamy photographer Bill Bachmann has recently had another book published, entitled "Send Me Anywhere". The book includes a selection of Bill's best images from his extensive travels to over 150 countries from the top of the world (above the Arctic Circle) to the bottom (below the Antarctic Circle.)

Congratulations to Alex Koloskov who was the National Photo Awards contest monthly winner, with image AW5Y00. Alex was also the Digitally Enhanced Award of Excellence Winner, with image A10FW3.

If you've won a photography award recently, had a photography book published or similar, we'd love to hear from you - please email memberservices@alamy.com. We may be able to feature you in the next edition of Contributor Source.

Jobs at Alamy

You may be interested in joining our team. We advertise any vacancies, both in our UK and India offices, in our job section. If you know anyone, whom you feel may be suited to any of these positions, please direct them to www.alamy.com/jobs.

Payment details - important

May we remind you of the importance of ensuring that you have the correct payment details in your Alamy account.

If you move house, you need to ensure that in addition to providing your new contact address in the 'Change your contact details' section of 'My Alamy', that you also update your payment address in 'Change your payment and tax details' if you are paid by cheque. Updating your contact address will not automatically update your payment address.

For a cheque, you must enter the information in your account like this:

Cheque payee: Mr A Smith
Address: 1, South Street, Oxford, Oxfordshire, OX2 56H, United Kingdom

Similarly, if you are paid by funds transfer, it is advisable to check that your banking details are correct so we can process your payments as swiftly as possible, when you are due payment. For a funds transfer, you must enter the information in your account like this:

Account name: This is the beneficiary name, usually either your name or your company's name.
Name of bank: Barclays Bank
Account number: e.g. 01234567 (or IBAN number if paid in Euros)
Routing code: Choose appropriate from list below:

Sterling: Sort Code
US Dollars: Fed Wire; Chips Universal; Chips Participant; SWIFT
Euros: SWIFT
Australian Dollars: BSB
Rest of World: SWIFT
Address: Bank's Address

Contacting us

Please appreciate that we have over 6000 contributors, so in the first instance, please email memberservices@alamy.com. We monitor this email box constantly and we will respond as soon as we can. Please avoid calling customer services as you may block a sales call.