Here's what you need to think about when uploading a story to Demotix if you are hoping for your photos to sell:
- Tighter Editing
- Titles
- Media Summary
- Captions
- Keywords
- Date
Only if these are all completed adequately will your images stand a chance of making sales.
Tighter Edits
- The 25-image limit serves a purpose - it gets you to send in only the best images.
- Clients don't have time to look through 100 near-identical shots of an event.
- Editing down to your best just looks more professional.
Metadata and Verification
- Make sure your camera date is set correctly.
- Upload in the highest resolution you can.
- Don't just send in one image - it lacks context and makes your image less verifiable.
Title
- A good title will bring readers' and buyers' eyes to your story.
- An inaccurate title means people who might be interested won't find your story.
- Titles should be considered and concise.
- Always make this as informative and to the point as possible – don’t be abstract.
- An example of a good title: 'Greeks riot in protest over austerity measures - Athens'
- Please don’t use CAPSLOCK throughout the heading, but you can use capitalised words.
Captions
A good caption:
- Clearly identifies the subject of the picture, without detailing the obvious.
- Is simple.
- Establishes the picture's relevance to the article.
- provides context for the picture
- Draws the reader into the article
Image Keywords
By assigning specific keywords to an individual picture you will increase the chances of someone coming across yours.
- Be literal - if there's a child in the picture, write 'child', 'afghan child' etc.
- Include small details - buyers could request anything. We once got a request for "Pope wearing red shoes" from the BBC.
- Use the Individuals field. Include multiple variants of notable individuals' names - e.g. "Pope Benedict XVI", "The Pope", "Joseph Ratzinger", etc.
Story Keywords
- Without keywords, no-one will find your story through search - whether Demotix internal search, or Google.
- You know best what keywords are relevant to your story.
- Relying on publishers to keyword your story loses valuable time after you've uploaded.
- Lift words and phrases from the title, media summary and body text.
- Use multiple ways of phrasing the same thing - "World Cup 2010", "FIFA World Cup 2010", etc.
- Put yourself in picture buyers’ shoes and think about what they’d type into a search field box.
- Don't forget to add the wider context - e.g. "Palestinian/Israeli conflict" for an event in Gaza/
- Don't feel like you're trivialising the subject matter with keywords - if you don't use them, no-one will see or buy your pictures.
Image: National Beard and Mustache Championships in Oregon, USA by Theo Stroomer
Image Quality and File Sizes
- Higher-resolution photos are easier to work with and more likely to be purchased.
- Upload in colour, not black and white - we can't add colour back into a black and white image.
- The industry prefers raw edits - no cropping.
- Watch out for image manipulation programs that wipe your metadata when saving.
- Don't do a lot of post-processing on your work - this will make clients suspicious of its veracity.
- Try and avoid compressing your images too much - it has a serious impact on quality and should be an option of last resort.
Don't Repeat!
Don't repeat your media summary in your captions and/or title. Clients will receive this and it looks unprofessional.
National Beard and Mustache Championships in Oregon, USA/Nearly 200 entrants compete in the first-ever Beard Team USA, National Beard and Mustache Championships in Bend. Oregon, USA./Nearly 200 entrants compete in the first-ever Beard Team USA, National Beard and Mustache Championships in Bend. Oregon, USA.
As you can see, this is how editors globally will see it, if you repeat yourself. If publishers work on your content before we push the images, you lose time and sales. Don't repeat!