[Gary Bagshawe]

Please find below a few tips for submitting your pics to newspapers. It is not an exhaustive HOW TO but gives a few pointers. Hope it is of use.

If you have taken photographs that you think may be of interest to a newspaper or similar publication there are a few tips below to help give you an idea of what to do with the pics etc….
First of all you need to assess if the picture is of national or local importance. An armed robbery with bodies lying all over the place and crashed police cars etc would be of national importance but a pic of a bus having smashed through somebodies garden wall will probably be of interest to your local paper. If in doubt phone the picture desk and ask if they would be interested in the image.
Pictures of celebrities, depending on what they are doing are probably best sent to somewhere like www.splashnews.com or again depending on what they are up to call the picture desk and ask.

As for what to do to an image, I have already in another post explained about FILE INFO. The importance of which cannot be underestimated. Without it the publication will not know who sent it, who to credit and more importantly who to pay.
Send high quality jpgs of around 2mb at 300dpi. Don’t send more than 2-3 images in 1 e-mail attachment. And remember to include keywords etc in the file info. In the body of the e-mail put a very brief description of what the pics are of. Be very judgmental of your own work and only send the best images with different views. Ie scene setting shot, close up, human interaction.

The speed of turnaround here is paramount. Newspapers go to print at a certain time and it doesn’t matter how good your pics are if they are too late they will not get used.

Do not just limit yourself to newspapers either, pics of a very expensive crashed car may be of interest to motoring magazines and pics of tractors ploughing fields may be of interest to some agriculture and farming magazines.

One last thing if you do get pics published do not expect a chq the following day. It can take from 14 days to 90 days to get paid. If you think that you have an exclusive then call a picture desk straight away, they may offer you a large sum for exclusive rights but do not take the 1st offer, call another desk and see what they are willing to offer you.
For newspaper tel numbers and other magazines and publishers etc buy a copy of the freelance photographers market handbook, a manual that is worth it’s weight in gold.