Submission Guidelines

1. Initial Contact
Please send an email (to info@postart.co.nz) with a description about you, your work, the type of photography you enjoy and the places you regularly travel to.

Attach a few low-resolution JPEG images (as attachments, not in the email body).

Provide a link to your website or a gallery showing your best work.

Alternatively fill in the enquiry form on our website: https://postart.co.nz/pages/photographer-enquiry

If we feel the type of work you have shown us will work well for our particular needs, we will invite you to become a contributor (see below).

2. Becoming a Contributor
If we feel your images will work well in our products, we will invite you to become a Contributor. We will send you a Licensing Agreement which is a contract where you assign the rights for us to be able to use your images in our products.

We do request an exclusive license to use images in tourism souvenirs in New Zealand, which means you would then not able to license the same or similar images to any of our competitors. However this agreement does not restrict you in any other way in how you use the images.

Once the agreement is signed we will invite you to make your first submission (see below).

3. Fees
We offer two fee payment options:

One-time fee
We negotiate a one-time fee for the use of your images. This fee can vary based on specific demand for the location, subject and overall ‘saleability’ of images. The fee is paid at the time the image(s) are first published by us (i.e. the first time the images go live on our website and are available for our clients to buy).

OR

Annual Royalty based on sales volumes
In January each year we run reports showing the volumes of sales of each of your images (for each product type your images are used in – e.g. postcards, magnets, etc) for the preceding calendar year (1 Jan – 31 Dec). We provide a report of these volumes along with the royalty fee for each product type the images have been used in.

You then provide us with your invoice for the total royalties we owe you. We pay your invoice on 20 February.

4. In-demand Locations and Subjects
We maintain a schedule of locations and subjects which are in-demand.

These could be new areas (either locations or subjects) we are trying to expand into or products we are trying to update with fresh images. We keep this schedule up to date and share it with our contributors regularly, so they can focus on images that stand a higher chance of being selected.

It can be especially useful to check in with us when you are planning a trip to a particular region to see what is in-demand in that region (or en-route!).

5. Preparing a Submissio
Prepare your files as follows:

Resolution:
300 DPI

Dimensions:
Minimum A4 (297mm x 210mm) or 3508px x 2480px

File Format:
JPG (at maximum quality)

Color Profile:
Adobe 1998 RGB

File Naming:
Please use the following naming format

YourName_Location_001.jpg

e.g. JoeBloggs_Kaikoura_001.jpg

Or alternatively supply files in separate folders for each location. While we know a LOT of New Zealand, if we don’t know the location of a great image we may not immediately see the potential demand for it.

Embed Metadata:
Include your copyright information in the image metadata.

Send files using your preferred file sharing platform (WeTransfer, Dropbox etc) to info@postart.co.nz

6. Creating Great Souvenir Images – Guide
This is meant as a general guide. If in doubt, please send us the image(s) and we will let you know as part of our submission feedback.

Recognisable locations:
Souvenirs are mementos of someone’s visit to New Zealand. ‘This is where I’ve been’. If an image is of a little known or little visited location, generally (there are always exceptions!) it will have low sales potential as a souvenir. It might do better in a book or as fine art. ‘Obvious’ locations sell well for a reason. So don’t be put off popular locations – try different perspectives or styles to create your unique take.

Mainstream Activities:
Images of activities (featuring people or implying the participation of people, such as a point-of-view image of someone zip-lining or luge-ing) need to be of activities an average tourist would participate in (simply because this is where the volume of the market is). Images of obscure or niche activities (e.g. extreme mountaineering) are unlikely to be successful as souvenirs.

Generally no people:
Images used in souvenirs generally don’t feature other people. They are memories of ‘my trip’ not ‘someone else’s trip’. If an image does feature people they should not be dominant in the scene and generally not recognisable (in which case you would need model releases). Images featuring people in the distance are generally fine. The purchaser needs to be able to picture themselves in the image. Images where people are looking at camera and take up more than a quarter of the frame generally won’t work.

Bright/Colourful:
Souvenirs are generally bright and colourful rather than atmospheric or moody. People want a memory of an amazing holiday where the weather was fantastic, sun shining, blue skies, etc, just like the brochures promised (even if that wasn’t their actual experience). Again there are exceptions.

Popular Attractions:
 Images from popular tourism attractions sell well. If you are travelling to a region and would like to visit an attraction, let us know. We will make contact with the attraction (if we currently supply them) and try to organise access for you and engage the client in discussing suitable types of images to create.

7. Post Submission Process
We receive submissions of images throughout the year. And we have a number of production deadlines. Depending on when you send us images, it could be sometime before we get in touch with you to let you know that they have been selected for publication. However, we will supply general feedback immediately after you have supplied images to at least give you some feedback.

This will normally be to show you a short-list of images that have been selected for possible use. Then we will give a final confirmation once images are selected an printed, before they are made available for sale to our clients.

Note that images will NEVER be used without your agreement and either the payment of a one- time license fee or addition to our annual royalty payment agreement.

8. A Note About Possible Rejection
We sometimes (politely!) reject applications for the primary reason that we don’t feel the images you have shown us would sell well by us for our particular market. 

This is not saying the images are not great – just not great for souvenirs (in our opinion).

Often images can be amazing as fine art prints, or in book publishing or advertising or many other purposes that we are not involved with.

There is a ‘science’ behind successful souvenir images which we know from many years of experience in the market (we know what will sell and what won’t!). We have a number of amazing images which have hardly ever sold. Conversely we have some pretty average images which are in our best sellers list – go figure!

Please do not take rejection personally. We know it can feel like an ‘insult’. However we do not wish to waste your time or ours going to the trouble of getting you onboard as a contributor, signing a contract and making submissions, only to discover that images don’t sell. We are assuming that you are in this to make money – we are!

9. Other questions
Have any other questions? Feel free to drop us an email to info@postart.co.nz and we’ll get back to you quickly. If you are in Christchurch or passing through Christchurch, please let us know and we will do our best to organise a meeting either at our premises in Middleton or a local café.

We look forward to hearing from you!

The Post Art Team