If you don’t have your own image or photo that you can add to your short story on ABC Open, follow these steps to find a suitable image that you can use for your story for free. (PDF file)
1. Use Google to search for an image: http://www.google.com
2. Type in the main topic of your story and click search, (example: baby)
3. You will see results from your search, but not all images are free to be used for your story (we’re looking for creative commons or royalty free images.)
4. Click on the little cog icon to the top right of the Google screen and select ‘Advanced Search’,
5. Scroll down the page to ‘usage rights’ and from the drop down list of options, select ‘free to use or share’,
6. Click the ‘Advanced Search’ button,
7. The images have now been filtered to show images that have a license to be used for free for your stories,
8. Choose the image that best suits your story and click on it, then ‘right click’ and select ‘Save Image As…’ (or ‘Save Picture As…’)
9. Save the picture to your hard drive,
10. Open up a new web browser window and go to the ABC Open project page, select ‘Add My Story’, and scroll down to the submission form. Click ‘Shoot or Upload Your Image.’
11. Select the image you chose for your story from your hard drive,
12. Once the image has uploaded, click on the picture where you want the main focus of the image to be and the centre point will adjust.
(Note: The image file has to be less than 5mbs to successfully upload to ABC Open.)
13. While keeping the ABC Open website open, go back to the webpage showing your Google search results and click ‘Visit Page’ on the image you have chosen for your story,
14. Make a copy of the URL (highlight the web page address and select ‘Edit > Copy’,
15. Go back to the ABC Open website page, click ‘Add Media Credits’ and paste the URL into the box labeled ‘Link’. In the ‘Author’ box type the name of the website or photographer of the image, then click ‘Add’,
16. Fill in the rest of the submission form; title, teaser, story, location; and click ‘Preview and Publish’ then ‘Publish’.
Your story will now have an image and will be sent to your nearest ABC Open producer for approval to publish on the ABC.