For his visit to Toronto, the Dalai Lama has come and gone. Some of his events were open to the media and some others were closed to the media but open to the public and their cameras. It also appears that some closed events weren’t really closed. Organizers just forgot to include them in the media itinerary.
The organizers released almost five dozen handout pictures all at once, covering all three days of the visit, at 11 PM on Sunday, the last day of the visit.
While the Dalai Lama is recognizable in the photos, (i) none of these handout photos had any captions, (ii) none had any names for the other people in the pictures, and (iii) none had any contact information to get further details. Three strikes and you’re out.
Plus, there were no online image previews for these handout images. You have to blindly download all of the handout pictures, all 225-MB. That’s four strikes.
There’s an old wire service saying that “there’s a deadline every minute.” This has never been more true than in today’s Internet world.
The earliest these handout pictures could be published is Monday (online) or Tuesday (in print). Why would any news publication use pictures that are up to four days old, especially since the wires got pictures out within an hour of each event? Why would any publication use pictures that have no information, no captions and no names? Are publications supposed to guess what’s happening in the pictures, when it happened and where?
If an event or business hires a photographer to shoot media handouts then it must ensure that the pictures get to the media in a timely manner, in the proper format, at the proper size and with full and proper information included. Otherwise, it’s just a waste of time and money.
Every experienced news photographer knows how to properly shoot, process and caption news pictures. It’s a learned skill not a guessing game.
