[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.

[Steve]

This is another very informative article that I am sure will be of considerable use to many members. Thank you very much for taking the time and going to the trouble of writing it out and posting it here.

[Dave]

Excellent stuff Gary !!. I always wondered how the process worked.

A few questions if I may.
1) How would you know the worth of a shot ?
2) If you send shots online, how do you know how much you will be paid if used ?
3) If your shot is published, do you get informed or do you need to hunt for it yourself ?

The reason I ask the last point is I saw a documentary where the photo agency used to scour all the papers to identify their shots, so they could expect / request payment.

[Gary Bagshawe]

Originally Posted by Dave

Excellent stuff Gary !!. I always wondered how the process worked.

A few questions if I may.
1) How would you know the worth of a shot ?
2) If you send shots online, how do you know how much you will be paid if used ?
3) If your shot is published, do you get informed or do you need to hunt for it yourself ?

The reason I ask the last point is I saw a documentary where the photo agency used to scour all the papers to identify their shots, so they could expect / request payment.

#1+#2 The worth of a shot - most newspapers have a set scale of fees for usual news stuff dependent on what page and how big it is used, For instance the shot of Eleasha hamed leaving court with the bouncers, used on page 5 of the Daily mail about 1/8th of a page =£130.00 it was also used in 3 other national papers which will be paying about the same give or take £10-£20. that makes about £500.00 for the mornings work.
If it is a bit more exclusive expect more money, Front page stuff is in the region of £1000.00 - £2000.00 per image.

#3 Yoy don't normally get informed, they will sometimes ring you up to ask for any extra info you may have, normally they just send you a chq or credit your account by bacs transfer once they have your details and send you a self billing invoice.

I usually go out and buy the papers the following day just to see if they have used any and get tear sheets for my ever growing scrap book.

Hope that helps.

[Jim Beam]

Very interesting read Gary. Glad your making a living at it, as I'm sure there are others who don't

[Sonsey]

Thanks very much for writing this up Gary, very helpfull indeed...
Is there anywhere I can go for a list of links of places to submit to?

[Gary Bagshawe]

When im sober I will write all the major uk newspaper e-mail addresses up. but please only submit if it is national newsworthness

[Steve]

That would be very useful Gary

I have added you some reputation points for the effort you have been putting into these articles

[Gary Bagshawe]

cheers, Apparently I will be famous soon enough
I am now a bit more more sober so will post up the details later today or tommorow morning.