Just an interesting conversation I had with someone the other day that works for a media outlet (their name and the event removed to protect the innocent)
- Me: Long time no see. How have you been?
- Them: Pretty good. How was [event removed]
- Me: It was pretty good.
- Them: Got a couple emails from people that photographed it. Couldn't use any of it.
- Me: Thats why you should have hired me
- Them: Yeah. People don't understand what is needed for editorial content anymore.
So, here are some basics you need to remember for editorial work. By editorial I mean photographs that you would want to submit to a newspaper or other media outlet for them to use with a story. This isn't necessarily just for sports, think newsworthy content in general.
THE ACTUAL PHOTOS:
- The biggest thing is the photos must be real.
- Do not remove anything from the photograph using cloning, content aware fill, or anything like that. If it was in the scene, it was in the scene. If you can crop it out that's generally fine but do not crop anything out that would change the context of the photo. That distracting light pole coming out of their head has to stay.
- Do not add anything to the scene. Do not physically put anything in the frame to change the photo. This also goes with post work. Do not add anything to the photo in post. This includes things like sky swaps.
- Do not stage photographs. You photograph it as you see it. You are there to record the news, not manipulate or create the news. Im talking about having someone change what they are doing in order to change the context of the photo. Now here's the asterisk to that: If you're doing a portrait for a newspaper, yes that is going to be "staged." Pick the best background, lighting, pose, etc. That's not what Im talking about here.
- When it comes to editing the general standard is keep it basic. The way it been explained in the past is if it's in the basics panel in Lightroom (exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, white balance, etc) you should good to go. Just don't go overboard. If its not in that panel you should probably think twice about doing it.
- Where I see a lot of problems is in color. I've seen a lot of photos that are obviously highly oversaturated or a particular color range has been boosted or desaturated. This also goes for HDR images. Just don't submit HDR photos to a newspaper unless they specifically ask for one. One of the biggest places I see problems with this is sunsets/sunrises with highly processed colors.
Now, you have this incredible photo from a newsworthy event. You were in the right place at the right time, go the shot, you didn't manipulate the photo, you didn't go overboard on the processing. What is in the photo is actually what you saw and what happened. So, why did the newspaper turn the photo down?
Well, what a lot of people forget about is with media its about telling a story and the actual photo is only one part of the story. The other part is the captioning of the photo.
CAPTIONS
- The biggest thing about captions is they must tell who, what, where, when, why, and how.
- Where the vast majority of people mess up when they submit a photo is they don't tell the "who." You might have to go up and ask for someone's name. Tell them who you are, what your shooting for, ask their story, and don't forget their name. If you're shooting an event and you get a great photo of someone, if there is no name associated, the newspaper most likely isn't going to run the photo.
- Learn to write and write in complete sentences that make sense. Captions should be able to add to the photograph and explain whats going on.
- A good way to learn how to write captions is by reading captions. The more captions you read (and ultimately write) the easier it will be.
- Also, make sure you use correct spelling and grammar
Again, this is just a basic overview. There's a lot that goes into photographs for a newspaper or media outlet but hopefully this points you in the right direction.
Here are a few links of interest: