Press Release Photos - Advice For The Novice

Many times, editors have to reject press releases because the accompanying photos, so essential to the story, cannot be used. If you are working on a tight budget, here are some tips to increase your chances of getting your press release photos into print.

First, send in good quality prints. Editors are often amazed that small companies, clubs and associations are willing to spend hundreds if not thousands on good editorial copy but spoil it all by including unfocused, grainy and badly posed photos with their press release.

Second, make things easy for the editor by putting the caption with the photo. In smaller publications the photo and copy might be handled by the same person, but in bigger newspapers and magazines your photo is very likely to be scanned together with many other pictures. So ensure you put the caption together with the photo and have the caption on the editorial copy as well to prevent mistakes when captions are retyped.

Third, do not write the caption by pressing on the back of the photo with a sharp point. The impression might show through on the photo and cause its rejection. Type out the caption on paper and stick it onto the back of the photo.

Fourth, in a check presentation photo, please do not leave a lot of empty space in the middle by having the presenter and recipient at opposite ends of the mock check. Give the photo editor some leeway to crop the photo to size.

Fifth, if identifying people in a photo do not forget to include "left to right" or "right to left" when listing out the names. The editor might be unfamiliar with the personalities and would not expect to spend time matching the names to the gender of people in the photo to figure out the order.

Sixth, if a name is spelled differently (for example, Smyth instead of Smith) do add "follow copy" or "sic" after the name to show that it is actually spelled that way and not a 'typo'.

Seventh, if you are sending in a photo of your graduating class to an educational supplement, do not just send in one photo of the whole class. Do include close up photos of some individuals, with the accompanying stories, because the class photo might not be published due to space constraints.

Eighth, try not to send "firing squad" photos of the winning sports team or whatever group you want to publicise. Get the team photographed hoisting the trophy or cheering their win, or with team members admiring each other's medals.

Lastly, if sending in photos by e-mail, do zip the files and send them in the publication's preferred file format if possible.