Blog – Page 13 – Riccarpics

Exclusivity – Worth it?

Alamy has about 155 million images available for licensing and say they have the world’s most diverse stock photo collection. In early December they announced that in January they would announce they were increasing their commission from 50% to 60%. An increase of 20%.

The Alamy forum erupted in a tirade of condemnation. Feelings ran high. Alamy said little and the venting continued for a few hundred posts. Then they announced that images exclusive to them would continue to attract 50% commission.

The issue has calmed for now, on the forum anyway. It will kick off again in January when the actual announcement is made, but it’s unlikely to gain much traction and the vast majority of contributors do not air their views on the forum.

Prices in stock photography have been falling for some years and many agencies have closed. As you would expect the board at Alamy will do whatever they feel is in the best interests of the company. This episode is a reminder that the future they see for Alamy may not align with the interests of contributing photographers as closely as in the past.

Will it be financially worth it licensing images exclusively through Alamy? Possibly for a few, for others probably no.

My last sale through Alamy was licensed to a National Newspaper for $8.59 and I will receive $4.30. After February I will receive $3.44, if it’s not exclusive. Yes, some sales are much larger but I’ve had smaller as well. Sales are rarely large enough to get excited about.

I will continue to upload but few will be exclusive.

An interesting start to 2019.

Happy New Year.

Storm Diana

We’re lucky in Northern Ireland when it comes to the weather. It‘s mild. It rarely gets too warm in summer and in winter rarely drops much below freezing. When storms get to us they’re usually winding down or just brush us as they pass by.

The latest storm to pass by is Diana. It’s giving Southern Ireland a hard time and although there’s a yellow warning about winds its not expected to cause many problems for us.

The best place for me to get dramatic images that include wind and sea, without travelling far and without putting myself in danger, is Donaghadee. It’s five miles away and while Bangor is in the mouth of Belfast Lough and somewhat sheltered, Donaghadee is exposed to the Atlantic.

The tail end of storm Diana hits Northern Ireland. — Water, water everywhere

Rain on Strangford Lough

I haven’t been to Castle Espie WWT Centre as often as usual this year. Last week I went motivated by the realisation that my yearly membership is due in January.

Castle Espie is on the shores of Strangford Lough, the largest sea lough in the British Isles. They have designated it a Marine Conservation Zone and a Special Area of Conservation under the EU Habitats Directive. It’s so big it can accommodate nearly the entire population of Light Bellied Brent Geese when they winter there.

The geese leave Canada in late summer. They travel across Greenland, stop briefly in Iceland to refuel and then on to Ireland. They arrive from late August onwards exhausted, hungry and ready for the nutritious eelgrass that grows in abundance on the lough. About twenty-five thousand of them spend winter there and this means, although Castle Espie is always worth a visit, it is especially so in Autumn when the geese arrive.

Last week when I went it was raining, and it was windy. No worries – I imagined dramatic images with sheets of rain gusting over the lough. I should know better. When I got there Scrabo Tower, which sits opposite, above the lough, was barely visible. There was plenty of rain but it was constant drizzle, not the windblown sheets I had hoped for. I waited and wished I’d brought a flask of coffee.

Eventually, it cleared, Scrabo Tower emerged and some Brent Geese even appeared. I got photographs, not the photographs I had imagined, but that’s rarely the case anyway.

Brent Geese fly on Strangford Lough. Scrabo Tower, is in the background partially obscured by rain. Up to thirty thousand Brent Geese travel from the Canadian Arctic to winter on Strangford Lough

Rain over Strangford Lough. Scrabo Tower is in the background partially obscured by rain. Up to thirty thousand Brent Geese travel from the Canadian Arctic to winter on Strangford Lough

The Entries

I’ve had a very loose ongoing project about The Entries rattling around in my head for years and wrote briefly about Pottinger’s Entry in an earlier post. The Entries or The Belfast Entries mostly run between High Street and Ann Street and date back to around 1630. In those days they led to the waterfront as what is now High Street was then the Farset river.

The problem I’ve always had with The Entries is that its challenging to make an interesting photograph. Pottinger’s Entry is the most photogenic – there is the Morning Star Victorian pub and arches at each end. The others are not so interesting and some show signs of neglect.

Joy's Entry at Ann Street — The Jailhouse, Joy’s Entry, Belfast. Previously called McCracken’s the bar has been extended

Porringer's Entry - The Morning Star — Porringer’s Entry – The Morning Star

Joy's Entry at High Street — Joy’s Entry at High Street

The Mermaid Inn, Wilson's Court — The Mermaid Inn, Wilson’s Court

Wilson's Court at High Street — Wilson’s Court at High Street

Bank of the Four Johns

The Bank Buildings, Castle Street, Belfast was built in 1785 and was originally known as the Bank of the Four Johns because the four founders shared that Christian name. The bank collapsed around the early 1800’s and became the residence of the Church of Ireland Bishop of Down and Connor.

Interestingly or gruesomely, depending on your outlook, the area directly in front of the building was used for public executions until 1816.

In 1853 the building was taken on by a wholesale drapery company and later became a retail department store with the upper floors being used as wholesale and warehouse area.

It was bought by House of Frazer in 1969 and later Boots the chemist. Boots moved out in 1975 when the building was badly damaged by fire after an IRA bomb and the present owners, Primark took possession in 1979.

On 28 August this year fire broke out on the fifth floor.

I photographed what was left the next day and it was only today while tidying up some of my photographs I came across this photograph that I had taken on the run up to Christmas 2016. The after the fire photograph is at the bottom.

Thankfully there were no injuries but the staff at both Primark and neighbouring businesses are now faced with an uncertain future. The surrounding area has been cordoned off, as the building is unsafe, with premises inside the cordon having to close. Pedestrians and traffic have been diverted, further reducing footfall to the nearby shops that have been able to continue trading.

There has been a campaign involving some local celebrities to promote the city and the council has committed funds to ease things but its a situation that is going to affect the livelihoods of many people in these already uncertain times with Brexit on the horizon.

The morning after

Every year, in September, we have a Culture Night in Belfast and this year was the 10th anniversary. The night now attracts over 100,000 people to the various events both in the street and in bars and restaurants. These range from mural painting and street entertainers, that tend to just pop up, to more formal events like choirs singing at the Cathedral and live music in the various bars and restaurants. This year there were over 250 events. Originally confined to Cathedral Quarter Culture Night now spreads across the city.

The night is family friendly and marketed as the biggest event in Belfast’s cultural calendar – put simply Its a Big Night.

I think I’ve only missed one year when I was laid up with an injured knee and in the last few years I’ve taken photographs mainly for myself rather than stock.

The next day I was back in Belfast and thought, while there, I should grab some pictures of ‘the morning after.’ With over 100,000 people in the streets the night before I expected some breakages and rubbish – lots of rubbish and photographs of rubbish can be good for stock. They suggest pollution, recycling and green issues as well as general environmental challenges to list a few subjects.

I readily admit that I didn’t really search for rubbish, I didn’t think I would have too. I happened to be in the city and expected to be able to easily grab a few pics of discarded waste and untidiness while there. These photographs are among the best I got. The streets were surprisingly tidy. It would seem that Belfast, as well as getting better every year at organising large events, is getting better at clearing away the mess the next morning and getting the city back to normal.

Rubbish discarded on a paved area — Discarded rubbish

I didn’t take many photographs the previous evening but here are a couple. The first is Fresh Garbage, a clothes shop that also sells incense, smoking accessories, jewellery and lots of other stuff.

This is The Duke of York Bar in Commercial Court. It sells beer and has the biggest selection of whiskeys I’ve seen.

Mobile Workflow

A couple of posts back I wrote about my attempt to get news away quicker than I had been doing and my failed attempt using Press IPTC for Android. I spent considerable time on that App but couldn’t get it to work – I still haven’t. I looked at Shuttersnitch but was reluctant to go there as it seemed similar to Press IPTC albeit on iOS. Another App called Filterstorm looked interesting but it hadn’t been updated for a couple of years. It’s also in the back of my mind and its probably just me, but I’ve found that often some of these apps take me more time to set up and master than I’m going to save using them and I don’t submit to Alamy News all that often.

Anyway Google was my friend and after a lot of reading on the App store I’ve found two relatively simple apps that seem to be more or less what I want – MetaGear and Easy FTP. Metagear allows batch edit of IPTC and Easy FTP to send the pics off. There are many FTP Apps available but not all seemed as intuitive to use as Easy FTP. Again probably me rather than the Apps.

I tried my new workflow out the day after a fire at the Primark Store in Belfast. The building had very badly damaged and the Fire Brigade were still there the next day. I photographed the damaged building and went off in the direction of Starbucks to work on making a selection and sending them off. This presented a problem, not with the workflow as such but getting somewhere to sit to put the workflow into operation. Starbucks at lunch time is a very busy place with a queue and few seats. Indeed it was like that in all the coffee shops I tried. Back to the car again – where it all went reasonably smoothly and I managed to send four images to Alamy Live News.

Although I’m happy now that I can use the iPad to send off images quickly it is far from ideal. A brief outline of my workflow follows.

I selected photographs on the camera screen and transferred them to the iPad one by one using the Panasonic App. Images imported into the iPad go into the Camera Roll rather than where you would like them to go and for some reason they are renamed on import. This means when the images are imported into Lightroom Classic on my computer later it can be difficult to identify the specific images sent off from the iPad. After import to the iPad I have another quick look and import the keepers into Lightroom mobile. At this stage I delete the images from the Camera Roll. I straighten the photographs and possibly adjust the curves in Lightroom (I’m working with jpegs so they need little adjustment) and then export them back to the Camera Roll. This is why I deleted them earlier. Lightroom allows you to export images to Files on the iPad but as far as I can find Metagear will only work on images in the Camera Roll. I title, caption and keyword the photographs in Metagear and then send them off using Easy FTP with my iPad tethered to my phone.

Surprisingly you don’t seem to be able to batch caption and keyword images in Lightroom Mobile and on export the keywords are removed anyway. Why you would want to keyword images and then export them without the keywords I can’t explain but the software seems designed that way.

I’ve just read over the procedure above and there must be an easier way. The wish that you could use Photo Mechanic on an iPad was a sentiment I read often while researching this workflow but t I gather Camera Bits have no plans to go there.

The iPad is a great piece of kit but for this its a grind. It may be I’m asking too much from it. The Apps don’t work well together and iOS doesn’t help. I’ve read that Lightroom will export fifteen images only at a time and others have experienced difficulty importing images with the Apple card reader. It feels that everything you want to do presents yet another problem that requires a workaround first.

I have an iPad already so I’ll work with it. I may have another look at Shuttersnitch and Filterstorm depending on how often I use my iPad for processing photographs. From what I’ve read I believe that it may be possible with these apps to import photographs directly into Files on the iPad meaning, if I understand correctly, they wouldn’t get renamed. Both Apps may also be able to connect directly to my camera, Filterstorm has some editing capabilities and both have built in FTP thereby reducing the number of Apps I need to use. Whether these points are enough to overcome the sentiments I have outlined in the first paragraph remains to be seen.

If I was starting from scratch however I’d be looking at a Surface Pro or a MacBook Air with Photo Mechanic.

If anyone has any observations or views I’d be very grateful to read them.

Pottinger’s Entry

An entry is what people from Belfast call an alley.

“The Belfast Entries” or simply “The Entries” are the alleys that mostly run from Ann Street through to High Street, Belfast. They have been described as, “The close knit passageways where Belfast was born and bred.” They date from a time when the geography of the city was very different from now. It is believed that The Entries led to bridges that crossed the Farset River, now flowing through a culvert underneath High Street.

Pottinger’s Entry is the most accessible of The Entries and hosts the popular Morning Star bar, dating from Victorian times. With a brick arched passageway at the Ann Street end, where you will often find a busker and an ornate metal arch at the High Street end, it is probably the most photogenic.

I’ll try and cover some of the others in the future.