fotoLibra And Metadata
July 4th, 2013If you read my previous posting about the CEPIC Conference, where I was asked to deliver a speech on metadata 24 hours before having to give it, I threatened to post as much of it as I could remember on this blog. Well, here it is:
“Many of you may not have heard of fotoLibra. This is the first CEPIC conference we’ve attended. So to give you a little background, fotoLibra is 10 years old, we have 750,000 Rights-Managed and Royalty-Free images, 90% RM, 10% RF, of which 500,000 are unique to us. Despite our small size and our relative newness, we rank fourth among general rights-managed picture libraries in the UK in the number of website visitors we get.
Unlike the majority of people who start picture libraries, I’m not a photographer; I am just a man who takes photographs. I come from a book publishing background, and by inclination I’m an historian.
Of course six months after I became a picture librarian I knew it all, I knew everything, and I turned up at a BAPLA metadata meeting with the solution to everyone’s problems: DOIs — Digital Object Identifiers. DOIs are widely used in academic publishing, and the concept is hard to fault. One persistent identifier, one long number, would be embedded in the digital object so it could not be stripped out, like versions of Adobe Photoshop strip out embedded IPTC metadata, like Facebook and Twitter routinely strip metadata.
The joy was that the DOI wasn’t in itself the metadata, it was merely a pointer to where the metadata was stored. And this data could be enhanced and extended, so rights information could be added or revised and the DOI would always direct you to the latest data.
A friend of mine, Rob Wilson, was in charge of DOIs at HMSO, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. He gave me 50,000 of them to get started with. He explained to me in great detail what they did and what they were all about, but I’ve never been able to understand a word Rob says.
After he left HMSO, the allocation of DOIs was taken over by another company. A bright-eyed (presumably) and bushy-tailed sales exec got in touch to say they would now be supplying fotoLibra with DOIs from now on. “The great news,” he enthused, “is that from now they’ll only cost you a dollar a year.”
That’s $1 per image. For 750,000 images. Every year. Persistently. For ever.
We no longer use DOIs.
Rob is now for the Application Developer for the PLUS Coalition.* Like the DOI, the PLUS identifier is a persistent embeddable string which refers to an external metadata source. To me it looks like the way forward for stock agencies and picture libraries.
A little anecdote about Rob: we were in South Wales and he had a meeting to go to, so he dropped me off at his parents’ house for an hour. They were a charming, elderly couple, and they made me tea and gave me a bun. After about ten minutes, Rob’s father leaned forward and asked me, “How long have you known Rob?”
“Oh, about ten years,” I answered.
“Tell me,” he said, “have you ever understood a word that he says?”
What was always of prime importance to me, wearing my historian’s hat, was the writing on the back of the photograph. How else do you know what’s in the picture, what it’s all about? That’s how I describe metadata to people who still don’t know the word; like a distinguished presenter I heard on BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House programme the other Sunday. He had only just come across the word metadata, and he was busily poo-poohing it. Clearly we have a long way to go in educating people.
I’m a member of a Facebook group (I hate it that Facebook knows I’m a fat git who likes rugby) on architectural follies. Some excellent photographs are posted to the group, and the other day I felt moved to ask if the people who uploaded them knew that Facebook stripped off the metadata and made them, by default, orphan works. I wrote:
“I hate to come across as Mr Kill-Joy, but I hope you know that Facebook deliberately strips all the metadata from images that are uploaded to it, rendering them as Orphan Works. In the UK, let alone the rest of the world, this effectively means that anyone will be free to use your images without any credit or payment. OK, this is a broad-brushed description, but it summarises the situation.”
In other words, under the blatantly unfair legislation the UK government has just passed, other people could freely use them. One replied:
“I’d rather share the photos than worry about the meagre profits potentially to be derived from them. (And as someone who writes on an unrelated subject, I’d say the biggest problem in this general field is people — and institutions — aggressively claiming rights to images that they don’t actually have any legal right of control over).”
Another responded: “My photos are not large enough / high enough resolution to be of interest to professional libraries (including fotoLibra) or photo editors so I put them up in the knowledge someone may “borrow” them in future and that’s fine it if spreads the knowledge and appreciation of follies. At the same time I know they are not professional standard enough to meet a photo editors’ requirements. Others may wish to take note though …”
Well, they don’t have to hide them away if some persistent identifier can let it be known that they hold the copyright. (And quality is relative — better to have one lo-res image of me shaking hands with Churchill and de Gaulle than none at all.) This is where Creative Commons is so powerful, over and above its original function — it introduces the concept of copyright, ownership and credit to people who are not necessarily bothered about remuneration.
There is in Britain a wonderful website called Geograph.org. Its simple plan is to create a photographic record of every grid square on the Ordnance Survey map. They’re doing the same thing for Germany. There are a few parts of Wales and the highlands of Scotland which remain uncovered, but in general wherever you go in the country there’ll be a photograph — perhaps several — of it on Geograph.
All the photographs are uploaded by members of the public. Some are iffy, some are just staggeringly beautiful — and they are all ‘licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Licence.’
This is wonderful. The majority of people happily uploading their images to websites have no idea of the importance of rights, or the role that metadata plays. Geograph is educating people in the importance and relevance of metadata and rights.
So how does fotoLibra manage rights? Well, for us it really is a frictionless process, because we do it manually. We are still in the unhappy situation of being on first name terms with most of our customers, and we deal with them as individuals. Not for us the tiresome process of clearing rights on 15,000 images for MegaCorp, Inc., no no! A quarter page for Merionethshire Life and we’re well away.
It would be great to have experience in all aspects of the process, from being a photographer trying to sell his work and coming to the realisation that pressing the shutter is just the start of a very long workflow; from the agents like us presenting the work to buyers; to life as a picture buyer trying to get the right pictures together, with all the data and the clearances they need.
My Radio 4 man sneered at the construct ‘metadata’. He felt it was an unnecessary overcomplication. Metadata has been defined as ‘data about data’. I agree with him that it is human nature to complicate things as far as possible. On the motorways, ‘Your International Partner In Logistics Solutions’ actually just means ‘I’m A Truck’. Remember Occam’s Razor, and let’s keep it simple.
As Richard Bamford of Extensis pointed out in his speech earlier today, a lot of our confusion is down to left- and right-brain processes. Photographers tend to be visually orientated and words, metadata and organisation are less important to them.
fotoLibra is here to help.”
*Jeff Sedlik, the co-founder, President and CEO of the PLUS Coalition, was giving the speech after me. He began by saying, “I’d just like to point out that Rob Wilson, who was mentioned by the previous speaker, is indeed our Application Developer. And, for the record, we’ve never understood a word he says either.”
This is such an interesting and, as usual, entertaining blog. Plenty of food for thought here. I did enjoy reading it…
Thank you Linda, you’re very kind!
I’m like you Gwyn. I don’t understand all the technical bits. I just keep on taking photos like I’ve been doing since I was 16 (that long?!).
Prefer to take pics of people and animals but can manage the occasional decent landscape. The main aim is – we hope – to make money, but even when I had a studio, the sitting fees were pretty much there to give away to it was almost all on spec – just like freelancing.
We’re happy to leave the sales, legal and technical bits to fotoLibra, though we would be even more happy to see more sales.
I have a feeling you may not have too long to wait, Derek …
Nice work Gwyn…utterly to the point.
Thanks Erik!
There is no such thing as bad publicity .. thinks aloud ..
Mystery is always intriguing ….
My biggest mistake was dropping you off for tea & buns in Caerleon …
Rob W
But your parents were wonderful!
Great stuff Gwyn – most impressed that you remembered all that from your speech. As with most photographers, it’s the making of the photograph which counts. The rest of it is a pain with which we have up to put.
Thanks John — to be honest I think I embroidered it a little. But the gist is there.
Your personal speech gives me a good feeling. I started to upload images a few months ago and did not sell any yet. Some are on someones lightbox,but sometimes very very long but as in the early analogue days: investment comes first. So I keep my fingers crossed.
Best of luck, Jan, we’re doing our best for you all.
It’s a really tricky one…whether to post to social media or not but I think so long as your image is low-res and watermarked it will be of little interest or value to someone seeking to profit from it. A good read and it’s reminded me to check my meta-data is up to date!
Exactly. Keep it lo-res, keep it watermarked. If you use your fotoLibra Preview, it’s all already there. And they’ll know where to buy the picture too!
Thanks Gwyn, you’re a gem. I knew that Facebook had done something dodgy to do with photographs but I hadn’t realised the extent of their stealth theft. I’ve posted a few recently to try and get people looking at more of my images, but I think I’ll stop doing that right from this moment! I don’t suppose you know what Pinterest’s metadata policy is? Or WordPress that I use for my blog? In fact a blog post outlining what each social media site’s metadata policy is would be really useful. No pressure!
That’s a really great idea. And now you’ve made me feel obliged to do it on behalf odf our members. Damn.
Seriously, I will do it. Obviously I can’t find out the policy of every social media network, so perhaps you can help me start off by letting me know the top 25?
Flickr. Facebook. LinkedIn. Bebo. Picasa. Reddit. Instagram. MySpace. YouTube. SnapChat. Ummm …
We are so different, Gwyn . For example , my metadata would record that I too am a fat git who revels in rugby , has a degree in history and still pursues it passionately , and has worked in and around publishing all his life . But if you are searching for photographs you will avoid me – I have never taken one worth saving in my life . But this too illustrates the power of metadata – it will be what we search on when searching at source for superficial likeness fails us . It is what we will search when we need to know whether things have value for us and where they are , not when we want to look at every object . Metadata will save our lives as knowledge workers , enable us to analyse and visualize , and save us from the sifting of torrents of peripheral content . And I don’t understand a word Rob says and I know why – he is articulating today’s view while thinking about tomorrows developments. Try replaying either of these idea streams in slow time – once they are separated from each other he becomes intelligible , and often brilliant ! David
Channelling Rob is a very good suggestion. I’ll give it a go on Friday. I hope my concept splitter is functional. And didn’t the Lions do well!
hi i registered at fotolibra a while ago pls i want to know im a nigerian i have wonderful pictures mostly african themed that will be an intresting addition to your collection i would love to share them but how do i position myself so i can make money off them like you im not a photographer but i just love taking pictures
Hello Emeka, just sign up to fotoLibra here: https://www.fotolibra.com/register/seller.php
then upload your images. You get 50% of net sales receipts when they sell. It doesn’t matter what country you are from, but we are especially interested in photographs of education and schooling in Nigeria.
Gwyn, may I elbow my way in here in my role as BAPLA Vice-Chair and ask that anyone who is interested in the vital role of metadata in the picture industry takes a look at this – http://www.clsg.info/codeofpractice.html
This is a draft code of practice for creating and retaining metadata, developed by a working group made up of members from across the creative industries and linked to (but not part of) the recently launched Copyright Hub.
They are asking for feedback from creators, licensors and users (both professional and amateur) and the more of us from the photographic industry that get involved the better the outcome will be.
BAPLA will be submitting its own response but we are encouraging all our members and individual photographers to make their own submissions.
If we can demonstrate the strength of feeling in our industry than it may help to change attitudes.
Thanks Steve, but instead of losing this important request at the end of a list of comments I will blog this — with due credits to you! — on Monday.
That would be great Gwyn, thanks.