Role

Senior Photo Editor

• Manage Photo Desk for Digital
• Deals with sourcing, licensing, shooting, processing, etc. of photos

Goal

• Deliver as best images as they can, quality-wise and content-wise
• Make the site as visually appealing to the audience as possible

Experience

5 years with CNBC

• Worked with MerlinOne
  • Enter the keyword, can file images altogether
  • All the wire images got fed into it
• WordPress

Day-to-day Work

• Receives requests via email
  • Photos for the story
  • For Slideshows
• Finds image that fit the story and license them
  • Typically starts with Getty for US news
  • Start with Reuters or AP for International or Breaking News
• Look through galleries put together by the wire services
  • Look for newsworthy images and subjects
• Edits the image in Photoshop
  • Downsize, typically width to 2000px
  • Crop, color adjustment, blur the background, etc.

Time

• 5~15 minutes per image request, depending on the amount of research
• Slideshow of 10 images: about a couple hours

Often-used Content Type and Features in Toolbelt

Content Type

• Image
• News Story
  • To understand what the story is about

Feature

• Search
• Focal Point

Pain Points

• Makes the workflow slow to use non-image asset system
• Search result not displaying unless the keyword is exact file name
  • Dealing with thousands of images
  • Faster to re-license the image and reprocess into Toolbelt than finding it again
  • A single keyword will give tens of pages to go through
• Search result is not visual
  • Needs to open the drawer with i icon to see the photo
• Not every image asset is a high-quality photo
  • Screengrabs from shows
  • Someone looking for photos in the off-hours could pull the low-resolution image
• Upload time is very slow
  • He spends about 5 hours a week watching the wheel spinning
• Image crops lose color & saturation
• Doesn’t know what focal point does
  • Used to have both horizontal and vertical images, during which focal points mattered more
  • Now there are only horizontal images
  • Rule of thumb: 16:9 box across the image
• All the photos (> 100,000) shoot by CNBC just sits in the server without image management system in place
  • Only Photo Desk people have the knowledge to access

Wants

• Google-like search
  • Respond to any word in the slug
• Filter out automatic image grabs generated from the videos
• Improved efficiency and performance
• Image interface
  • When searching for images, get the images as results
• Specific system for images where all the CNBC images are managed through
  • Using metatags, can send to anybody in the building
  • Talks to Toolbelt through API
• Wire image feeds inside the CMS
  • See all the images, license the ones you need
• Simple photo-editing tool
  • Crop
  • Basic level adjustments: curves, levels, vignetting
• All-encompassing system
  • Having all the images accessible
  • Videos – currently need to ask the Video team, as Stratus is not Mac-friendly
  • Anyone can grab the appropriate assets themselves

Tools & Software

Communication

• Email
  • Receive requests
• Slack
  • Get additional information about the story

Image Sources

• Getty
• Reuters
• AP

Image Editing

• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Lightroom

Work Behaviors & Rules

• Try match the mood and sentiment of the article and the photo
• Photos have prefixes on the slug depending on the source and licensing agreements
  • Premium or Subs: Getty
  • RT: Reuters
  • ONE TIME: AP, one-time use images
  • CNBC: CNBC-produced
• People know how to use the images based on the prefixes
  • ONE TIME: Only one-time use, so don’t pull in for another story
  • CNBC: Proprietary, can use
  • Premium: Per use basis, need to license every time
  • Subs: Already licensed, can use
• Slug format
  • Prefix: Slug date-of-the-photo
  • e.g. Subs: Private prisons GEO Group prisoners Adelanto Detention Facility 131115
• Tries to get as much information about the article as possible
  • Gets the article attached in the email, Toolbelt ID, etc.
  • Needs to choose unique and fitting image for the story
• Put in 16:9 box for focal point on images
• Work on other image requests while the image is uploading, as it takes a while to upload
• Tends to remember which photo was used in which article
• Keeps the Caption and Title the same for SEO purposes

Miscellaneous

• Depending on the image source, sometimes the description is automatically filled, sometimes not
• Getty ID is the same as the title of the downloaded image
• NBC Universo has Media Grid: doesn’t want to create two different places to manage, but Media Grid has wire feed inside it.
• He had to individually size every image when using Workbench