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Light TableNotes on editorial and documentary photography
Thirteen pages, no advertising

How editorial and documentary pictures actually get made

Two trades share the same camera and almost nothing else. One answers to a picture editor and a deadline. The other answers to the people in the frame, over years. These notes take both apart: the brief, the shot list, the caption, the release, the invoice.

  • Written in English
  • Southern California bias
  • Revised 20/08/2026
Run 01

On the bench

Nine pages of substance. Each one answers a question that costs money or trust to get wrong.

Desk note

Three words that get used interchangeably and should not be

Most confusion about rates, releases and credit lines comes from collapsing three different trades into one. They are separated by the purpose of the publication, not by the equipment or the fee.

Editorial photography
Pictures made to accompany journalism or other non-commercial editorial content. In the United States a release is generally not needed to publish them, because the use informs rather than sells.
Advertising and commercial photography
Pictures made to promote a product, a service or an organisation. Identifiable people and, often, private property need written permission, and the licence is priced on how widely the image will run.
Documentary project work
Self-directed work on a subject, usually over months or years, with no commissioning editor. It is published editorially but it is built like a book: the photographer sets the question and lives with the answer.

Everything else on this site sits under one of those three. If you only read one page, read the one on consent and releases: it is the mistake that follows a picture for the rest of its life.

Start with assignment work

Two ways in

Sections

Same craft, opposite clocks. One is measured in hours, the other in years.