Photography tips for the social pages

Dec 08, 2011

As a lifestyle PR agency, we do lots of events and one of the objectives might be achieving coverage in the social pages.  This coverage is predominately photography driven and each media outlet has their own style and requirements.  Here are some insights into social photography.

1/ What are the main social pages (Sydney based)?

• The key outlets are The Sun Herald ‘S’, Sunday Telegraph Insider and the Daily Telegraph ‘Confidential’
• Other print outlets include SMH P.S., The Wentworth Courier, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, GQ and more
• Online outlets include Nine to Five, Pedestrian, Two Thousand, Concrete Playground, and various radio station websites

2/ What do they want?

• Each publication has a style guide and rules in line with the photos they like to run. These are available upon request from the picture editor
• Generally celebrities, exclusives and anything with a unique or quirky angle
• About 10 shots with captions, however be sure not to repeat the same people in more than one image

3/ What happens at the event?

• Each paper has a regular photographer who is great at recognising faces, knows the picture brief for the paper well and generally like to work independently
• They’ll arrive and scout the room for recognisable faces, or fun, quirky shots that fit the outlet’s style guide
• If they can’t send a photographer, book a photographer and brief them to shoot in the style of the outlet you’re aiming for
  

Social photography dos and don'ts

4/ What photos do and don’t work?

Socials are looking for these kinds of shots:

• A mix of horizontal and vertical and good proportioned / framed shots
• No chopped off limbs – everyone must have feet!
• Mix of singles, couples and group shots
• Bold, fun, candid images – no blank faces!
• No repeating people in final selection – one person, one shot
• All shots must be captioned with full names

I hope you’ve found these tips useful.

Posted by Phoebe Jackson.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 8th, 2011 at 4:57 pm. It is filed under Events and tagged with event publicity, Events, online social pages, photography, Publicity, social pages. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.