Vice President Kamala Harris speaks from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, July 22, 2024, during an event with NCAA college athletes.

SELL NEWS IMAGES

Contributor homepage / Sell News Images

Become an Alamy Live News Contributor

Not only do we have a dedicated team working round the clock to help you get your images online and out to our customers within minutes, we work directly with media outlets across the word, and our Live News images sell for higher prices than regular stock images on Alamy. Below is how you get involved.

Sign up as a live news contributor

If you are already an Alamy contributor, then all you need to do is fill out the application form under the ‘additional revenue options’ section of your contributor dashboard. If not, then you just need to create an account first and then you can apply.

Sign upFill out the application

What images can I send to Alamy Live News?

If you want to sell news photos you need to recognise what makes a good news, sport or entertainment picture. It should ultimately stop us in our tracks when flicking through our newspaper.

A news image could be a shot of a momentous event, an arresting image of a politician at an otherwise boring press conference, a celebrity in a marathon or of a beautiful sunrise. It’s not just scandal and disaster. You will know it when you take it. The images all need to be of the moment and submitted to us within minutes of the event taking place.

For more inspiration, see our Editorial homepage or take a look at what’s on the Alamy News Feed right now.

Explore editorial

Captions, headlines and dates for Live News images

Your image tells a story but no one will understand it unless you caption it correctly – and we can’t sell it without full, accurate captions and headlines. It’s essential that before you upload your image, you add a caption to the IPTC description field, a headline to the IPTC headline field and the date the image was taken (not the date of upload). If your image doesn’t have this, our team might reject it from the News Feed.

If you’re still not sure which IPTC fields to use then email us on news@alamy.com and we’ll send you an example image. You can open this in your editing software where you’ll see which IPTC fields you need to fill out and some helpful guidelines about what to write.

See the live news policy

Quality Control for Live News

We know that photojournalistic images captured under difficult circumstances might not always be free from technical faults, but they need to be of the highest quality possible.

Due to the ‘of the moment’ nature of News images, they don’t need to pass the same Quality Control checks as stock images, however they will be spot-checked in the News Feed.

If the Live News team decide the quality makes the images unsellable then it’s likely your images will be removed from the News Feed. If we find any problems, we’ll be in touch.

Frequently asked questions

What is the technical criteria for live news images?

We need:

JPEG images uploaded as soon as possible
Images older than 24 hours will be rejected (except in exceptional circumstances).
IPTC headline, caption and date added before you upload
You need to add these in the correct IPTC metadata fields of the images before you upload.
A true representation of what you saw
Nothing should be added, removed or altered (e.g. the image should not be lightened/darkened in a way that changes sunny clouds into thunderous clouds).
Images of the highest quality possible
We understand that there are some occasions where they won’t be technically perfect.

For more information you should check out our Live News Policies.

What are the rules for adding headlines to live news images?

When you have two or more images from one event, all the images need exactly the same IPTC Headline to keep them together in the news feed. The headline needs to be in this format: General description of event, town/city, country (e.g. Grammy Awards red carpet, Los Angeles, USA).

What are the rules for adding captions to live news images?

It’s your image so you know what it’s about, but a picture editor seeing it for the first time will be completely lost unless you help them out with accurate captions which answer the basic questions:

Where did it take place?
When did it take place?
Who is in the image?
What is going on?
Why is it happening / why is it newsworthy?

The caption needs to be in this format: town/city, country, date (in format 1st April, 2015.), description, credit.

For example: Los Angeles, USA. 1st Apr, 2015. Elton John trips over as he walks along the red carpet at the 101st Grammy Awards Ceremony in Los Angeles, USA. Credit: John Smith/Alamy Live News.

For more info, download our helpful PDF guide on captions and headlines for Alamy Live News.

What is the difference between headlines and captions?

Headlines and captions are different. Headlines apply to all the images in a set from an event. The caption is specific to the individual image and describes what’s happening.

How do I upload to the Alamy Live News Feed via an FTP?

Once you've applied for access to upload to the live news feed, you can upload your images via an FTP. We recommend using FTP as it’s a quick and easy way to send us your images. You’ll need an FTP client, we recommend Filezilla, FirefTP, WinSCP, Cyberduck, or ClassicFTP

Enter Alamy’s FTP details into your FTP Client:

Host name: newsupload.alamy.com
Login/username: Your Alamy email
Port: 21
Your password is the same as your Alamy login

Drag your images to the relevant folder within ‘Live_News’:

News
Sports
Entertainment

How do I upload to the live news feed online?

Once you've applied for access to upload to the live news feed, you can upload your news images online,(a web-based online upload tool) from your contributor dashboard:

Select Upload and choose the correct category under the ‘Live News’ route (News, Sport, Entertainment)
Select your JPEGs to upload, then click ‘Submit’

What are the legal guidelines for Live News images?

All images should be taken according to the law of the country they were taken. In the UK, images must be taken in line with IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organization) guidelines.

Here are the basic guidelines:

Captions must be factual and not defamatory in any way
Children subject to court proceedings shouldn’t be identified
Victims of sexual offences shouldn’t be identified
Images must be taken from a legal location (e.g. you shouldn’t have trespassed on private land to obtain the image)

If the requirements for Live News imagery aren’t met, then we might remove your access to the Live News Feed. In extreme circumstances where the law or rules set out by IPSO have been broken, your Alamy account will be closed, so make sure you’re familiar with all the requirements and rules before you upload.

When and how do I get paid for selling Live News images?

Prices for Live News images are quite often more than double the rate they would be for stock. News outlets want images that are of the moment and unique so they will pay more to use them.

We report sales to you as they happen on the site. You can keep track of your sales, view your account balance and download a sales report from your contributor dashboard.

Newspaper customers take longer to report, so you might see your image used in a newspaper before the sale is added to your account. This is perfectly normal and nothing to worry about. We track all downloads and your sale should appear in your account within 90 days.

You can see your cleared funds (which means we’ve received the money from the customer) in your account balance. We’ll pay you at the start of each month if your total cleared balance is over $50.

You can choose how you get paid from the following: