Photography should be an important part of a small company's publicity program.

There are specific tips we can provide, but there is an essential, conceptual issue that must be grasped if photography is to be successful.

The checklist for any company planning a publicity effort must include an item for photography. The final decision in any given case may be to use a photo element in the publicity program, or it may be to NOT use photos. But the issue must be discussed for every publicity effort. This works photo considerations into the publicity planning progress and, in the long run, results in better photos.

The next step is to hire a good photographer. A good photographer may be costly but it is the best money you can spend. If the pictures are not made correctly, or not made well, the whole photo effort will be wasted.

To determine the quality of the photographer ask to see his or her "book." This is a collection of their photographs. Also ask to see pictures from their last several shoots.

If you believe that the pictures are the kind of pictures that will tell your story, you have your photographer. If you are not pleased, consult another.

Once you have the photographer lined up, spend time explaining just what you expect from the pictures, what story you are trying to tell, what message you want to deliver to readers and others who will see the photos. Too often, photographers are poorly assigned, uninformed and therefore make poor pictures.

Product Photos: This photo shows the product. Such photos are useful to editors when a new product is unveiled, or when a special sales campaign is planned for an old product.

A simple catalogue photo is the first stop. Shoot a simple picture, well lit and photographed from the proper angle to show the aspects of the product that differentiate it from competitive products. The picture shows what it is that makes this product different from other products of its kind.

The next photo will show the product being manufactured -- perhaps the assembly line, or engineers/scientists/designers working on the product. Good photography is essential here. Look for good lighting, dramatic angles, visual patterns, make sure branding is included as a necessary but not intrusive part of the picture. Do NOT force special signs, banners, etc. into the picture. Utilize the natural packaging or design of the product. Try to include humans in the picture; people add life to any photograph.

The next photo should show the product in use. Check with good customers who make good use of the product. If it is a consumer product, show it in the home in use by real, but ordinary, people. Use camera angles and lenses to emphasize the product, not the people or the surroundings. A good photographer will understand this concept.

Keep a supply of portraits of company officials handy, but do not limit these to only headshots. Action portraits make more of a statement.

Do not make 500 prints of your picture and send it out through the mail. Most media outlets prefer that you use a distributor like PR Newswire to transmit the photo digitally directly to picture editors.

Forget black and white photos! Color pictures are used almost exclusively on the front pages of newspapers, always on TV and throughout magazines.

Just a few words about captions. Every photo and graphic needs a good caption. Captions will help to sell your story if you include the right information. Editors need an explanation of what is pictured in the photo and why it is important. Generally, write the caption in newspaper style -- describe the who, what, why, when, where and how. Identify people in the photograph Left to Right. Include the hometowns of the people pictured, to increase interest in your photograph among papers that cover those hometowns. Describe to editors what is unique about this product, or topic covered in the picture. Give them some background information on your company. Of course, you want to include as much information in the caption as possible, but try to keep it concise -- 80 words is the wire service standard.

If your manager is a hands on person, or a high profile person, and a person intimately connected to the product, make a good portrait of him or her with the product, using the product, etc.

If it is a new product, show it in use in its new way (as compared to the old way).

Distribute your logo so that a publication can use the logo, if a picture is not their cup of tea.

Once you have a selection of photos you must decide how to distribute them to the media. That is where PR Newswire comes in because that is PR Newswire's business -- distribution of information to the proper media points. Your PR Newswire account executive can help you with distribution suggestions and walk with you through the simple, but effective, technological steps that will get your pictures to the right editors.

Important factors to keep in mind when scanning an image to be given to the media are the technical specifications of the photo. To ensure that your photograph can be used by print media, you need to supply a high-resolution photo that looks great when printed in a newspaper or magazine. The standard requirements among the wire services and newspapers is an 8x10" at 200 dots per inch resolution. If this all sounds like a foreign language to you, you are not alone. Creating a good quality scan that meets these standards is a very technical process. PR Newswire can help here, in two ways: We can scan the picture for you and we can distribute digitally for you.