CBC dipping its toe into user-generated content
Ben Whitney was pretty excited when he found a photo he took at the SPP summit show up on the cbc.ca web site.
“Of the 13 photos CBC selected to display representing the SPP summit, mine was the only one by non Canadian Press/CBC official photographers. How about that?” he posted on his Flickr page.
Turns out, CBC actively welcomes photo submissions.
CBC photo editor Robin Rowland tells me we get the best response during, naturally, big stories. For instance, the partial collapse of BC Place stadium’s roof. In many cases, we provide a mix of citizen-, staff-, and wire-generated content. The B.C. snowstorm is a good example of that.
Some others:
But it’s not always easy to get the photos in the right way. Although the submit page asks for clean pictures as large as possible, often the pictures are too small for us to use or have the date and time burned in, which limits the ability to crop a picture for better composition. CBC also doesn’t use photographs where people do not include their name and a phone number or name and address so we can check with them. (Apparently, we get a lot of pictures submitted directly from Hotmail or similar addresses with no other identifying information. We never use those pictures.)
You retain the copyright on your photos, but do grant CBC the “non-exclusive right to use it in any way that CBC sees fit.”
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I feel the need to point out that just because you *can* submit photos without requesting payment doesn’t mean that you should. Presuming your work has editorial or artistic value, approach the CBC about submitting the pics on a Freelance Contributor basis, and negotiate payment terms just as you would do for a radio or TV piece. You still retain the copyright and can re-sell the images elsewhere. If you want advice or assistance, contact me at the Canadian Media Guild at keith@cmg.ca .
The CBC does not have ANY staff photographers.