Accent Alaska Submission Guidelines
New photographers:
Accent Alaska welcomes submissions from accomplished photographers who have a strong collection of Alaskan material. We are most interested in seeing photos of people engaged in outdoor activities (winter and summer), lifestyle photos and tourism-related photos. We would also welcome strong, tightly-edited photos of wildlife and stunning scenics. We strongly suggest that you search our online collection for the type of images that you are interested in submitting, to get an idea of what we already have. If you want to show us your Alaskan work please put a tightly-edited gallery online and email us a link to it. We will respond to all serious inquiries.
The following information is for our current photographers:
Accent Alaska no longer accepts film submissions. You are welcome to continue to shoot film, but you must now scan the film yourself and send us the pictures as a digital submission. Please contact us if you need help getting started with the scanning.
You now have two ways to submit new work. You can still send us a CD/DVD of your keyworded, captioned and toned high-res images. This is still the preferred method for large submissions (over 500 images). For all other submissions we encourage you to use our new FTP upload method.
In order to be accepted into our collection, your digital files must meet the following requirements:
- Pixel dimensions of at least 3500 pixels on the long end. Photoshop's "file info" screen will tell you the pixel dimensions. Most digital SLRs greater than 8 megapixels can meet this requirement unless the image is aggressively cropped.
- Should be clean of dust.
- Should not be too noisy or over-sharpened.
- Should be properly toned (white balance, contrast, highlight and shadow detail, saturation etc). How you tone an image is part of your artistic interpretation of the scene, but keep in mind that contrasty, richly-saturated images tend to sell better than dull, dark or washed-out ones. If you need help toning your images for stock please contact us for help.
- Save the file as a maximum-quality JPEG.
Accent Alaska will not consider images that have not been properly keyworded and captioned. The necessary fields include:
- Caption - The complete description including the who, what, when, where, and how many of the image.
- Keywords - Comma or semicolon-separated keywords encompassing all the variants of the image (fish, fishing, fisherman, fishermen). Including emotive keywords is a plus (radiant, glorious, powerful, strong, etc).
- Copyright - Your own copyright.
Please download these correctly captioned and keyworded images for reference, or download this screen shot of recommended Lightroom export settings that will ensure your keywords are embedded in the file you submit to us.
How the submission process works: Once you have submitted images, we will select the photos to be marketed by Accent Alaska. We will inform you of our decisions and delete those that are not considered marketable.
What we are looking for: Your absolute best, crème of the crop images of Alaska including but not limited to: scenics, recreation, tourism, industry, wildlife, flora, ethnic diversity, native culture, special events, transportation, geology and weather. Take a look at what we have in our library and think of how you could bring a fresh or updated approach to an image we already have.
Accent Alaska Captioning Guidelines: Detailed captioning of all images is essential in order to attain all possible sales. The more information on the image, the more profitable it will be. Applicable information should include the following:
- Location information: Where was the photo taken? State, city, nearest town, national park, wildlife refuge.
- Specifics of the scene: Mountain ranges or peaks, including elevation, rivers, lakes, trails, roads, highways.
- Time of day/season: Sunset, sunrise, dusk, twilight, night, spring, summer, fall, winter.
- Activity in the scene: Kayaking, hiking, fishing, biking, boating, skiing, logging, mining, etc.
- People in the scene: Woman, man, couple, family, child, children, girl, boy, ethnicity, etc.
- Wildlife with scientific/Latin name.
- Flora with scientific/Latin name.
- Industry: Mining, timber, logging, agriculture, tourism, transportation.
- Model or property release: If applicable, model release should be included in the caption as “MR” and property release as “PR”.
FTP submission instructions are available here.
