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If you are serious about freelancing for magazines, what you must never do is shoot a range of subjects that you know little or nothing about and then try to find a market for them. That’s what a lot of freelancers looking to get into magazine work do, and that’s why so many of them fail. You go to the coast for a weekend and take lots of pictures of boats and yachts. Reviewing them, you think that maybe a sailing magazine might be interested. Or you visit a county fair and photograph dozens of vintage tractors, imagining that they’ll be of interest to a magazine about restoring old vehicles. Well, the images might be just what the magazine is after – but they probably won’t be. Unless you really understand the magazine, what it publishes and why, you’re just shooting in the dark. You need to choose your market first and then go out and take pictures for it. Editors spend a lot of time and effort giving their magazines a recognizable character, so you can assume that their requirements can be summed up as ‘more of the same’.
DRAMATIC PERSPECTIVE
Magazine editors want pictures with impact – and if you want to get published you’ll need to provide it. Here a wide-angle lens and a low viewpoint have been used to create a dynamic view of a conventional building.
Buying a reference title such as The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook or The Freelance Photographer’s Market Handbook is a good starting point. The entries will help you to avoid obvious mistakes. However, there is no substitute for obtaining a few recent copies of the magazine you wish to submit to and scrutinizing them carefully. Study them feature by feature, and then as a whole. How much importance is given to the photographs? Are they small, medium-sized, or sometimes splashed across a double-page spread? What kind of pictures are they? Very specific or more general? Straightforward record shots, or more arty, creative treatments? Often a magazine will have sections devoted to both approaches to give a sense of pace and rhythm.
Look at credits for the photographs. Do the same names come up time and again or are they all different? Are they all individuals or are some credited to libraries? Most magazines use a mixture of freelance contributors, picture libraries and commissioned pictures. Some also have staff photographers – check out the panel that lists who works on the magazine. If a staff photographer is mentioned, that can limit your potential for making sales.
Many magazines produce a set of ‘Guidelines for Contributors’ to assist people interested in writing for them or supplying images. This will tell you about the ideal length for articles, the preferred format for pictures, the fees you can expect to receive and any other relevant information. These guidelines can often be found on the magazine’s website, and sometimes come in a printed form that can be posted to you. It is in the interests of the editors to produce them because they will get more material that meets their needs and less that doesn’t, and they save time by not having to repeat the information. If the magazine does not have specific guidelines for contributors, you can always ask them to clarify their requirements.
The easiest way to get started is by concentrating on magazines that you are already familiar with. If you have a hobby, such as gardening, snowboarding, caravanning or restoring antiques, then you are already halfway there – you will know which titles deal with that subject, and you should have a good idea of the types of pictures they use.
Common sense dictates that you choose a subject that interests you. For one thing, you will spend a lot of time shooting it, and for another, you will produce better and therefore more saleable images if you have genuine enthusiasm for what you are photographing. Chances are that you have pictures on file that may be suitable – so you will not have to start from scratch. You may be in a position to pull together a submission from existing material. If not, you know what readers will be interested in seeing and can get going without delay.
MAKING IT SALEABLE
Images with rich, strong colours are always saleable because they can be used to brighten up a page of dull text.
When I started freelancing, I had young children whom I regularly photographed. I had hundreds of high-quality shots on file of them doing everything from drawing to eating to sleeping. It occurred to me to target some parenting titles, and I was delighted that two of the pictures from my first submission were used in a leading parenting magazine. I sent in material every couple of months after that, and shots were used regularly. Then I looked for a new market. Realizing that I had lots of pictures of the surrounding area, I submitted some to county magazines – once again with success.
The most important thing is to get your foot in the door. I have found that editors tend to be more receptive to submissions once one of your pictures has been published in their magazine. What subjects and interests fire your enthusiasm? A glance through your pictures will soon tell you. What kind of magazines would be a natural home for the kind of pictures you take? That should tell you where to start.
Photographic magazines such as Amateur Photographer and Popular Photography can also be an ideal market for your work; they constantly need pictures to illustrate all aspects of technique, from lighting effectively to mastering depth of field. Some photo magazines have a policy of using readers’ pictures whenever possible, and go to libraries only when they can’t get the material they want from other sources. Features tend to have a seasonal bias, so if you have back issues go through them and note what appears when. During the dark months of winter, you are likely to find articles on winter landscapes, still lifes, birds, studio lighting, fireworks, indoor portraiture, Christmas and using flash. In spring, the focus shifts outdoors, and there will be features on landscapes, filters, portraits and spring itself – crocuses, rabbits, daffodils, lambs and so on. As the sun climbs higher there are summer subjects, including weddings, holidays, reflectors and travel. After that you have autumn, with writers waxing lyrical about warm light, higher ISO settings, autumn leaves and low-light shooting.
Whenever possible, you should supply ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots. And, following the digital revolution, magazines are increasingly interested in sequences of pictures that show digital techniques. When you are enhancing images – even if you are only sharpening them or using curves – keep the original image, any in-between stages, and screengrabs as well.
Of course, you won’t be on your own in submitting pictures to your favourite photography magazine – many other readers will have the same idea. Don’t let that deter you, however. I have spent many years editing photography magazines, and, in all honesty, most of the images sent in are not suitable for publication. While most submissions these days are correctly exposed, in focus, and otherwise technically competent, most lack impact. Frankly, they’re dull. This means that the opportunity is there for anyone who can produce dynamic, eye-catching images of popular subjects that can be used to illustrate technique features. As ever, use the pictures already being published as a guide
