Just an interesting conversation I had with someone the other day that works for a media outlet (their name and the event removed to protect the innocent)
- Me: Long time no see. How have you been?
- Them: Pretty good. How was [event removed]
- Me: It was pretty good.
- Them: Got a couple emails from people that photographed it. Couldn't use any of it.
- Me: Thats why you should have hired me
- Them: Yeah. People don't understand what is needed for editorial content anymore.
So, here are some basics you need to remember for editorial work. By editorial I mean photographs that you would want to submit to a newspaper or other media outlet for them to use with a story. This isn't necessarily just for sports, think newsworthy content in general.
THE ACTUAL PHOTOS:
- The biggest thing is the photos must be real.
- Do not remove anything from the photograph using cloning, content aware fill, or anything like that. If it was in the scene, it was in the scene. If you can crop it out that's generally fine but do not crop anything out that would change the context of the photo. That distracting light pole coming out of their head has to stay.
- Do not add anything to the scene. Do not physically put anything in the frame to change the photo. This also goes with post work. Do not add anything to the photo in post. This includes things like sky swaps.
Again, this is just a basic overview. There's a lot that goes into photographs for a newspaper or media outlet but hopefully this points you in the right direction.
Here are a few links of interest: