Why the outrageous 25 image limit on stories?

Hi Chris,

Thank you for starting this discussion.

Indeed the question was posed by @Steve on Sun, 09/10/2011 - 11:37 by posting this question: "
One other thing, is there a hard and fast reason why there is a 25 photo limit on stories,"
(http://www.demotix.com/forum/help-us-make-new-upload-page-better#new)

And as Chris said some argue, amongst other reasons, that 25 images is more than enough for a story. And if I understand their arguments (and if I'm wrong it is my fault, of course) they argue that by carefully editing our photos and upload the best of the best (my words) 25 images would be enough.

Whilst I respect and fully understand the arguments put forward by the members of this school of though, I disagree with this position because there is no journalistic evidence to support this position: at least I think so.

With your permission I will post my long reply giving my journalist reasons why I don't support the 25 image limit. Actually there are two long posts, but my latest comments are enough for now.

And for those who don't want to read my long post this is the gist of my arguments:

1) the arguments put forward for the 25 images apply to any number of images we are allowed to upload.
2) our hot shot competitors do no have these limitations on their stories (although limitations do apply for print media).
3) things which we already know for a fact that editors want, many of us are not doing this anyway. So fewer images might not necessary increase the disciple that many have argued we should be aiming for with 25 images.

On the other hand I will accept a limitation, and I do support the present limitations, if this means the IT end at Demotix functions more efficiently, as Chris points out.

And since writing earlier this afternoon there is another reason why the 25 image limit is a valid limit and why we should support this limit whole heartedly, if it is the case, and this is that maybe it is not in the present business plan of Demotix to engage more editors to edit our stories.

But my bottom line is that whilst I will always support the limitations, IT reasons and Business reasons are not Journalistic reasons for a limit on the number of images per story.

best

Lawrence

Hi everyone:

this my post on the 25 image discussion from here:
Help us make the new Upload page better
http://www.demotix.com/forum/help-us-make-new-upload-page-better#new

and if you are interested in my earlier arguments you will find these here:
Mon, 10/10/2011 - 13:31
Help us make the new Upload page better
http://www.demotix.com/forum/help-us-make-new-upload-page-better#new

In this last post I argue why a 25 image limit is not an industry standard.

Re images per story: (apologies this is long)
Hello everyone,

I am beginning to think that this topic should be moved to its own discussion, but in the meantime…..

The only justification to limit the number of images per story if for IT reasons. Which of course, I can understand and a good enough reason for me to accept 25 images.

But an IT reason is not a journalistic reason. The main argument many of you have put forward for limiting the number images is to exclude those photos that are not the best of the best: ie rigorous editing. Yes, of course, but we should be doing this whether the limit is 5 images or 5,000 images. And in any case, there is no guarantee that the 25 we up loading are the best of the best, as opposed to up loading 50, or 500 or 5000. I’m afraid the argument to limit so that we up load our best of the best does not hold. We should always up loading the best of the best, period.

@Steve “Buyers are looking for top quality images, not mediocre shots, that tell the story.” Yes, of course, the question is what is a top quality image, what is a mediocre image and what are editors prepared to buy! From my experience (and not just photography) it is amazing what some people like and don’t like. It is one thing to upload technically poor images (camera and composition) for no reason at all and another to upload what we enjoy looking at. Don’t forget, that sometimes editors use a photo because it can be verified by looking at the other photos. I don’t remember where we discussed this, but a single photo has less value for an editor than a photo in a story, even if it is the same photo.

@Steve, “you happen to shoot 9 shots of the same banner as it comes down the street, how many of those shots should you realistically submit?”.... “only one, or two of them is of top quality, and needed to tell the unique story of that particular part of the event.” (Please refer to the actual post.) At face value this is true and valid, except of course we know, or at least I know because Demotix editors have told me so, those editors in many cases like to see both a portrait and a landscape version of a scene. We know this for a fact, and not guessing what an editor might do, so if we take this to its logical conclusion every image ought to be supplied both in landscape and portrait format, which leaves us with 12 images for a story and a joker!! However, I have just checked with the current headline stories on the front page and out of a total of 44 images for the three stories only 3 were in portrait format (0.068%) and none of them had an equivalent in landscape format. Of course, I am guilty of not supply both versions, and I know for a fact that editors appreciate having both versions in many cases.

But Steve gives the answer to the issue of taking nine shots of the banner in the same street; the answer is “tell the unique story.” Hence, the answer to which photo we upload must surely be the one that tells the unique story, after having passed the technical test.

But we are forgetting a hat trick here. Whilst individually, we are duty bound to upload our best of the best, our collective stories of an event give each of our individual stories more value than any individual story could possibly have. So Steve, whilst we are duty bound not to upload mediocre stories, someone’s mediocre photo might confirm the validity my photo and my photo might end up being chosen by an editor as a consequence.

However, during the summer disturbances in the centre of Madrid, whilst I was photographing the head banner in a peaceful demo protected by the police, my colleagues were photographic mayhem in Sol, which was part of the same event. So my photos of a peaceful demo with the head banner is various streets of Madrid is put into context with the stories of my colleagues. If you are telling a story you are telling a story, the question is what is part of the story and what is extra? I would argue that it is for editors to decide the extra part, whilst we have to keep to guideline set out by the editor, and sometimes maybe not, who knows!

@Chris, “If the local Z list Celebrity becomes international A list later this year/decade etc Then is the time to bring out the background pictures for a Feature Article. With pictures from past and present.”

Yes this is a valid solution except for two points: the competition already have the Z list on their servers, and secondly, assuming that the Demotix editor in London knows what we have on our hard drive, it might be too late by the time our images are on stream and assuming we are not on holiday etc. Hence, those of you who have images of celebs who were born before the war ought to have those images up and running on Demtix today!! (Yes, I know it sounds callous, but this our business)

@Chris “Incidentally one thing that is important is the story with the images and captions.” Let me first say that those of us who ignore Chris’s advice about matters journalistic do so at our own risk. Chris is right to emphasise the text side of the story especially, the captions. I should have made it clear before that I did not mean to diminish the importance of text in our reports, but unless we have some special or unique information the text should not over shadow the photos.

As for captions, Juliette complimented me for translating the messages on banners during a demonstration. It now takes me longer to file a demo story (I do start translating earlier), I do take Juliette’s comment as being the final authority on the subject: the law is that banners not written in English should be translated!! Hence, those of us who are showing images of placards not written in English without a translation are probably not captioning all that well.

To conclude, all the journalistic reasons given so far to limit the number of images per story, apply anyway whatever the number of images we are allowed to upload per story. Moreover, even when we do know for a fact what editors look at, many of us do not submit what is required. And finally, as I said before, neither the scientific evidence nor our big shot competitors support the idea of a limited number of images per story.

On the other hand, if limiting the number of images per story makes the IT operations and the filing of stories quicker and more efficient than I will be the first person to support this policy, and I do support it because this makes sense. But not, unfortunately, for the journalistic reasons given so far.

Best

Lawrence

There seems to be a big misunderstanding that because other organizations don't impose a limit that Demotix shouldn't.

This would be a correct assumption if the photographers contributing to Demotix were held to the same photographic standards as the "other" organizations, with the risk of loosing their jobs, or uploading privileges by not critically editing what they submit so there are only those pictures that tell the story they are reporting, not that some of their other pictures might also re-enforce some other contributor's interpretation of the event. The other contributor is also operating under these rules so that contributor is also submitting the pictures that tell his version of the story, and only submitting the few high quality pictures needed to do that. Thus by sticking to this standard there is no need to put a limit on how many can be uploaded because it is known that only the few best images that tell the story will be sent.

The editor will have the few top quality pictures he needs to make the decision on what goes in print to additionally tell the story (the picture tells a thousand words premise). You give that person less choices, and he can work faster in getting the news out. He knows that whichever picture he ends up using will be top quality, and tell the story. He doesn't have to figure that part out, and it speeds up his workflow, which is very critical in breaking news.

With today's high quality of digital resolution there is no longer the need to submit both a vertical, and horizontal shot of the same scene. A landscape shot has enough digital information that it can be cropped vertical (portrait format) if needed, and still have the required quality for the size it will be printer at. A 10meg pixel image will print at 16x24 inches without much problem if the original image is tack sharp. That gives allot of room for any cropping that needs to be done. A vertically shot image doesn't have as much of the scene in it so this same principal doesn't apply. Submit landscape format.

With most news agencies a few pictures are sent right away to break the story, then within a few hours some more pictures are sent to fill in the details of what the news that broke involves. There are strict rules in place in how you do this, and in what you upload by most other news agencies. Thus no need for a limit.

With so many new citizen photojournalists that use Demotix it is necessary to impose a limit mainly because of the inexperience in critically editing their own images, and again with Demotix if there was no limit most contributors would upload every single image they took at an event hoping someone with experience would find that one picture in the hundreds they sent that was good, and buy it.

No buyer/editor has the time or ambition to do this day in, and day out, so they expect the submitter to be the first line of critical editing, and in other organizations this is demanded more so than with Demotix. To the point that they don't have to worry about limiting what is sent in because of what is professionally expected.

Steve, what happens if I go to an event, as some one mentioned recently, where there are a LOT of celebrities from A-list to Z list. If there are more than 25 of them you may need to do 40-60 pictures. With the 25 picture limit that may need 3 stories 25+25+ 10 pictures.

You never know when the Z-list celebrity may become an A-list!! IF my pictures of all the Z-list people at the event are not on Demotix when they become A-list how will picture editors find them next year? If they are only on my hard drive I could miss sales!

Hello all,

To cut through the middle of all this and add the reasons.

We didn't have the 25 image cap a while ago, in fact publishers were trawling through around 100-200 images per story sometimes.

What happens is the queue of breaking news backs up, contributors don't caption 100 images, buyers don't like this. Individual captions, and 'who' tags in the individual fields are brilliant for picture buyers to search. The vast majority wouldn't caption all of those. If they were my own work id rather get them up and online, than sit there tagging. I'd be wrong as I am missing out on sales.

A 25 image cap is bite size enough for our global contributors from Chad, Djibouti and St Kitts and Nevis to upload and caption their images without internet failure - plus it sends a subconscious message to edit their sets down. It's also bitesize for publishers to sift through the good content and push them out.

You will find on this side that its not 100 images of A list celebrities, we would have to go through 100 images of whatever was on the camera. We don't have to remove images now from the sets.

When does your interest wane after cycling through 200 images of a bomb blast? Children with malnutrition? A listers? Now stand in the image buyers shoes, they look at thousands and thousands of images, more than me. They want the good content without cycling. Go to any major exhibition of a photojournalist and count the framed pieces.

If you clicked on a tweet that said "Occupy Wall Street protest hits Cape Town' - you may click it and be interested. If that set had over 300 images uploaded to it, would you sit there? Would a photo editor? A buyer for the Guardian?

Now, what is you have 100 red carpet images of A listers? Well at the present time you may have to upload into numerous sets, this still gets it onto the site.

Possibly in the future we may allow certain contributors to upload more on the promise they captions and keyword correctly, but this will need to be discussed at a later date once our new upload system is installed.

Stephen

I suspect that the people who are going to fit the criteria for no limit on images per story (good iconic images, good captions and full story) are going to be the people who are unlikely to exceed 25 images anyway.

Good Editing is the key.

Look at your target newspapers and magazines how many images per story do they use? The *maximum* i have seen is 15 for the biggest even in town for years on a slow news week. Even for an Armed Police siege (including the hostages leaving and criminal surrendering) the maximum used was 8 images. (including the image that was the whole of the front page!)

Most newspapers use 1 or 2 images. Magazines maybe 10-15 on a picture story. 25 images is plenty.

As Steve and Stephen have said (and Tom else where) Picture editors skim over many many images a day. If you have a small group they will pause and look. If a large group they will skim but not look in detail.....

If you have three stories of 25 images they will skim the first and *maybe* look at the next set but are highly unlikely to look at the third set. After s couple of times like this they will recognise your name and not bother looking at all.....

It is better to spend more time well captioning a few good images.

Hello Tom, thank you once again for your help. Best Lawrence

Stephen spelled it out perfectly. One thing I like about Demotix is watching some of the new photojournalists progress on their road to becoming exceptionally good at what they are doing. With each new submission it becomes obvious they are taking what they learn from the feedback at Demotix serious.

Having a 25 photo limit in what they can caption correctly, tag, and upload reminds me of my college days years, and years back (yeah it was longer than some of the contributors have been on this earth....lolol), and being given a writing assignment with a 25 page max. After spending days in the libraries, countless interview hours, creating loads of raw data to work with, it became clear that the problem wasn't in how I was going to find enough data to fill 25 pages, it was how I was going to successfully present what I found on the given subject in ONLY 25 pages, and as the assignments progressed the limit became less pages.

After repeated exercises in defining what actually deserved to go into the reports, it became easier to recognize what parts of the raw data were important, and what was just repetition of the facts told in a different manner. To get under that 25 page limit repeatedly a style started to develop in what I felt was the most important parts of the raw data I was given to work with. It became easier to eliminate all the fluff, and recognize the basic core of what all the raw data was saying, and use the minimum number of pages required to complete the report effectively, maintaining objectivity yet saying it in my style.

This same principle relates directly in critically editing photos. Tell the story in how you objectively want to tell it, not in a number of different ways hoping one of the ways will interest someone. This in the end has a better chance of confusing people about what you are trying to say, or present in your photo set then presenting a concise to the point picture story in your objective point of view.

I see some of the new contributors going through this same type of learning pattern in the photography they are posting with each new submission they make. They slowly submit less photos with their contribution, but what they are submitting has much more impact in telling the story than what they included in their submissions when they were first starting out with Demotix. I see some starting to develop a recognized style in how they present their objective interpretation of the story in their pictures. This makes it all worthwhile. When a buyer can look at a set of pictures, and tell who shot them before he reads the by-line, then you're becoming good at what you do.

We could take a recent story as an example. how about this one
http://www.demotix.com/news/869928/national-day-spain-military-parade

2nd picture is all backs of people.... 3 and 4 are better

Two of the parachute and flag in the air are near identical
we don't need two of the parachute landing.. the one with the flag spread is OK.

Next 3 are near identical and just show backs of people....

Next two of the salute are almost the same and one has principal figures looking down so skip it.

Fly past is nice but why 2?

Last two with the flag and pole are almost the same.

This leaves the 6 of the soldiers in the parade. Two with the flag holder are very similar....

I would have posted no more than 14 of those images......

(I have of course left myself open for a similar critique of any of my stories

Hello Everyone,

I will address individual comments at the end, but first my short overall comments.

1) I am not advocating that people dump their memory cards on Demotix. This is assumed as given, and those who do this should be given the right advice on how to do things.

2) All arguments regarding quality control and good editing apply to whatever we are doing and allowed to upload. This is not an issue about how many images a story needs, but how many best images do we have.

3) Number limits apply to newspapers and magazines and especially print media; photo news agencies are a different issue all together. But don’t take my word for it check out the competition and the competition of our key partners.

4) I agree that 25 images are a good comprise between story numbers and technical efficiency. BUT personally, I would prefer that such numbers are decided on real scientific evidence: maybe conduct research amongst photo buyers, find out why our competition do not have such limits, check out things like the paradox of choice if this is still valid (have not checked recently), how much information can a person handle objectively etc etc.

5) As we all agree tagging and captioning are the key here. It is a trade off between spending time captioning or uploading fast. But with forward thinking and planning the time it takes could be reduced.

6) On tagging again, thanks to Facebook we now know (some knew before Facebook) that there is technology that can recognize images, and does not rely on text to match images. So the chances are that in the future it would be much easier to check out thousands of images: astronomers have been doing this for many decades anyway.

7) What we really, really, need to focus on, is to learn, maybe from the experts amongst us, how to compose stories with photographs as the main medium and that still of interest to both the image buyer and the story buyer.

8) I have many times argued that there should be an editorial stock section on Demotix to submit our best quality orphan photos; thus reducing the pressure to add photos to stories. Today we have one of the largest partners who specialize in stock and editorial stock, but speaking for myself I don’t know how to submit my orphans to our partners via Demotix. And again, speaking for myself, I cannot see myself submitting my orphans anywhere other than through Demotix.

@Chris
- “Most newspapers use 1 or 2 images. Magazines maybe 10-15 on a picture story. 25 images is plenty.”
- But Chris we are a news agency, what are the thumb rules for agencies AND are our competitors a good guide to what may or may not be the industry practice?

- “If you have three stories of 25 images they will skim the first and *maybe* look at the next set but are highly unlikely to look at the third set”

- -Thank you Chris, you have persuaded me that I should title my different stories of the same event to reflect the content of the story rather than repeat the title for all stories. Thus: “People demonstrate against X” would be the lead story and maybe “Banners during the X Protest” would be the title of another story. What do you think?

@ Steve
“With today's high quality of digital resolution there is no longer the need to submit both a vertical, and horizontal shot of the same scene.”
I do this, but it is not good enough since an editor would still have to imagine the photo in portrait format, and that is just as bad as look at half a dozen extra images – it is more work for the brain literally.

“With most news agencies a few pictures are sent right away to break the story, then within a few hours some more pictures are sent to fill in the details of what the news that broke involves”
I am sure many of us do this, I am in the process of doing this today!

@Stephen
“We didn't have the 25 image cap a while ago, in fact publishers were trawling through around 100-200 images per story sometimes.”
Ah! the good old days when it took us all night to upload 15 images and still had to re do the last three photos in the morning! ITMT were the 150 (average) from the same person or from the event? And wouldn’t they still have the same problem today with more people reporting the same event? In Madrid we are more or less six active members, if we had to use our max images/p.s. that is still 150 images.

“Now, what is you have 100 red carpet images of A listers? Well at the present time you may have to upload into numerous sets, this still gets it onto the site.”
Thanks to a prompt from Chris (see @Chris above) I think I have found a way out. The title of the story should reflect the photos in the story: thus if out of 100 images of the A list, you had 15 of Celeb A, one of your stories would have the title : Celb A at Event B. What do you think?

Thanks

Lawrence

Lawrence, you are looking for ways to circumvent the problem not deal with it.

The problem is Demotix reporters need to edit the set of images to a few good ones not lots of average ones. For some of your recent stories I would have posted less than half the images you have put up.

For example on
http://www.demotix.com/news/870490/parachute-jump-starts-spains-national-day-parade

I would not have posted images 2,3, 5, 6 and 8

Also you need to check your captions and keywords...... on image 1 the keywords are

12 de October, acrobatic plane, dia nacional, flag of spain, Juan carols 1, king of Spain, military aircraft, military parade, national day of Spain, parachute, parachutist, plane, Queen Sophia, soldiers, the Queen

Why are the following keywords in an image of a parachutist?
aerobatic plane
Juan carols 1,
king of Spain,
military aircraft,
Queen Sophia,
the Queen

Good captions (you have room for 250 characters) and lots of *relevant* keywords.

Picture editors are looking for a *few* quality images. They need YOU to do part of the editing work yourself by only posting a few quality images. Not lots of similar ones.

As for thinly disguising mass of images with slightly different story names will not help. After a while picture editors will search for keywords but exclude others like. Your user name. So rather than standing more chance of of sales you will get no chance.

reply off to moderator *AGAIN*

I am going to give up posting to Demotix forums.

Patience, Chris - the tech team have a lot on their plate, and the forums, unfortunately, are quite far down the priorities list at the moment. I get notified when you post, so I'm making sure that they get displayed.

Understood. Thanks for keeping an eye on it.

Obviously Demotix has to concentrate on the parts of the web site that that will generate income. An income that pays the reporters, staff and the resources to maintain the social side of the site. ie the forum. As some one who runs a business I fully understand the position.

I would love to upload even half that limit, but can't due to limits on my broadband

Plus most of the time when I log into Demotix, it seems to take ages to do so (I am assuming that was the reason as to why it took so long to login). No offence to the OP, but I would welcome the limit of 25 photos per story

Hi,
I am not photojournalist, journalist or even photographer. I have a camera, I like to take photos and I thank this opportunity to show my work through Demotix.
A far as I know “About Demotix” says ; (1) Capture your NEWS with a mobile phone or camera; (2) Upload your STORY to Demotix; (3) Publish and sell your work to the world’s media. I understood I had to take the photos, select the photos to tell a story with the photos and upload them with captions and tags, etc.
What I see some people doing is; (1) Take as much photos as you can; (2) Upload as much photos as you can, even if you split a “story” into several sub stories; (3) Publish your work and expect that all of your photos go to Corbis site. Then you have much opportunity to sell them.
This summer I covered two festivals of music; one with two days of a reagge festival and the other with 22 concerts. I have several hours and thousands of photos in this work. I only uploaded one concert with 12 photos. Well I have to consider uploading all the photos splitting groups of photos and increase to possibilities of my work to be sold.
Best
Fernando

Hello Fernando,

the issue is not whether to play the numbers game, but to find a balance between providing enough good quality material from an event for editors to find the photos they want for a story and finding the point at which having an extra photo would be counter productive. My argument is that a cut off figure is not a journalistic criteria, but some other equally valid criteria. Other agencies do not seem to have a limit to a story, but despite the fact that they tend towards lower figures, this does not equate to a limit for a story.

As for your 12 photo report, the issue is not whether to split your mountain of photos into small chunks, but how many of your 12 photos did you sell?

The irony of you story, if I may, is that this suffers from the same drawback as if you file all the photos: if you file all your photos the editors may say that this guy has too many photos, but if you file only 12 photos after a 48 hr gig and 22 concerts the editors might say that after such a do, they can only come up with twelve photos.

The reality is that we have no idea what this point of equilibrium is for a story filed with a news agency. We have a fair idea of what that equilibrium is with end users and print media because they tell us and we can figure out for ourselves: someone who wants a photo for a story we know that their equilibrium is 1, and the equilibrium of a print media is the physical size of the media.

What we can say for sure and with a certain degree of confidence is that the right balance for a news agency lies somewhere between 1 photo and a 100. But one is too few unless it a unique exclusive and a hundred would take too long to process and file within the life span of a news story.

For those who are familiar with Parkinson's Law, you would recall the advice he gives for the best advert for a vacancy and that would be the advert that will only attract one applicant and they are the best possible person for the job!!

best

Lawrence

Lot's of good points here, and I can easily see both sides.

For me however it is much more straight forward. With the slow broadband we have here I just don't want to even do 25 images, never mind doing more.

If I was in Fernando's position then each of the concerts would be going up as individual stories, but there would be a main story to begin with.

So how do we approach the upcoming protests? Separate stories obviously as we can't add on.

I think this will be a huge test on the whole Demotix system over the coming day's and I can also see lots of issues arising because of thing's like this. I can see a lot of what Chris suggested with the "slightly different story names" as really it's going to be one story but being told over several day's (weeks?)

Edit to add:
Title: Occupy Protests World Wide, Day One.

You have to also break away from the norm.

25 images of a protest, every angle covered won't cut it sometimes. During the Egyptian protests, a photojournalist uploaded 7 stories in one day, each covering a different aspect of the same protest.

Female protesters using smart phones
Rock throwing
Placards with all of them translated.
The front of the rally
Police
The injured
The clean up.

Each was a separate story, each keyworded accordingly and each had its own back story. None had 'part 1, part 2 in the title. As when the image is sent, it is sent alone with the Title/Media Summary and Caption.

Now if you were to show all that in 25 images it would be difficult. It would also be hard to show all that in 100 images as its too much for them to cycle.

An editor may be selectively wanting images of injured people at the protest. You should always try to know your buyer.

Stephen

Ok, thanks for getting back here Stephen. I'll be bearing that in mind.

@Stephen: None had 'part 1, part 2 in the title.
-I’m guilty as charged on this one. But in my defence and that of many others, the 25 image limit was not well communicated when it was introduced and we were not prepared for it. In fact the first time this happened to me I thought that there was a tech/IT problem (I’m familiar with most of them!) so I split the story since 25 were going up, and of course titled 1 and 2. As far as I was concerned this was a work around until things were fixed, but was soon told that this was a new policy. But by the end of the day most had adopted this very bad habit of titling.

@Stephen: a photojournalist uploaded 7 stories in one day, each covering a different aspect of the same protest.
-This is the natural and obvious way to report a big event, otherwise, we’re just taking pretty pictures.

@Stephen Dickson: For me however it is much more straight forward. With the slow broadband we have here I just don't want to even do 25 images, never mind doing more.
@Richie: I would love to upload even half that limit, but can't due to limits on my broadband
-Stephen/Richie we’ve all been there, try releasing more memory space on your PC, clear cache, stop unnecessary background sw, check for viruses, check that your wi-fi is not being hacked etc. The problem is not, as a general rule, at the Demotix end but our home end. From the press centre at Cibeles I could upload 25img from the terminals there in about 20 seconds. From home, with a customised PC for speed and memory, I can upload within 15minutes on a normal day.

@Chris: For some of your recent stories I would have posted less than half the images you have put up. For example on http://www.demotix.com/news/870490/parachute-jump-starts-spains-national-day-parade
-Chris thank you for your excellent advice and apologies for replying late. Would you be so generous again and look at another story on mine maybe a demo: these are popular with new members so they have good guidance? Unfortunately, it is important that this specific story has as many images as possible and the way I tagged; I have explained to Tom why. Thanks.

Best

Lawrence

Thanks Stephen, best Lawrence

I pretty tuned into that type of stuff Lawernce Broadband here is just not good, then put mobile on top of that and well it's a for gone conclusion.

@Stephen Dickson That's terrible, I'm really sorry. Is there a chance of getting the telco to increase the speed, or maybe there is a quiet time when things can go faster.

Lawrence

Thanks Lawrence for the info, but I have been noticing recently a speed increase when logging in.

I personally think 25 images per story is too many. This is not a photographers blog to show off your work, it's a funnel to other media organisations and you hope you can sell a few images in the process if they get chosen. If you look at Reuters or NYT, you would be flat out getting them to take 20. Mostly its 5-10.
Demotix is for news with supporting images, not for documentary photography.

If you want to add your images for stock, Demotix will send them to Corbis but the jpeg image size is 17mb minimum. And don't moan about that, as the normal image size they take is 50mb jpeg. Why 50? So their clients can crop and resize without losing resolution. This is also why there is life left in MF film and scanning to digital becuase a big chunk of their clients are feature magazines.

My tuppence worth,

For me, 25 is plenty. I also submit to The Guardian. How many images per day do you think they get from their own group of freelance photographers? 20,000. Yes, thats right. How many staff do they sifting through this?...3. Anything to make life easy for them will be appreciated.

So I plan to make life easy for people who may buy my content. If I am hoping to rise above the rubbish, then its up to me to submit stories with photographs that are better than the tsunami of shots from the happy snappers.

I could not agree more Stephen. Picture editors will look at a small group of images... they will only very quickly scan a larger group and unless something really stands out and grabs them they will not look in detail.

Also after they start to recognise some photographers put in large numbers of pictures their search criterial may well be "keywords" and "NOT name" so they can avoid them........

I'm Ok with the 25 pictures limit. Most of the time, for a single story it's actually more than needed.

If "a picture is worth a thousand words..." then 25 pictures should adequately illustrate any single story, surely? We're not novelists. Or staging an exhibition.

Quite so. Re exhibitions... Having been to a few they are usually about 50 or so images from a whole career never mind one story.

Well, I doesn´t understand the point really. Selling directly to newspapers, I´m often asked to send less than half a dozend pictures covering an event like a basketball game. So 25 pictures aren´t a limit in fact.

At the other hand I did just my first upload after I left the board 18 months ago. Compared with my other agencies Demotix is the absolutely nightmare, because it tooks me more than an hour to open a story, add there six pictures and type in the forms allthing, which was registered in the IPTC-data yet.

And after this battle I was informed, that

"These are images which you have already uploaded but not yet attached to any stories. You can access them when creating a new story by clicking the "Existing images" button."

which means obviously, that the story went into data-nirvana.

I cann´t believe, that I´m such a fool being disabled to put six pictures into the portfolio of an agency.
I cann´t imagine, how I should provide pictures by this way from location just in time to Demotix - which means nowadays to be almost as fast as the guys working for Reuters, AP, N24 and dpa sitting beside me and
I wouldn´t even think about an once upload of more then ten pictures.

try using lightroom/ photo-mechanic with the demotix plugin.. pre caption and keyword... then load and attach to a "story" . You don't even have to add story text but ti does help the editors

@Peter: sorry that you had such trouble with that story. At the moment there can be a bug when you save the story and it looks like it hasn't gone through to the publishers.

I've taken a look at the workflow and it looks like you edited it twice after creating it - was that to try and add the pictures again?

If you can let us have any more detail about the problem you experienced, please send it to support{at}demotix.com so we can look into it properly.

Chris said:

"try using lightroom / photo-mechanic with the demotix plugin.. pre caption and keyword... then load and attach to a "story" . You don't even have to add story text but it does help the editors."

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Well, I had to use PM anyway, but my English isn´t the best and I would really prefer software exposing my native language. But that´s not the point.

Covering an event, I have only to cut and to tag the pictures and to upload them to the ftp-server of the agency - done, for me. Then, often even not a few minutes later, the agency blows the selected pictures out to the newspapers.

That´s the workflow here at Germany, because the newspapers are flooded by pictures of all great events.
The first look of the picture desk of a newspaper is going to the merchandise he got from subscription partners, because it´s paid yet and it´s for less.
If nothing acceptable there, the second look will be what´s coming in on their desktop software frequently (in this cathegory wins often the first pictures coming in and not necessary the best ones).
Only if they still haven´t got something they like, what happens eventually at every third case or less, they begin to look themselfes for pictures at platforms like picturemaxx or fotofinder and to the agencies, who are wellknown as specialised for that topic.
And if they still didn´t get anything after this, than also archives of the other agencies are frequented.

So the picture agencies here around sell less than 5% via their own archives. That´s why to load it is the very last step in their workflow. An autonomous archive is only important for agencies suppliing clients, who haven´t a subscription contract with one of the big players, who haven`t access to the picturemaxx-network (pretty expensive) and who even haven´t an own ftp-server. And just these clients pay at the end of the day between 7 Euros and eventually 25 Euros for a print ...

That´s a short summary, how selling pictures to editors works at Germany. Additional of course needs to know the submission deadline of the concerned newspaper. If the match begins at 7:30 p.m., so the agencies editor will instruct me eventually to send him half a dozend pictures within the first 30 minutes. He will ask me to stay up to the final cheers and than I´ll have to leave location, because the guys serving at the stadium or the sporthall are cleaning and going home.

Even if there´s a press conference, it wouldn´t mean, that I can pass there such a long time struggling with eventually not running server scripts - because understanding the background correctly, I had to create a story with a placeholding picture anyway, before the hot pictures can be added to it by the way You suggested.

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And for coming back to the topic:

Picture editors haven´t the time to folder a lot of pictures. They want us to come to the point, so the number of 25 is in most cases more than to much.
Covering a fair like the CeBIT, which runs over a week, You´ll have every day several different happenings, which are topics for their own story. A podium discussion with the premier minister of Lower Saxony is another point, than presenting the fairground of Microsoft, and the walkabout of the Federal Chancellor is a third one. Nowhere You´ll need more than 25 pictures to show to a stressed picture editor the high essentials of the event.

Tom wrote:

@Peter: sorry that you had such trouble with that story. At the moment there can be a bug when you save the story and it looks like it hasn't gone through to the publishers.

I've taken a look at the workflow and it looks like you edited it twice after creating it - was that to try and add the pictures again?

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Well, as I pointed out within my reply to Chris yet (excuse me, that I answered him first, even if he`ll see the reply only some days later, when it becomes revisioned), every obstacle between the ftp-upload and the acceptance by Your editors helps the competitors of Demotix (this discussion is not out of topic here, because it´s anyway obvious, that You´ll get even a not obstructed story including six pictures earlier than one including 24 pictures).

And of course - You knows Murphys law good enough - the obstacles are going to assemble, if the pictures are sold beforehand, the time to the submission deadline is running and consequently a not so experienced photographer becomes stressed.

That´s why I´d like to suggest almost in exceptional cases a way around the whole story-story.
In the first time being Demotixer, I was living at Frankfurt (Main) and asked to cover the inauguration of the former First Mayor of Hamburg, Christoph Ahlhaus, because nobody of the locals had at this time access to the parliament.
I sent the pictures via UMTS to the email-account of the european editor, because I didn´t have time to look for some terms missed for an outworked story in a dictionary, but also by this way I didn´t see them become part of the agency´s portfolio.

Peter: viellecht wäre es besser, auf Deutsch zu schreiben - ich glaube, ich werde deine Meinung besser verstehen.

hi peter I enjoyed reading your posts. although the bugs are really annoying I am sure they are part of the present development programme at demotix. I agree with you about uploading fast. I am sure that one day very soon demotix will be able to capitalize on this opportunity. it can be done because in the past it was done when it mattered. as for the 25 image limit this discussion is partly my fault. I still maintain that from a journalistic point of view a limit is not relevant. the irony is that the discussion was started before we had advertising on the public site. with advertising one needs as many eyeballs viewing the site as possible. and there is link between the number of photos and eyeballs. you can include more people in more photos.

Chris Hill asked:

"The question is one of editing the set of images. This is Should we be forced to edit down to less that 25 images for a story?"

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Shortly said: yes, because the clients haven´t time to flip throw a crowd of images.
Last example: the picture editor of the LVZ (Leipziger Volkszeitung) asked me on the telephone, to send not more than three pictures about the concerned basketball match. I sent two and one of them was printed.

Tom Barfield asked me "Peter: vielleicht wäre es besser, auf Deutsch zu schreiben - ich glaube, ich werde deine Meinung besser verstehen." (Peter, eventually You should write in german - I guess, I would understand Your opinion better).

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Well, thank You very much. It´s the first time, that I´m asked by a british guy to post in my native language. Of course I´m very happy to do so, but I have regards for the colleagues, who don´t understand german. That´s why this post will be a summary of my posts n-ro 35 and 36 at this discussion.

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35

Chris said:

"try using lightroom / photo-mechanic with the demotix plugin.. pre caption and keyword... then load and attach to a "story" . You don't even have to add story text but it does help the editors."

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Nun, ich müßte PM ohnehin nutzen, aber mein Englisch ist nicht das Beste und ich würde Software in meiner Muttersprache bei weitem bevorzugen. Aber das ist nicht der Punkt.

Wenn ich eine Veranstaltung abdecke, habe ich nur die Bilder zu beschneiden, zu verschlagworten und auf den ftp-Server der Agentur zu laden - dann ist die Arbeit für mich erledigt. Meistens verschickt die Agentur dann höchstens ein paar Minuten später davon ausgewählte Bilder an die Zeitungen.

So ist die Arbeitsweise in Deutschland, weil die Zeitungen mit Bildern aller wichtigen Veranstaltungen geradezu überschüttet werden. Der erste Blick der Bildredaktion gilt dann den Bildern von den Agenturen, mit denen sie einen Abonnementvertrag geschlossen haben, weil die vorbezahlt und billiger sind. Sollt sich darunter nichts akzeptables zum Thema finden, gilt der zweite Blick den Bildern, die auf ihrem Computer eingehen (in dieser Kategorie gewinnen oft die Bilder, die zuerst kommen und nicht unbedingt die besten).

Erst wenn sich auch darunter nichts brauchbares findet, beginnt die Redaktion, selbst nach Bildern auf Plattformen wie picturemaxx oder Fotofinder sowie Agenturen zu suchen, die sich für das Thema einen guten Ruf erworben haben. Und erst wenn sie auch dort nichts finden sollten, schauen sie sich auch einmal die Archive der übrigen Agenturen an.

Infolge dessen verkaufen die Bildagenturen hier in Deutschland nur zu etwa 5% oder weniger über das eigene Archiv. Und deshalb ist die Bestückung des Archives der allerletzte Schritt in der Arbeitsfolge. Ein autonomes Archiv ist nur für die Kunden wichtig, die keine Abonnementsverträge abgeschlossen haben, die nicht ans picturemaxx-Netzwerk angeschlossen sind und die nicht einmal einen ftp-Server haben. Und diese Kunden zahlen dann zwischen 7 Euro und 25 Euro für eine Veröffentlichung.

Das ist eine kurze Zusammenfassung, wie der Verkauf aktuellen Materials hier in Deutschland gehandhabt wird. Zusätzlich gilt es natürlich den Redaktionsschluß zu beachten. Beginnt eine Veranstaltung bspw. um 19:30 Uhr, wird mich der Bildredakteur der Agentur vielleicht bitten, ein halbes Dutzend Bilder während der ersten 30 Minuten zu schicken. Er wird mich bitten, bis zum Ende zu bleiben, um den Beifall des Publikums aufzunehmen. Und dann habe ich auch den Ort des Geschehens zu verlassen, weil man anfängt, den Raum aufzuräumen und zu reinigen.

Selbst wenn dort noch eine Pressekonferenz stattfinden sollte, kann ich nicht solange auf eventuell nicht laufende Server-Skripte warten. Denn wenn ich die Hintergründe richtig verstanden habe, können die Bilder erst dann an die Kunden weitergereicht werden, wenn sie in eine fertig ausgearbeitete Story eingebunden wurden und diese Story dann auch abgespeichert wurde.

Tom Barfield asked me "Peter: vielleicht wäre es besser, auf Deutsch zu schreiben - ich glaube, ich werde deine Meinung besser verstehen." (Peter, eventually You should write in german - I guess, I would understand Your opinion better).

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Well, thank You very much. It´s the first time, that I´m asked by a british guy to post in my native language. Of course I´m very happy to do so, but I have regards for the colleagues, who don´t understand german. That´s why this post will be a summary of my posts n-ro 35 and 36 at this discussion.

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36

Tom wrote:

@Peter: sorry that you had such trouble with that story. At the moment there can be a bug when you save the story and it looks like it hasn't gone through to the publishers.

I've taken a look at the workflow and it looks like you edited it twice after creating it - was that to try and add the pictures again?

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Nun, wie ich in meiner Antwort an Chris schon unterstrich, hilft jedes Problem auf dem Weg zwischen dem ftp-upload und dem Punkt, da Eure Bildredakteure die Bilder endlich zu sehen bekommen, nur Eurer Konkurrenz.
Die Diskussion driftet insofern schon nicht vom Thema ab, als Ihr ganz offensichtlich selbst bei einem reibungslosen Ablauf eine Story mit sechs Bildern viel früher als eine mit 24 Bildern haben würdet.

Und natürlich - Ihr kennt selbst Murphy`s Gesetz gut genug - treten die Probleme gerade dann gehäuft auf, wenn die Bilder schon vorweg verkauft sind, die Zeit bis zum Redaktionsschluß davonrennt und ein weniger erfahrener Fotograf anfängt nervös zu werden.

Deshalb würde ich Euch in außergewöhnlichen Situationen empfehlen, den Bildbearbeitungsaufwand abzukürzen. Wie ich gerade wieder erleben mußte, braucht Demotix mitunter schon allein für die Bildbehandlung durch den Server länger, als die Konkurrenten vom Drücken des Auslösers der Kamera bis zur Auslieferung an die Zeitungen. Und das qualifiziert Euch zur klassischen Zweitverwendungsagentur ab - also als eine Agentur, der man die Bilder erst dann gibt, wenn man die aktuellen Verkäufe abgewickelt und für das Verfassen von Artikeln genügend Zeit und Muße hat.

I have some understanding.... I Arbeitsweise in Deutschland (Munchen fur Siemens in 1995/6) but my German is not that good. Not speaking a foreign language is a failing of most Brits as the rest of the world learns English or American.

Demotix is comparatively young and small. I expect given time it will get smoother, faster and customised for specific market conditions. Most of the competition has been honing it's systems for 20 years.

Google translator is perfect in the discipline to get the translation to the native language of the reader more nebulous, than the original ...

Chris wrote:

"hi peter I enjoyed reading your posts. although the bugs are really annoying I am sure they are part of the present development programme at demotix."

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Well, it may be also a philosophical question: which purpose serves the stories? As I wrote yet, the workflow at other agencies is as simple and fast as possible: I put the pictures onto my folder at a ftp-Server, sometimes even directly from the cardreader - my job is it, to take pictures (in hot situations I could miss the greatest picture, meanwhile struggling with picture-processing). And the agency's editor takes the pictures at the next moment from the ftp-server, prepares it and forwardes it for example via ftp, the picturemaxx-functions or sendfirst to the desktop of the newspapers editors. When the ice hockey WM took place in Germany, the newspapers had the first pictures within less than ten minutes after the starting whistle at their websites!

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Chris continued:

"I agree with you about uploading fast. I am sure that one day very soon demotix will be able to capitalize on this opportunity. it can be done because in the past it was done when it mattered."

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Great to hear that, but I would be interested to know, how the detailed procedures would be in fact in a case of need.

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Chris continued:

"... as for the 25 image limit this discussion is partly my fault. I still maintain that from a journalistic point of view a limit is not relevant."

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Yes and no.
At first we have to accept the clients wishes. If they haven`t time to look into dozens of pictures to find out, what may be essential at the event (what is clearly a question of journalism), we have to take this fact in consideration or see them buy the pictures elsewhere. Also Demotix isn`t very often in the cmfy situation to be the sole supplier.

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Chris continued:

"the irony is that the discussion was started before we had advertising on the public site. with advertising one needs as many eyeballs viewing the site as possible. and there is link between the number of photos and eyeballs. you can include more people in more photos."

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The irony is, that picture editors of newspapers usually aren`t potential target audience of any online advertising, because they´re more than enough stressed to do their job and so are suspected to run advertise-blockers.

Gruss Gott Peter

I am not sure I said some of the things you mention above.
I think that 25 images is usually more than enough. Picture editors see LOTS of images. you need to get your set down to a small number of very good images.

Advertising? not bothered. As you say the buyers don't see the advertising. Their access is though a different portal.

Hello Chris,

You´re right - I mistyped Your name instead of the name of Lawrence. And I´m glad to see, that our opinions aren´t so different, as it may seem reading the discussion-opener written by You.

By the way:
"Gruess Gott" is a speciality of the bavarians, who`s mayority are catholics. Outside Bavaria the people not so strongly beliefing in god say "Guten Tag", which will be understood as a shortage of "Ich wünsche einen guten Tag!" (I wish You a good day - or "Have a nice day", as britians say that).

All the best to You,
Peter

What I see allot of, and this directly relates to how many pictures are adequate, are the number of copied captions from one pictures to the next. If you can't come up with a unique caption for a picture does it belong in the set? If one caption fits the whole story then so does just one picture. If only half the pictures have unique captions and the rest have copied captions then only half were worth sending in my opinion.

Hi Peter, yes I know the greeting is Bavarian. (I spent a lot of time in Munchen).

The discussion opener was intentionally provocative. I rarely post 25 images for any story.

Steve's point is a very good one: IF the picture can use the same caption as another picture should it be there?

I keep seeing people who "don't have time" to caption and keyword posting a lot of images all using the same 2 line caption and 3 keywords. In this game without good key wording and captions there is no point in loading an image let alone 25 similar ones for the same story.

What this highlights is that photo journalism is not the same as photography. You can be a good and enthusiastic photographer and be no use as a photo journalist. Also a photo Journalist does not have to be a good photographer particularly as modern cameras can take care of a lot of the technical aspects if not the composition.

Steve pointed out:

"What I see allot of, and this directly relates to how many pictures are adequate, are the number of copied captions from one pictures to the next. ..."

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A great point - if the fact of 1:1 copied captures really means, that there is nearly no difference between the statements of the pictures and every of them can really stand instead of the others.

There may be also other reasons, not so outstanding language skills of the photographer and lack of time uploading, for example. At actual pictures the caption contains the intormations about the event, which can be typed into the IPTC-tagging software beforehand and eventually the names of the persons being visible.

Gentlemen,

Thank you for continuing this thread. PJ's must understand that images get sent to the client as follows.

Title/Caption/Media summary.

Any repeats in each of these is frustrating for the editor on the receiving end. AP make a big move to make sure repeats get banished. Its also frustrating on both the publishing end http://www.demotix.com/blog/926912/avoiding-captioning-frustrations

Looking at the World Press Photo awards today, doubtful any of those captions were a repeat of the last. There is always something to add. A repeat of the caption means you didn't move much when shooting the second image. If you hardly move during your shoot, then 25 images is more than enough of the same style.

Lawrence shoots on a cat walk, he is bound by those rules, he shoots what comes down the runway. The caption's can be the same unless he knows the intricacies of the fabric used in each fashion set, which is hard. Lawrence adds value with keywords, which makes up for it.

But in a protest or a feature, each caption is gold dust. Each of your shots should convey a different message to the last, after all your research. This will aid in clients finding it, activists discovering it, and families and politicians debating it once found. 'A man shouts during a protest' - Where was he from, why was he shouting, why did you choose him to shoot anyway, bearded man? Man in a big leather jacket? What protest? What did he shout!?

You have a lot of text to play with once you omit the text you put in the Summary. Contributors do complain sometimes with the character count, but you can make this up in the captions - its what I do daily.

Help us help you ;)

25 is enough for one view, as repeated on an old post. We had Egyptian protesters uploading 4/5 stories from one hour at a protest in Jan 2011, each had 25 images, each held a different theme. 'Women with mobile phones', Activists with stones' 'Police violence' 'Mass crowd shots in Tahrir'.

Each story could then be marketed, and yes he sold a lot.

Stephen

Thank you Stephen for clarifying the issue even further.

It is true that we are a bit restricted when covering the catwalk itself. But we are also lucky in Madrid that there is enough space in the pit to be creative. This season I managed get a front row place with a seat to boot and the other photographers kindly respected my place so it would have been bad form not to use that place. Thi quite wisely changed her angles sometimes.

Strictly speaking we are not allowed to go where the seats for the guests are; only photographers can stand up in the pit, everyone else must be seated during the show. At the end it boils down to whether the security people allow a photographer to be somewhere that is not the pit. One must remember that the set up here is no different from a cinema or a theatre, ifema are bound by strict safety regulations.

I adopt the attitude that I cover the f.week as a news reporter and not as a fashion photographer so I am after fact photos and I feel I shouldn’t bend the safety rules just for a different angle or a pretty picture; unless I’m in the pit. I’ll have no problem if I thought there was public interest issue involved, but speaking for myself so far I have found the set up and event very professionally run and extremely well organized.

For me the backstage is more important because this is where the human activity takes place and for me that is news. Backstage I am prepared to stand my ground within reason but like the other professional photographers (there are many who aren’t in my opinion) we go out of our way not to interfere with the backstage people. This explains why even my backstage photography tends to be the same style. It also explains why I tend to cover one catwalk backstage; the other catwalk is more restrictive backstage. And although in the past I covered the “other” catwalk backstage, I feel I would be in the way if I covered it backstage so I try not to do it too often.

Why is this important? I don’t remember who said this but someone once said that fashion photography is about the clothes (and not the pretty models). Which brings me to the debate at hand. I do try to supplement the obvious captions with key words, but basically during the f.week it is really a matter of whether an editor wants to cover a designer or not; maybe more elaboration might be useful when the images become stock. And since a fashion show is about the clothes and design I feel that we should offer a good coverage of a designer’s collection. As far as I know Demotix is one of the very few places where one can find a really comprehensive coverage of a collection from a Spanish fashion designer.

Now that I am on the subject, when I am covering backstage I always try to include enough of the outfit when I take close up photos of the models: enough to identify the model with the designer and the season.

I do admit that maybe I should revisit some of my photos and add even more key words.

In the meantime would it be possible to set up the system so it regularly sends us a reminder about the importance of captioning and key words? In my case, a reminder every six hours 24/7 would be just about right!!

Best
Lawrence