Quick question about sending photo to local paper

Should i just send them the image or wait until an agreement is made about payment. (assuming they decide to use my image)

I called them last week and the sports editor told me just to email the largest version of the image i could.

If you think about it, the newspaper is unlikely to agree to pay real money for something if they haven't seen it.

---Bob Gross---

Obviously but I wouldn’t want them to be under the impression that me sending a 4mp image to them is considered a donation.

One could make an agreement prior to any exchange. That is; the agreement would be based upon what exchange may take place in the future.

I'm not exactly sure what you’re trying to tell me here Robert. Is your only goal to come off condescending or were you actually trying to make a point? Because if it's the latter then I think I missed it, sorry.

when email them the photo, make sure you state in the content of email that if they ever gonna use the image you provided, you reserve the copyright of the photo and a payable usage fee applies with 4 weeks of publishing it.

My point is that the newspaper is unlikely to agree to pay real money for something if they haven't seen it (at all). Once they see it, they can decide whether or not it is worthy of a price, or even whether or not it meets the editorial intention of the sports/news article. Unfortunately, now the time has passed, so they are unlikely to take any action even if the shot is excellent.

---Bob Gross---

[QUOTE="robertwgross"]

Your wrong as it is a weekly paper and i have until tuesday, but thank you for your insight.

Generally the way it works is like this, you send them the photo. They decide whether or not they want to use it. Then you discuss payment. My guess would be that you call them after you send it and discuss if they are going to use it how much will they pay. My guess is if it is a weekly your not going to get much over $10-15 if anything at all.

If I were in your situation I would already know how much they are going to pay if they use it because I would have contacted them before the game to see if they were interested in my submitting images. At that point I would have asked how much they pay. That is when you learn they will pay you very little or nothing at all.

Contact the photo editor and ask. There are three considerations: A. Photo content, quality and relevance. B. Compensation. C. Confidence. If the photo content is unique and relelvant, it's a good bet you'll get B. Paid. The paper is certain to have terms regarding ownership of the image once you agree to sell it and these are generally spelled out in a contract present to you. Most papers have paid photo staff and tight budgets so your stuff will have to be very good and very unique. C. is a foot in the door thing. Once they have a confidence in your ability to deliver quality and content and once a fee for your work is contractually establihed, you'll likely see some addtional work. Again, they are not likely to use your stuff if the content is competing with good staff art. Good Luck.

If you're concerned, send them a low-res copy with a cover that you can provide the higher resolution version if they're interested.

Well, as i stated it is a weekly publication based in a very small town for the vary small town. They talk about two highschool football games a week. They have one photographer (who doesnt even work for them, she's just sold them photos for a while now) who i talk with at the games. Because of the rain the other day though i know she didnt get too many photos (as she uses a D100).

Thanks for the advise guys.

Similar question...

Not wanting to hijack the thread...

While on holiday in the south of France, got some excellent photos of
the Mirabella V (brand new, world's largest single masted yacht) in trouble due to the winds.

Managed to capture what I believed were pictures far better than the press photos in the papers.

Went to see Yachting World and Boat International, both wanted the pics, and said they would offer their standard rates, to which I said fine. They're deciding which ones to use, and page layouts etc, for next month's editions, at which point they can confirm the fees. Seems reasonable to me.

The rates mentioned were in the region of £30 per 1/4 page. Does this seem reasonable rates to you guys?

Here's the selection of images, all resized and watermarked for the web, so nice and small.

http://www.sleepy-fish.com/mirabellav.ht​m

Any views much appreciated....and by the way hello as I'm new to the forum....been lurking for a while though