I’ve recently been contacted by a newspaper who want to run a story on my youth project and my website. They like my project and its depiction of the youths I’ve photographed and want to run with it. I’ve had an interview over the phone and while I was being interviewed, they asked for 10 of my best street images.

In a later conversation over the phone it was made clear to me that they now wanted 20 images with which to edit down to 10. My issue and I’m speaking as a student here with no experience yet with working within the news industry is one of fair price and usage rights.

I’ve been told to email the 20 images, as full res jpegs (from raw files) with no written agreement, just to invoice them afterwards, this I am told is normal behaviour. But as soon as I hand over the images, what is there stopping the organisation from running multiple stories in other papers they own? Or will it be normal behaviour to contact the photographer, I don’t hear much about British newspapers misusing photographers images. Or maybe I haven’t heard enough to assume something like that.

Anyway, I want to stay positive about this because as a student this is a good opportunity to get the work out there, and that is the main thing, but without being taken advantage of course. I’m not trying to paint a picture here of my images being taken from me and being misused I’m just trying to understand the process here as I’m unsure of simply complying because it is standard practise.

At the same time, I’ve been offered £100 for the 10 photographs that will be used, again I’m told this is normal behaviour. But is this normal, what if somebody else submitted 2 images for a story? The price per photo at the moment isn’t working in my favour either. What if they run with more than the 10 images I’ve submitted, that means I’m getting less than £10 per image. But I’m well aware they could run with less of course.

I’d appreciate a quick reply because around Monday time I’m supposed to send the images off.

The site btw is a simple wordpress blog. www.swanseacastlesquare.wordpress.com

Thank you