How to Properly Credit your Photographer
A quick preface - this post is not aimed at any one person in particular. As a matter of fact, it's something that happens so frequently that I've never been able to post about it without the worry of someone being directly offended. It's something that happens so often, that I felt it was necessary to make a post about it, and this post is only meant to help and inform. ❤️
So you've had your photo taken, and it's FANTASTIC. You look flawless, the lighting is perfect, and you're ready to make it your profile photo on Facebook and wait for those heart-eyes emojis and positive comments to come rolling in. That's the whole point, right? To share images of you looking your best in a place where people can see them? Of course it is! Your photographer LOVES seeing their photos a they're scrolling through their feed, they just want to make sure they're shared the RIGHT way. I'm here to help you figure out how to do that, since it can often seem overwhelming or downright impossible to do it correctly!
The first thing to do when sharing your photos is to make sure you credit your photographer. When possible, use their full name and a link back to their Facebook, Instagram, website, or whatever.
Naturally, every platform is different and figuring out the tricks for each of them can be, well, tricky. I've laid out a few of the practices I keep personally and try to share with my clients. I hope this helps!
On Facebook, most photographers have a professional business page with all of their contact information on it. It's important that people who see your photos can get to this page, because it's what allows your photographer to connect with their audience (your friends and family) and continue to get hired. A personal tag on Facebook is nice, and it's easiest to do if you're personal friends with your photographer. However, this still requires people to click around and find the photographer's website/contact info. It's easy to get past this and tag the business page by knowing this one little trick - before you start tagging, type an "@" symbol. Especially on a phone (where most people are sharing photos), it lets Facebook know you're tagging a page and pulls up businesses instead of people. Try it! It will change your tagging game forever! A quick note - this works best in captions rather than on the actual photo if you're on a phone.
On Instagram, it's much easier to tag your photographer, as they usually just have one handle and it's tagged the same way you'd tag a friend or coworker. Of course, tags from Instagram don't transfer if you share the image to Facebook, so you would have to manually edit the caption to make sure they link up.
Another important thing to remember is if your photographer has a hashtag. These are incredibly helpful, as they allow potential clients to see a sort of "quick portfolio" that works across most platforms. A hashtag used in an Instagram photo that is uploaded to Facebook will still allow someone interested in a particular photographer to see their work and find them online.
The second big thing to keep in mind when using professional photos online is how the photo is being cropped. Your photographer sees your image as a work of art, not unlike a painting. When you crop out part of it, the art is being changed, and the quality lessened. That, and often times, people will crop out the logo of the photographer, making credit harder to give.
Some applications don't give you an option to leave your photo at full-size, like Instagram (for vertical images) or Facebook when choosing a profile photo. It's important to know where you're uploading your image and what you can do to keep the image at it's full-size. If uploading to Instagram, try to use a horizontal-image, that way you can see the whole photo. If using a vertical photo or uploading a profile photo to Facebook (or just anywhere you HAVE to crop in), try using an app to "fit" your image to a square. I use the app SquareReady on my iPhone, and it's simple to change what would be a cropped image into something to display it's full glory.
At the end of the day, we all just want to be acknowledged for our work, regardless of what it is, and it's especially important for people who work in creative fields to rely on their happy clients to help with that! Each creative professional has different rules, but those are pretty basic ones to go by. If you're ever not sure, just contact your photographer and I'm sure they will be happy to help you give them their proper dues. :)
Love, Amber Lane
