Construction Photography is a photo library and agency based in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, UK. It was established in 2001 to provide the construction and built environment industries an alternative to established multinational agencies such as Getty images

Getty Images

Getty Images, Inc. is a stock photo agency, based in Seattle, Washington, USA. It is a supplier of stock images for business and consumers with an archive of 80 million still images and illustrations and more than 50,000 hours of stock film footage...

 and Corbis

Corbis

Corbis Corporation is an American company, based in Seattle, Washington, that licenses the rights to photographs, footage and other visual media...

. The company has positioned itself within the creative production sector and online stock image market by identifying a “global niche market” opportunity, creating a one-stop shop to the built environment worldwide.

Using Digital asset management

Digital asset management

Digital asset management consists of management tasks and decisions surrounding the ingestion, annotation, cataloguing, storage, retrieval and distribution of digital assets...

 software technology Construction Photography delivers creative content over the internet with an online work flow to major players such as government organizations (Transport for London

Transport for London

Transport for London is the local government body responsible for most aspects of the transport system in Greater London in England. Its role is to implement the transport strategy and to manage transport services across London...

, Highways Agency

Highways Agency

The Highways Agency is an executive agency, part of the Department for Transport in England. It has responsibility for managing the core road network in England...

, ConstructionSkills , Waste & Resources Action Programme

Waste & Resources Action Programme

WRAP works with businesses, individuals and communities to help them reap the benefits of reducing waste, developing sustainable products and using resources in an efficiency way....

 as well as multinational corporations such as Vinci Plc, Lafarge

Lafarge

Lafarge is a French industrial company specialising in four major products: cement, construction aggregates, concrete and gypsum wallboard. In 2010 the company was the world's second-largest cement manufacturer by mass shipped behind Holcim.-History:...

, Compass Group

Compass Group

Compass Group plc is a global contract foodservice and support services company headquartered near London, United Kingdom. It is the largest contract foodservice company in the world and has operations in over 50 countries...

, Corus Group

Corus Group

Tata Steel Europe is a multinational steel-making company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the second-largest steel-maker in Europe and is a subsidiary of Tata Steel of India, one of the ten largest steel producers in the world.Corus Group was formed through the merger of Koninklijke...

, Gardiner & Theobald, Murphy Group. etc).

Construction Photography is the largest supplier of assignment images for the construction industry worldwide managing over 1 million images across all its client base. It has a stock collection of over 100,000 built environment related images of which 30,000 are available online and a roster of 170 elite assignment photographers operating from 15 countries.

Image licensing and search

The library license [Rights Managed] and [Royalty Free] images from a number of content providers, photographers, agencies, museums and libraries around the world. In 2007 Construction Photography signed an agreement with the Russian state news agency Ria novosti to represent its built environment content worldwide . . In March 2005 Construction Photography launched a new generation of search engine including a feature called “Image Weight”. The search results are primarily ordered by image weight. Images increase in weight when users add them to a lightbox or a cart or open an image preview or large preview. Each action has a different weight. Images also decrease in weight when they are removed from a lightbox or from the cart etc. A complex algorithm calculates in real time all these parameters to give each image a constant updated weight. Also included in this complex algorithm were the upload date and the keyword relevance to the search. Commercial libraries have the constant dilemma of how to return images to their users, as search results order relying mostly on the choice of editors based on their knowledge and experience. This proved a very subjective approach and a time consuming effort for the administrators of the website, ranking images manually and updating the ranking order on a daily basis with new content being uploaded. With Construction Photography's Image Weight system, customers have a direct influence over the image results as most relevant and popular images are returned first. The process is fully automated providing not only a sound sales strategy but a fair decision for all the agency contributors. In 2007 Construction Photography has launch some further improvement to its "Image Weight" system with the ability for their editors to overwrite weighting on a batch or on single image in order to promote quickly new content, exclusive imagery or simply outstanding visual content. Royalty Free and Rights Managed images can have different weight algorithm depending on sales strategy.

Photo assignments

The agency produces imagery for most industries within the built environment: construction, engineering, architecture, property development and house building, machinery, rail and energy. Their ground breaking workflow allows clients to order shoots and edit them online with images uploaded on editing galleries within minutes after a shoot. Skills includes:

• 360 Virtual Tours
• Aerial
• Architecture
• Creative & Lifestyle
• Progress Legal photography
• Mast photography
• Portraiture
• PR & Press photo call
• Still life & Products
• Time Lapse
• Webcam

Video production

The agency focuses on broadcast quality content, media products and services for business-to-business, business-to-customer and business-to-employee communications.

• Promotional Film
• Short clips for Tender submissions
• Training and Health and Safety videos
• Events and Launches
• Internal communications
• Aerial footage
• Time Lapse videos

Media management

Construction Photography is the exclusive distributor of The Data Archive media management software (The Data Archive is the parent company of Construction Photography). The web based digital assets management software helps companies within the built environment to manage their media content over the internet including photographs, videos, any type of media files or documents. The secure service also includes hosting, metadata management and data migration.

Awards

Construction Photography was a finalist for the 2007 Construction Industry IT Awards organised by Contract Journal the UK weekly magazine for the construction industry published by RBI (Reed Business Information). The agency was a finalist again for the Quality in Construction 2008 Awards organised by Construction News the other main weekly magazine published by Emap Construct for Excellence in use of ICT.

Industry membership

Construction Photography is an accredited member of BAPLA British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies

British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies

BAPLA is the trade association of UK based photographic image suppliers, commercial picture libraries and agencies.-History:The association was formed in 1975 with founding members: Getty Images, Robert Harding World Imagery, Aspect Picture Library, FLPA - Images of Nature, Camera Press, BBC Photo...

  the British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies. BAPLA is the UK trade association with over 400 member companies. It represents the vast majority of commercial picture libraries and agencies in the UK.

In 2005 Construction Photography joined CEPIC

CEPIC

CEPIC, from CEnter of the PICture industry , is a registered European Economic interest Grouping and international umbrella organization...

, the Coordination of European Picture Agencies Press Stock Heritage (now Centre of the Picture Industry), which was established in Berlin in 1993 as a European economic interest group. CEPIC represents over 900 picture sources in Europe with members from seventeen different European countries.

The agency is also a member of The Picture Licensing Universal System (PLUS), a worldwide Coalition of leading companies, associations, and industry experts.