Writing — Travel & Photography

Photo Policy for Globetrotters

No stock photos going forward 🙂

Hello Globetrotters,

When it comes to reading a great travel story here at Globetrotters, we editors always favor those writers who are able to provide their own photos to go along with their stories. When it comes to travel stories, this just brings so much more of a personal connection to the story.

We love seeing your own captures of where you’ve been!

Plus, with the volume of submissions and new writer requests we receive on a daily basis, it just becomes a way for us to make the load more manageable.

So, we’ve decided to make it an official rule.

All stories going forward will only be accepted if authors are providing their own photos.

This means no stock photos — not even ones that you’ve legally purchased.

This also means no photos or embeds from TripAdvisor, Facebook, company websites, etc.

Crediting your personal photos

When it comes to crediting photos, so as to make everything easy on our editors, we will require the photos to be labeled in one of two ways:

Option #1: Label each photo with “Photo by author” or “Photo by ‘your name’” or something similar.

Example: I label each of my photos with “Photo by JoAnn Ryan” with a link back to my Medium profile (this can also be linked to your own profile on Facebook, Instagram, etc.) The reason I do this is that it shows clear ownership and clears up any potential confusion as to who the photos belong to. Takes some effort, yes, but it’s worth it.

Option #2: Alternatively, you can also label just the first photo with “All photos by author” or something similar, which implies that all the photos in the story are indeed yours.

Using photos from friends and family

Photos taken by family members or friends are perfectly fine as long as you have their permission to use the photos. They must still be credited, and you must include their name and “Photo property of author” or “Photo used with permission” or something similar. And a link back to their profile, this can be a profile on Medium, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

Map screenshots

Screenshots from places like Google Maps are fine to use, but they cannot be used as the main feature photo or the first photo in the article.

Proper credit and citation must be used in accordance with the map owners.

We recommend using Google Maps as they provide clear direction when it comes to this. Jillian wrote this helpful article to use as guidance:

What happens if editors have photo issues?

Watch out for private notes. If an issue arises with your photo(s), we may leave a private note advising you of a photo captioning problem and give you the chance to fix it in a timely manner.

Mistakes do happen and sometimes people honestly just forget to caption their photos. If it’s an honest mistake it’s usually an easy fix. No problem.

When rejection may occur

If the problem isn’t an easy fix or if there are issues beyond simple fixes, this is when rejection may happen. If a note is left for you to fix the issues and it isn’t returned in a timely manner the story may get rejected for this reason as well.

As always, questions, comments and feedback are always welcome!

Your amazingly talented editing team: Anne Bonfert, Adrienne Beaumont, Jillian Amatt - Artistic Voyages, Michele Maize and I just tag along. Ha ha. 😆

If you are new to Globetrotters, please read our submission guidelines here: