Tasty Bev Submission Guidelines | Updated February 3, 2016 | TastyBev.co

Tasty Bev Submission Guidelines Not every recipe submitted to TastyBev.co will be featured. Featured recipes are based on ingredients and the quality of the photographs. If your recipe submission is declined, we will try our best to respond in a timely manner with feedback to help you improve your submission and try again or to improve for future submissions. This guide will help you to better understand what we are looking for and how we determine whether to feature or decline a submission.

Submission Requirements 1. Original Content You must be the copyright owner of the photos and content submitted; 2. URLs URL submitted must link to a beverage recipe; 3. Photo(s) There must be at least one photo of the recipe included in the submitted URL that meets our photo guidelines as listed below;

4. Ingredients Ingredients listed in recipe must seem tasty or healthy and cannot consist of anything harmful or poisonous.

What to Except After a Submission If it is your first time submitting a recipe to Tasty Bev and your recipe is accepted, an author category will be created for you on Tasty Bev in the name of your blog or website. You will then receive a welcome email giving you the link to your personal Tasty Bev library along with a button (or “badge”) that you can use on your website to link to this category, if you so choose. Recipes that are submitted and approved after this initial set-up will post to Tasty Bev and appear in your library without notification. If you submit a recipe at any time and it is declined, you will receive a brief response from Tasty Bev Recipe Curation stating the reason for the decline. This could be one of the four reasons listed above for not meeting one or more of the submission requirements; or one of the six reasons listed below in photo guidelines.

Tasty Bev Submission Guidelines | Updated February 3, 2016 | TastyBev.co

Photo Guidelines 1. Exposure, Contrast & Lighting Overexposed & Underexposed When an image is too bright and detail is lost, it is overexposed. When an image is too dark and detail is lost, it is underexposed.

Contrast Contrast refers to the level between the brightest points to the darkest points in an image. If an image is too high in contrast, it will loose detail in the natural shading that occurs between black and white tones. If an image is too low in contrast, there will be little definition or detail causing everything to appear gray in tone.

Tasty Bev Submission Guidelines | Updated February 3, 2016 | TastyBev.co

Lighting Natural, soft, window light is most widely accepted for making food and beverages look the most appetizing. This type of lighting can be achieved indoors by being near a window that does not have direct sunlight shining through. It’s best to place your subject matter to be side or backlit by the window light for best results. This natural window light look can be achieved artificially through advanced lighting methods as well.

2. Composition Composition is the placement or arrangement of visual elements in a photograph. Because Tasty Bev displays images in a square crop, composition of submitted images must work well in a square. Below are some factors that can effect composition. Zoom How close or how far the subject appears in a photo can have great impact on the visual experience.

Tasty Bev Submission Guidelines | Updated February 3, 2016 | TastyBev.co

Styling & Props How an image is styled with props and background elements that are additional to the main subject can have a great impact on the visual experience of that image. If the props or styling elements don’t relate to the subject, this can be confusing to the viewer. If there are too many props or styling elements this can cause the image to appear cluttered and could confuse the viewer as to which is the main subject matter. However, including the right props and styling can enhance the image and give more context and interest to the viewer. Cropping Cropping is simple but huge in terms of image quality. Cropping helps provide balance within the image and also helps to bring attention to the main subject matter.

3. Color & Effects Color The color of an image must be neutral, or in other words, white balanced to what seems close to normal. White balance is the process of removing unrealistic colorcasts in an image, so that objects, which appear white in person, are rendered white in the photo.

Tasty Bev Submission Guidelines | Updated February 3, 2016 | TastyBev.co

Filters & Effects Although some filters and effects can be really fun and even look good to enhance a photograph, if we feel like the treatment takes away from the subject we may decline based on this. We want the photos to be representing the subject as realistic and as close to true color as possible. 4. Focus Sharpness | Subject in Focus Watch where your focus is placed when taking a photo: we want the main subject to be the “hero” of the image.

Depth of Field Depth of field (DOF) is the amount of distance between the nearest and farthest objects that appear in acceptably sharp focus in a photograph. Choosing how much of the scene is in focus is a subjective choice. In most cases food and beverage photos look best with shallow depth of field. However, if an image has too shallow depth of field, causing not enough of the subject to be in sharp focus, it may be declined.

Tasty Bev Submission Guidelines | Updated February 3, 2016 | TastyBev.co

5. Watermarks, Text, & Graphics

There cannot be any watermarks, text, or graphics on the photographs submitted unless they appear small enough and are positioned in such a way that the image could be cropped into a square without these elements interfering.

6. Resolution

Resolution refers to the number of pixels in an image. Resolution is identified by the width and height of the image, in pixels. As a minimum, images must be large enough to be viewed on a smartphone without loosing sharpness, for our purposes.

How to Submit a Recipe

You can submit a recipe by simply entering your name, email address, and the URL for the recipe blog post or recipe page on your website into the form on our submit page or in the form located in the sidebar of the blog page. If you have any question, please contact us!