I try to get to Belfast Pride most years and send the pictures to Alamy Live News. I don’t think I’ve ever sold any as news but the occasional one has sold after it moved from News to the main collection.
The first Belfast Pride Parade was, unbelievably, in 1991. The years really do pass quicker as you get older and change happens fast. It would’ve been around 100 people and few would’ve bothered watching them. Now thousands turn out to watch with large companies like Sainsbury’s and Asda represented in the Parade. The police even take part!
My main motive in going this year, apart from taking photographs, was to experiment with delivering images to Alamy faster. In the past when submitting to Live News I had travelled home and uploaded the photographs from my main computer. This I am told is not the way it should be done. Images should be sent within minutes not hours.
Some time ago I had bought an App called PressIPTC that allowed you to upload images to an Android tablet or even phone and FTP them. I had never got round to using it before and thinking this would be an ideal opportunity decided I would try it on an Android tablet I have. The night before I managed to get it set up, added the IPTC information I would include, tested the connection via my iPhone and went to bed feeling confident.
Failure! I took some pictures at the start of the parade and went back to the car to send them off. I had expected to have to do it in the street or at best a coffee shop but I’d managed to get parked nearby and thought the peace and quiet of my car would be more conducive to dealing with iffy wireless connections and strange software. I know these things rarely work as they should first or even sixth time. I loaded the photographs onto the tablet, got a connection via my iPhone and couldn’t get the pictures to go. I made quite a few further attempts but couldn’t get it to work. That saying about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result popped into my mind. I’m not sure its right when your’e dealing with computers but I left it and went back to the parade for more photographs. Later I went home and sent the images to Alamy Live News as I’ve always done.
I’ve looked at Press IPTC again and still can’t get it to work. It hasn’t been updated for 3 years and I suppose its possible that with the updates to Android it simply may not work anymore. My knowledge on such things is limited. I’ve checked online but found little about the App and the website is no longer there.
Shuttersnitch for the iPad/iPhone is similar to Press IPTC but after my experience I’m reluctant to travel the same route and spend yet more time and money at this, albeit with a different operating system. Perhaps sometime in the future I’ll revisit it.
I’ve resurrected an old Netbook with a proper keyboard and a slot to put the memory card in. That’s the way forward if I can find suitable software. There are also questions on the screen quality and processing power but I’m hopeful. Its not ideal when I’m trying to keep weight down but I’ll see how it goes.
I’ve posted a few images below and and you can see more here.
