In our forum they have a little “game” where they pick each other’s favorite photos. “(…) Pick your favorite picture/illustration from the previous person’s post and put it up. Then the next person will go to your portfolio and pick their fav and so on.” If you want to join you’ll find the post here – to add your favorite go to the end of the thread to post.
L:)

In our forum they have a little “game” where they pick each other’s favorite photos. “(…) Pick your favorite picture/illustration from the previous person’s post and put it up. Then the next person will go to your portfolio and pick their fav and so on.” If you want to join you’ll find the post here – to add your favorite go to the end of the thread to post.
L:)

The main rule is:

You should not change the main theme or content of the image in such a way that the message displayed in the image in any way gets distorted.This includes cropping and montages.

Yes, it happens all the time – but that does not make it any less questionable . You could get sued, and we don’t want that to happen, do we?

Often you need to give an editorial image a bit of retouching, a better cropping and perhaps some color adjustments. Minor adjustments like these are allowed! At Professor Hany Farid interesting home page you can see examples of unlawful image tampering, ranging from Abraham Lincoln, to Britney Spears and Sarah Palin. Some of the images at the site are funny, some are questionable and some are asking for a lawsuit.

And remember – editorial images mean editorial usage only, no commercial use! Editorial rights are licensed on a use-by-use basis. Use in an editorial manner means use relating to events that are newsworthy or of public interest and usually distributed through a legitimate mass media, presumably unbiased, which reaches an anonymous audience. For commercial use YAY offer Creative images with RF-license. This RF-license grants you permission to edit the image as much as you want, in any way you want. If you are unsure about editing or usage, feel free to e-mail us for (a free) advice!

Linda

A good starting-point is to divide editorial photos into three main categories:

A. News
B. People and places
C. Editorial stock

News
News photography is pretty self-explanatory. This is newsworthy events. These images are extremely time-sensitive – upload them as fast as possible to secure sales. Think about what kind of events that are newsworthy and interesting for publications to write about.

People and Places
This category is basically famous people and famous places. It includes photos of people at events that are or have been newsworthy. A good tip is to try to capture interesting facial expressions at rather boring events. A good shot of a politician expressing a feeling at a convention can be used many times over by a wide range of publications. When photographing places, try to capture famous buildings, streets and landmarks, and – if possible – try to do it with a creative twist. Just don’t overdo it

A good example of a photo of Barack Obama which
has potential for sales over a prolonged period.
Photo: Dersankt / YAY

Photo: JrnGeeraert / YAY
John Mccain with a nice twist and a clear message.

Editorial Stock
Editorial stock is, quite probably, the most ill-defined and undervalued form of editorial photography. These are images the news agencies have a rather limited selection of and the potential for sale is large. They are not nearly as time-sensitive as news-images. Editorial stock includes several sub-categories: Images of logos and brands in different settings and images of people using different (branded) products. Examples could include: Photos of large outdoor signs of multinational companies, photos of people shopping at well-known stores, (overweight) people drinking soda from a specific brand etc.

Photo: kjellesvig / YAY
Typical editorial-stock which exemplifies issues with Google
and privacy issues

What to remember
Think about the following :

A. What kind of images do newspapers/magazines/websites print?
B. What news are recurring? What will be in the news the next months?
C. What people (celebrities or semi-celebrities) might someone need a photo of?

Description and keywords
The description should be more specified on editorial images than on creative stock. The major news agencies write a quite detailed description on every image they distribute. It is, in fact, so detailed that the journalists can get most of the information they need for an article from the metadata in the image. Always include where the photo was taken, the name of the event, names of all people depicted and other relevant information. Try to be as exact as possible. An editorial image with a missing or bad description is basically worthless, since the usage is based on context and if you don’t know the context you can’t use it.

Jan