There are many benefits to photographers.

1. Your images will be searchable by photo editors, journalists, students, and anyone coming to SDN to search for documentary content.
2. You will become part of the largest network of documentary photographers on the web.
3. The cost to you is much less than creating your own website.
4. Your images will be presented larger than almost any other photo website (but we also prevent unwarranted copying.)
5. You will have your own personal home page with a URL with your name, a photo, and biography, and links to  your exhibits on SDN.
6. You will have numerous other fields to provide  information on your subject matter, on you, on groups that are helping your subjects.
7. You can view statistics as to how many people have viewed your exhibit.
8. All exhibits have viewer feedback forms for the public to comment on your exhibit.

SocialDocumentary.net is an affordable addition to your online marketing strategy. It is another site for your work to be found. Your photos will be  searchable to people who are looking specifically for documentary content, including photo editors, journalists, non profit organizations and the general public. You only need to put up a small collection of work with a link to your primary website. Another benefit is that you will become part of the largest network of documentary photographers on the web.

Nothing. The membership application is free and simple.

Member benefits:

• Receive monthly Spotlight newsletter
• Can post news to the site. News will be reviewed before going live.
• Can create exhibits. There is a fee to create exhibits, and they are reviewed before going live.

Once your exhibit receives approval, you will need to pay the current cost for each exhibit. Please click here to view our current rate for images. (The price may vary due to promotions). You will not be charged until your exhibit has been approved and after you choose to make your exhibit live. You also haved the option of a free trial. With the free trial, there is no cost to create an exhibit. When the trial period is up, you can choose to pay to continue your exhibit.

One year after creating your exhibit, you will receive a renewal notice. If you choose to renew, you will be charged for every image that you maintain on your exhibit. You can always delete images but you must always maintain a minimum of six images.

There will never be advertising on your exhibit. We may have advertising on other pages of the website, such as the home page and search pages.

• Aesthetic quality. The photographs must have strong point of view and have a deliberate and meaningful composition.
• Documentary integrity: The images and the writing must avoid sensationalism, must be factual (if facts are presented), and must exhibit respect for the subject and viewer.
• Technical quality of digital files (resolution, focus, exposure, etc.) Photos must be a minimum of 1000 pixels wide.

Our goal is to be inclusive, not exclusive.

Once your membership is submitted, login to your account and you will have immediate access to begin creating exhibits. We provide simple web-based tools to upload your images, add captions, and other information.

Beginning in September 2012, there is a new field titled "Video" on the page where you entere information about your exhibit. Enter embed code from YouTube, Vimeo, or other multimedia hosting platforms and your video will now be one of the links on your exhibit.

Your profile page on SDN will have your name, your photo, contact information, a bio, areas of focus,  thumbnails and links to your live exhibits on SDN, and one large photo. If you participate in the licensing and print sales program, you will also have links for this as well.

This is an example of and SDN profile page:
https://socialdocumentary.net/photographer/frankward

To create a profile page you must have at least one live exhibit on SDN. Then login to your account, click on the "Profile" tab, then enter requested information.

The website will automatically select an image from one of your exhbiits to feature as the large photo on your profile page, but you can override this by uploading any image you choose.

Images must be rgb jpgs, gifs, or png, and at least 1500 pixels in one dimension, and not more than 5 mb. Our software will further process them so that when first viewed, they will appear smaller, but a visitor to your site can make the images larger.

In addition to the photographs, every exhibit must have a short paragraph (abstract) describing the overall concept, and every photograph must have a caption. You can create captions up to 200 words, but we only require a minimum of one word. Captions MUST give the viewer useful information about the subject.

We determine the basic design of the exhibit. You determine the images, background color, the image order, and all the text. You can turn on and off specific images at any time, or you can turn off the entire site at any time, and turn it back on.

We reserve the right to edit all text for spelling, egregious grammatical errors, and formatting problems. We will not alter the intent of your text.

While it is almost impossible to completely protect images from being copied once on the internet, we do limit the ability of web users from downloading your images. If a web user right clicks the image to download, or to display in a new browser window, they will instead get a completely blank page with a blank image.

Very easy. Just copy the URL that displays in the location bar at the top of your browser window. You can paste that into an email, or you can link to it from another web page. You cannot direct people to an individual photo, only to your entire exhibit.

The staff of SocialDocumentary.net regularly review all exhibits and makes a decision based on the strength and originality of the documentary images.