alittlenews

I got a nice email yesterday from Bob Caston who is a vice-president of a new photo site, WeSay.com.  It is a site that features photojournalism from around the block and around the world.  The best feature for many of you guys is the chance to have your work displayed next to the very best photojournalists from the AP, among others.  I have checked out their site and it is very visual and filled with all kinds of news, sports, entertainment and some other, quirky, visual content.

Readers can become contributors and Bob says that they really like to feature the work of citizen journalists in the “hero position,” meaning the lead spot on the page.  You can check out the site at WeSay.com.  Here is what they are saying about themselves:

“WeSay.com is a news site that focuses on news photography from both mainstream media and amateur photographers.  Our main goal is to promote the photos of our members that have news value and we will bump an AP photo to showcase someone’s photo in our hero shot, even if it isn’t current.  The site is organized into six categories (News, Politics, Environment, Sports, Celebs and Far Out) and we are looking for any photos of news value, whether it is something national such as Barack Obama giving a speech or something local such as a house fire, high school football game or local musician on stage.  WeSay.com visitors can create their own profile page of submitted photos as well as sign up for a free membership. The benefits to them for submitting are: opportunity to be chosen for the homepage; users can offer feedback by voting and commenting on photos; members can write a profile about themselves and include a link to their website; our editor’s will also issue an Editor’s Choice award for outstanding contributions.”

Rights control over images is a huge issue in the industry right now and I would not be bringing you a link to this site if they did not allow you to retain all rights to your photos.  WeSay.com only asks for the right to display your photos on their site.  They generate the income to keep the site alive by selling ads so you will never lose control over your photos.  If you have any aspirations toward becoming a successful freelance photographer of any stripe you must learn to control the rights for your images so this is really important.

I think that a great deal of journalism and photojournalism will be migrating toward the concept of citizen journalism in the future and by “the future” I mean it is already happening and will continue and escalate.  As newspapers struggle through financial hardships and lose staff and, in some cases, close down altogether, citizen journalists using the blogosphere will be taking up the slack.  You can see some evidence of this in the coverage of the plane crash in the Hudson River with a photo taken by Janis Krums who was a passenger on a ferry boat. He took the photo using his IPhone.  The photo was about the best image from the event and ran on many front pages around the country.  The AP bought the rights to the image but it all started on some guy’s cell phone and was posted to his twitter page.  You can check out the story on Photo District News.

The point is that you simply never know when you will be in the right place at the right time.  WeSay may be the right kind of spot for you to show your stuff if the day comes when you are the one with “The Image.”

The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.