The difference between Editorial and Commercial photography explained
Commercial photography can mean any kind of photography that’s monetised in anyway, so in theory all Stock Photography is commercial… but wait… within the world of聽Stock Photography there are two categories of commercial photography; Commercial and Editorial.
Confused? Well let’s look at the differences.
Editorial
Editorial聽photography covers a wide range of different styles and genre but in simplistic terms, the definition聽of editorial use is聽not selling stuff.
Predominately聽with editorial use, images聽are used to support text, so most usages are by customers such as聽newspapers, magazines and textbooks.
Generally the imagery has a certain element of realism to it reflecting the world around us, but it’s not limited to that聽as illustrations can also be used editorially.
With editorial use in聽journalism聽the聽聽and聽they have聽to capture the realism of the scene. However newspapers can also use photography to illustrate a story without it necessarily being directly linked and this is where they’ll often turn to stock photo libraries to source imagery.
To illustrate this let’s look at the recent visit to the UK by US First Lady, Michelle聽Obama, where she聽stopped for afternoon tea with聽the Camerons聽at Number 10 Downing Street.
The trip was with photojournalist images used to illustrate the factual account of each step of the visit. The story聽at Number 10 was聽they聽all had聽afternoon tea, but there were no photographers inside Downing Street to document this. If they wanted the newspapers could have used images of tea to illustrate the story, which is still classified as editorial use i.e. to illustrate a factual story.
Commercial
As with editorial photography, commercial also has a wide range in themes and styles, but聽you can simply聽define commercial use as advertising or promoting stuff.
The main difference from editorial photography is there cannot be people or property within the image unless they have signed a model and/or property release form.
A release form is聽basically permission from the person/property owner within the photograph for them/their property to be used to endorse a product or service i.e. be used commercially in promotion or advertising. If you聽don’t have model or property releases聽it’s fine for customers to use images for editorial use, but having them also opens up potential commercial use for your images.
People who work in advertising and those brands trying to sell us stuff have very large budgets and so commercial use of stock photography can net more money for single uses than聽editorial, where you need to sell large volumes of images to bring in the same amount of cash.
In some cases, the end user may decide聽the way they intend to use the image in their commercial product means they don’t need a release; for example they may be overlaying text, or cloning out people or property. However we advise to get releases if you can聽and never ever say you’ve got a release if you don’t聽actually have one.
Whether you shoot photos with editorial or commercial use in mind at 17吃瓜在线 we have customers that want both and we’ll gladly accept either style from you. Just keep in mind if you’re shooting for editorial use then customers are looking for realism. With commercial customers the latest trend is for more realistic people, but they don’t want it that real and they do want model releases.
Extra information if you need it
If you’re interested in editorial photography and journalism then check out how to get involved with 17吃瓜在线 Live News.
If you fancy checking out some cool creative photography perfect for commercial use then聽see our Creative category.
Need more info on releases? Check out this awesome infographic.