7.4 Captions and Final Delivery

So that was a whirlwind journey through my photo editing process. Now you have your photos edited, it's time to caption these photos, and finally transmit them to the client. Some editorial magazines do not use embedded captions, but the vast majority of editorial publications out there require embedded captions through the IPTC, how we saw in Photo Mechanic. Captions are simple, but it's important for all of the information to be 100% correct. Most publications will print a retraction if they print information that is not correct. This is not a fun thing to go through. For captioning, keep it simple. Stick to the five w's, who, what, when, where and why. For instance, here is my photo for this caption. Hipolito Mora talks to media in front of his ranch in La Ruana, Michocan, Mexico, December 17, 2014. This was the site of a confrontation between two rival vigilante groups, including one led by Mora. The conflict left 11 people dead. Who? Hipolito Mora. What? Talks to media. Where? In his ranch in La Ruana Michoacan. When? December 17th. And why? Because they had a bad incident there. Also included here is my name for the publication. All publications have different styles, and they appreciate when you send it in the correct style. It makes it a little bit easier. So, yeah, that's basically a caption right there. Once your photos edited and captioned, they're ready to be FTP'ed. FTP stands for file transfer protocol, which is basically sending information directly to a host server. Editors will give you the FTP information. They're all different. Again, Photo Mechanic is great for FTPing photos. It has a built-in FTP program. It is Cmd+U, File FTP Photos as, Cmd+U. So you select that and up pops this FTP loader window. So select FTP, there's different things to upload, I've never tried those before. Here you have the connection. So, I've already pre-saved some of my regular clients here, with their information. Some options here, just basically what to send. Basically, here is the connection setting. So you put in all of the info here. All the passwords and what not, and then it'll connect, and you can save that. So this one's saved for a client of mine. So you just hit send, and you are done. Photo send, drop in their folder, and they tell you when they're done. My back up is Fetch, which is a neat little program. It's a little more stable and it's good for doing long transfers. Especially if you're still working in the foreground, it kind of just runs in the background. Here you see again I had some of my saved FTP info, or you just put host name, user name, and password, which they will supply to you and just hit connect. Then the little dog runs there and you're connected to the server. Drag, drop, and forget about it. But it will also tell you down here when it is done. So, yeah, that is helpful. That is how to FTP photos. And another recent favorite of mine is a program called Dropbox. You download the program, essentially it is just an easy way of FTPing. They build FTP sort of into a program, of sorts, but it's good. You can see here I have this assignment here. I just took that folder of edited images, created a zip by saying right click, compress, should be here. I guess you can't because it's out of a zip folder, but yeah, you guys should be familiar with that. Just drag the zip folder in here. It uploads, and as soon as it's uploaded, I can go copy public link, and send that link directly to a client via email. As soon as they click the link they start to download. Another important tip for filing is to be sure to know when your photo editor accepts the photos. For news and sporting events we're often filing at the scene of, trying to get the photos in as quickly as possible. One way we can do this, file mobiley, is connect via our cell phones. Most cell phones now days have the option to create a Wi-Fi hotspot. This is very convenient when you're filing on the street, but it can go very slow for transferring times. Filing from home is preferable. Being in the comfort of your own home in good lighting conditions, you can edit the photos a little bit better. And your internet speed is going to be a lot quicker. I work with a stock agency called Corbis images. I submit all of the photos I take on assignment, once they go through the specific embargo period that you have signed in your contract. And then Corbis will take my photos and resell them to their clients. I get a cut of the sales fee, and this is a great way to keep your archiving working for you. It's important to research a stock agency that's good for you and your photography. There's many out there, Corbis, Redox, Getty, Panels, many agencies that deal with specific markets. But they're all pretty close to the same as far as payments go. You're not gonna get rich off this, but it's nice to know photos that you've already taken are still working for you. And the check is always a nice surprise at the end of the month.