Hello I'm Ruth Medjber,
welcome to
Out of the Darkroom.
In this series of
special videos, I'm giving my
professional insight
into shooting music festivals.
In this episode we will look
at what to do
with the photographs
after the festival.
Well congratulations you
survived a music festival
as a working photographer,
now you have hundreds, if
not thousands of images
to process and share.
Processing can be done relatively
quickly in Lightroom and exported as
screen resolution, JPEGs for web sharing.
What I tend to do is also export
a higher resolution batch that I can share
with my clients as well
as with the printed press.
Normally for press images
or music photography, I wouldn't do
anything more than a touch of cropping
and exposure balance in Lightroom
and there's definitely no need for
anything further like Photoshop.
One thing you should always do with your
images before you share them is embed
all the necessary data.
This will ensure
that your name, copyright information
and contact details are embedded
into the files themselves,
so if a journalist or
even a band gets hold of an image that
they want to use they'll know how to
contact you.
Not only should you be
filling in information like the keyword
tags such as band names and even
the festival name,
you should also be captioning
correctly.
If you have a really great
photo of two friends posing for the
camera at the festival then the
newspapers are going to want to know
their names, their ages
and where they're from.
Some newspapers won't run the
images without this information so you
need to write down the captions as you
shoot and then transcribe this
information into the IPTC section of the
photograph. This can be done really
easily in Lightroom.
When I'm sharing to
web I will embed my watermark on to the
image, I do this in an unobtrusive way,
slightly opaque so as not to upset
the whole image.
Some people don't do it
at all which is also fine but I like to
think of it more as a form of free
advertising, when people share my images
between each other online.
Sometimes you'll find that
a band share images
online without asking permission or even
tagging you
It will also be a savior
when someone else tries
to claim ownership of that image
and take all the credit.
In this day and age,
turnaround time is everything.
If you're shooting Friday to Sunday
down at the festival
then booked Monday off
to process and share.
If you've arrived home
Sunday night,
ideally start work
immediately.
There really is no time to waste.
Chances are you'll have gotten some
similar shots to the other
photographers there,
but your advantage can be the
speed of delivery.
If you were just
shooting for yourself,
there will be no
restrictions on when
you can post your images,
so post them to your social media
platforms instantly.
If you're doing a
Facebook album then tag each band,
tag the festivals,
tag the drink sponsors,
tag everyone and anyone
who you think will
have an interest in sharing
that image
and spreading your name around.
If you're shooting for blogs
or magazines then
usually you'll have to file with them
first before releasing the photos on
your own website
or social media channels.
If you're shooting
for a corporate client
then you'll definitely
have to check with them
when or even if
you can release the photographs.
Some clients might insist
that you sign
a copyright transferal contract
when you
shoot the festival for them,
in which case
you might not have any rights
to share the photos at all?
If you have the
rights to your images and think
you've gotten some of the best shot of
your life then you might like
to sell your prints.
You can physically print
and roll and post these yourself,
maybe setting up a store on your own website?
Or you could decide to lose a percentage
of the sales and let a third-party
online print store handle it all for you.
Whatever you do
try to share
only your best images.
You want people to know that
you shoot quality work,
not that you're a bit hit-and-miss.
Quality over quantity.
Realistically your Instagram followers
are going to get bored
very quickly of seeing
the same stuff from the same
festival for days on end,
so limit your
posts and redirect them to a full
gallery on your site
if their interested
in seeing more.
On Facebook you can
share albums which is brilliant
for tagging bands and tagging friends.
People are more inclined to scroll through
a Facebook album,
so you can be a little
bit more generous
with your shots here
but still try to keep
duplicate band shots to a minimum.
If you've shot the festival
just for yourself
and are not aligned to any
paper or blog,
then you might consider
sharing your images
with the local press.
Usually the papers will have their own
photographers on site,
but you can send
the editor an email
with a very small sample
selection of your work
saying that you were there,
you shot the festival
and you've got amazing shots
of X, Y, Z
should they wish to see more.
Freelance press photographers spend
years building up their lists of editors
email addresses, news desks,
picture editors, contact info
exactly for this purpose.
Once you get into the swing
of things you'll know exactly what your
local papers like to show
and how they
like to receive their pictures.
Some like straight
email attachments,
some prefer an FTP system
which you'll need access to.
Most journalists will welcome
a WeTransfer files
so you don't clog their inbox,
but always remember the IPTC info
if you're venturing into the press world.
That's all from me for this episode.
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tips and tricks.
Thanks and I will see you
again soon.