Neil Danton

Public Relations photography is Commercial photography, but only for limited usage.

PR photography can be defined as “Images released to a newspaper or magazine for speculative editorial-use, without payment to the publication”.

That means: the client pays the photographer to produce & provide images to use, which are then sent (released) to the relevant publication(s) for them to place (use). The publication doesn’t pay to use the images (that would be Editorial use) and the client doesn’t pay the publication to guarantee usage (that would be Advertising use).

Of course, the downside of choosing the PR route as opposed to Advertising, is that there is no guarantee the publication will be either interested in, or have space available to use, the images that are supplied to them. What the publication(s) would really prefer of course, and what would guarantee usage, is for the client to pay them a fee to produce an advertisement or advertorial feature. Advertorial features are an advertisement that is made to look like a “news” story, but somewhere in or around it, in very very small type, will be a statement along the lines of “This is an Advertisement”.

So getting PR images placed (used) is a bit of a love-hate relationship between the publication and the PR client. The publication has to pay-out for Editorial images (to wire-agencies, freelances etc), so they like to also get-paid, by clients paying for adverts. Somewhere in the middle lies PR photography, which has almost morphed into an entity on it’s own, as a lot of people don’t even realise that it is in fact commercial photography.

This is where the client needs to work with a photographer that has experience and contacts with many publications. He/she will be able to advise on:

What type of image will stand the best chance of being placed
What type of image should be avoided
Who to put into the images, and who not to
What time of day/day of the week/day of the month is best to release images
What time of day/day of the week/day of the month is best to shoot images in order to achieve the above

Publications generally aren’t waiting with bated-breath for PR images, that aren’t earning them any income, to arrive. Even if a publication has agreed to use an image (I’m talking daily newspapers here), it may get bumped at the last minute in the event of a fire, flood, or other man-made or natural disaster.

The competition for space in a publication is fierce. Publications may have their own photographers, that they have to pay anyway, so will tend to use their images over others. Many publications will also subscribe to news and/or sports wire-agencies, like Getty/PA/Reuters/AFP/Inpho, where they pay an annual fee and may use as many images that they are sent daily as they wish to.

In terms of volume of images that they receive, as an example a National newspaper in Ireland will receive around 5,000 images a day from their staff photographers, the wire-agencies, PR photographers and agencies, freelance contributors etc. I’ll say that again in case you missed it – FIVE THOUSAND images every day. Magazines can range from just several dozen a day to something like Stern, a German weekly news magazine, that receives 12,000 every day.

This is where it becomes incredibly important to discuss with your photographer, WELL BEFORE the event, what/who is to be photographed, and get their advice on the best way of creating something that has a chance of being used. When booking a photographer the client obviously needs to give them the date & time of the shoot, but it sometimes appears that any further information is some kind of state secret. For images to stand a chance in amongst the numbers quoted above, a little advance planning & communication will go a long way.