Contacting TrustImage

E-mail should be sent to support@trustimage.org

Important note! Requests to attempt to change the three
characteristics of the world’s most-famous and most-trusted
photographs — or to change TrustImage so that qualified
photographs only need to have one or two of those
characteristics — obviously will go unheeded.

General Notes on Contacting TrustImage

• Because it is impossible to monitor every blog and every online photography forum, flaws in this website that are discussed on blogs and photography forums are likely to remain uncorrected unless someone contacts TrustImage directly to report those flaws. (Much of the consternation expressed in blogs and forums on any subject could be avoided by a simple e-mail directly to the source!)

• Effort will be made to reply with a written response to requests for clarification or for navigation help. Other comments, criticisms, and suggestions will be read but (because of the volume of them) a written response is unlikely.

• Communications on which the “Subject” line sounds like spam (e.g., “What about this?”) will be discarded like spam: specificity helps ensure that an e-mail will be read (e.g., “What about cropping?”).

No attachments will be opened, and Bulk sends are automatically discarded before they even get to the Inbox.

• Please do not send e-mails in all lower-case or in ALL CAPS. Both of these are considered disrespectful (because they imply that the writer’s time is more valuable than the reader’s) and — because they take longer to read and staff resources are limited — neither kind will be read.

• E-mails pointing out errors of any kind on this site — no matter how small the problem — are always welcome (there are almost 10,000 internal links on this site, and some inevitably point to the wrong page). Errors are corrected as soon as they are identified, so readers who spot a problem should assume it hasn’t been reported yet. (Material is added to — and deleted from — various pages almost every day, so the potential for introducing new errors is ongoing.)

• Suggestions on how to improve the site are always welcome, especially those that pertain to making points more clearly and better ways of saying “what the page was trying to say.” (A constant goal is to make this a website that — despite its complex subject matter — people want to read rather than merely feel like they should read.) Details matter, and no point is too small to merit attention.

• There is never any licensing, registration, or fee involved in using TrustImage; there never has been and never will be. Any claims to the contrary can be completely disregarded: TrustImage is completely independent and nonprofit, accepting no advertising, no corporate support, and generating no income of any kind. All time, money, and expertise needed to operate TrustImage are provided through private donations.

“Like the term ‘Nonfiction,’ TrustImage is a principle, not a product.”

• TrustImage.org never sends out e-mails of any kind except as individual (non-bulk) replies to individual inquiries, nor are correspondents’ email addresses — or the contents of their communications — ever disclosed to anyone.

Any unexpected e-mails purporting to be from TrustImage
— or even claiming to be connected with TrustImage —
may be discarded without opening.

The preservation of TrustImage’s reputation for the highest ethical standards is crucial to its mission, and anything that would even hint of jeopardizing that reputation can be assumed to be completely unrelated to TrustImage.org. (If in doubt, simply contact TrustImage immediately.)

• TrustImage.org never analyzes photographs for TrustImage compatibility (see “A. Checking” on the Using TrustImage page). Should photographers wish to ask others about specific aspects of particular photographs, there are plenty of photography forums on the Internet for doing so (e.g., photo.net). (As noted after the third bulleted item above, no attachments on any e-mails to TrustImage.org will ever be opened.)

• Readers who believe they have found discrepancies between a publication’s policies and its practices should contact the editors and publishers of that publication, not TrustImage (see the Policies vs. practices page). However, readers who believe they have found discrepancies between the policies and regular practices of reputable American newspapers and TrustImage’s interpretation of those policies and practices (as spelled out on the Apply page) should contact TrustImage.

Please note that photo manipulation controversies at magazines and other non-newspaper publications are irrelevant to TrustImage.

All contents of this website ©2008 TrustImage.org
Contents may be copied and reproduced in whole or in part only if credited to trustimage.org