Photographic Standard

What we are looking for

Frames that stay with the subject

The archive’s photographs are documentary first and aesthetic second. A frame earns its place by carrying information about the subject - what they do, how they stand, what they hold, where they work, who is with them. Beautiful frames that tell us nothing about the subject have no place in the archive. Plain frames that tell us a great deal do.

The contributing photographer’s tonal choices - colour or black and white, contrast, dodge and burn - are theirs to make. The archive has its own visual register and most of our work runs in monochrome, but we do not impose that on contributors. Photograph in the way your eye and your subject ask for. The editor will tell you if a frame fights its neighbours on a page; that is a per-page conversation, not a global rule.

Watermarking

Do not pre-watermark. The archive does it.

Every photograph the archive ships carries the watermark 'THE ENGLAND ARCHIVE' composited into the bottom-right of the frame. The watermark is applied by the archive’s own pipeline on receipt, so that the position, type, opacity, and sizing are consistent across every frame in the archive regardless of who took it.

Deliver clean, unwatermarked frames. Do not add your own watermark, the archive’s watermark, or any other overlay. Frames that arrive pre-watermarked are returned for re-export from your master file, because the archive cannot guarantee consistency once a watermark has been baked into a contributor’s export. This is one of the few non-negotiable points of the protocol.

File format

WebP at ~1920px, original RAW alongside

Edit deliverable

Your final processed edit as WebP, ~1920px on the longest side, quality 85. Clean - no watermark, no border, no signature, no plate text. The contributor’s tonal and editorial work (B&W conversion, contrast, dodge and burn) is preserved exactly; the archive watermarks on receipt.

Cold storage

The original RAW (or original unprocessed JPG/DNG) supplied alongside each edited WebP. The archive holds these in private cold storage and does not redistribute them.

Larger reproductions

For prints, reviewers, and exhibition use, the archive may request a high-resolution TIFF or full-resolution JPG from the cold-storage RAW.

Deprecated

JPG and PNG are not used for new public work. The archive's tooling assumes WebP.

Naming

Camera filename, preserved

Each frame keeps its original camera filename through the archive (DSCF1234.webp, L1023456.webp, IMG_1342.webp). The camera filename is the manifest’s primary key. It is how the archive identifies which frame is which during editorial review and image swap. Do not rename frames to descriptive titles before delivery; the editor will not be able to match them against the original session.

Manifest

Every frame carries an archive ID

A subject profile is delivered with a gallery manifest, a location hub with a location manifest. Each entry in the manifest pairs a camera filename with an archive ID (IM-NNNN), an orientation, alt text, and an optional caption. The editor issues your IM range at brief time so you can assign IDs as you work. We’ll send a template manifest for whichever form you’re submitting; you fill in the values as you process the frames.

Once an IM-NNNN is assigned, it is permanent. If a frame is later cut from the published page, the ID is retired, not recycled.

Alt text

Describe the frame for a screen reader

Alt text is documentary, not decorative. Describe what the frame shows in a sentence a blind reader could use to picture the scene: who is in the frame, what they are doing, what is held in their hands, what surrounds them, what time of day. Avoid “a photograph of...” - the reader knows it is a photograph. Avoid editorialising (“a beautiful shot of...”). Specific nouns, simple grammar, present tense.

Captions

Optional. Documentary if used.

A frame can carry a short caption if it adds something the surrounding prose can’t. Documentary register, not editorial colour - what the frame shows, who is in it, where, when. Most published frames have no caption beyond the archive ID, and that’s often the right call. If in doubt, leave it out.

Layout

Full-width singles, portrait pairs

The archive’s pages render frames as full-width singles or as portrait-paired diptychs. Two practical conventions to know about:

• Diptychs work for two portraits. Two landscapes side by side fight each other - render those as successive full-width singles instead.
• Three frames in a row aren’t used; a three-frame sequence reads better as three successive full-width singles.