Even though a photographer may have been paid to shoot an image, that doesn’t mean they forfeit the right of ownership or credit for the image. Around the globe, copyright rules vary, which is why it is essential that when you provide images for media pitches, there need to be clear instructions around publishing rights.
Whether it's photos or videos, photo editors and journalists need the attribution details. To protect your organisation from legal action and ensure your images are published, you must provide this information with your images and video content.
If you have people in your images, do you have model releases? What are the terms around those releases? Have those present agreed to editorial release? Do you have the right names in the image description? Has this description been provided to the photo editor or journalist? Accuracy, documentation, and detail are more important to the media than they may be to you. This information provides them with legal coverage and demonstrates a right to use the image.
Do your images contain accurate descriptions? Dates, places, subject matter, and other information create context around your image, helping it become an integral part of the story and providing additional legal cover for the media.
Depending on the publication format, photo editors and journalists will have very specific (and often) individual needs for images and videos. They may want horizontal, vertical images and video. These print publications need different resolutions to their online and social channels. They may want other images based on something as arbitrary as colour or some other aesthetic concern.
Lookatmedia™ is uniquely suited to handle the media's minutiae of photo and video management. To start with, it's built around one of the worlds best Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions and contains workflows that are designed to bulk manage metadata for digital assets. It uses AI technology to tag content to make it easier for you and journalists to discover. It automatically adds titles, descriptions, and attributions (and even hashtags) that have been added to images when they were uploaded to the DAM. It delivers this information back to journalists when they download this content. It provides everything you need to ensure photo editors and journalists can discover and legally use your images and videos to illustrate your stories in the media.
