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Submitting Work to Magazines

So this is a spread that I had in a magazine well back, uh, just showing you what I mean by the's fashion stories where you submit to magazines so there's obviously a whole world of magazines out there, I'm talking mainly about magazines online that are free or they might charge in some cases, but they're generally free independent magazines that accept submissions from all kinds of photographers at any level. A lot off them opened themselves up to emerging photographers, so there's definitely worth a lot ofthe research if you want to start getting images out there on a fashion photographer. Now, this whole world of fashion magazines is a bit strange one because, like how I was talking about yesterday when I said about there, no budget on dh people doing these things for free. Generally, these things are done for free and you submit for free so you don't get any money to do them on the most you'll likely get in most situations with independent magazines is a pole letter for you to pres...

ent two stylists, and they give you basically this approval that your story will get published in the magazine. Eso you could go to a stylist and styling team of confidence to say this is for a publication in the magazine, but the gist is that you're all doing it for exposure so it's a bit it's good, because these these thes things are tools for you to use to make yourself look like you're you know you're out there, you're doing stuff, you're busy, you're working with models, you working styling, but I find it difficult because sometimes, you know, actually we need to prioritize paid opportunities. So if you are starting out, you might find that this kind of pursuit is best done alongside another job where you're, you know, supplementing your lifestyle with another job or if you are a photographer, then you might find that this is just something you do on the side. It's not sustainable a career thing to be doing this for long periods because you're just not gonna make any money for it. The goal is to get exposure and to build your credentials on dh importantly your own and so a few tips on submitting to magazines. I don't like the first tip. I thought I would have liked it, but I definitely do agree with it. Now start small, you might not want to start small, you might start going for those kind of bigger magazines have loads of followers and loads of exposure, and I'm not I'm not putting off doing that if you want, if you wantto. Start high do that, but the problem is that you might be wasting a time because a lot of these magazines would just ignore you because your level might just be lower than you think is on dh it's best to get the hang of it by approaching smaller magazines so that you can grow towards the bigger and more important and more swished looking magazine to starting small is a good one because if you're not used to fashion and you're not used to shooting outfits and you're not used to all those things you gotta look out for in a fashion image then it's best to just go with magazines that you feel like you can aim for and succeed in and I'll give you a little kick to grow and grow and grow you aim for the top straightaway, then you're going to get rejected your time's going to be wasted and you might even feel like your ego kicked a little bit as well. So by achieving these small goals you khun get the hang of it for the next observe seasons and themes. Another thing that I find kind of just inherent in the fashion scene is that you've got seasons you've got themes of magazines as well eso you can't just like submit what you want where you want, which is a bit different fine art because fine art is like anything goes on dh there's no issue about timing. I mean, don't get me wrong. There are magazines, art magazines out there that might be doing it particular theme, and they want your pieces of art for that theme, not saying seems a completely redundant in the final, but with fashion, there is predominantly maura notion of themes, seasons, cycle of the year. So you have to think about what you're shooting, whether it's, you know, spring or summer or winter, look on dh, how it's going to fit into the magazine's going, aiming for later down the line? Give yourself time as well, because you want time to work on your pictures and you want time, therefore, then tow research way. You're going to submit them if you haven't already researched that, so then the season will have passed on, and the magazine will be working on the next issue, etcetera. So you have to make sure that there's a timing there, observe a style of magazine sound pretty obvious, but, you know, when I first started looking at all this fashion magazines, there were a lot that I felt like I wanted to. I had attraction toward the magazine, but but I just knew that my my pictures, but I had especially the ones I had ready to submit, we're just I just knew they weren't quite the same like the magazine for example might use a lot of young models you've got like magazines that have a very childlike appeal to the the aesthetic of um I'm thinking of magazine in mind here called material girl where you've always got these young looking models very kind of you dull like um and and perfect in their skin and so if you've got an image that use uses older models then it's just not going to fit into that look on then you've got gothic magazines you got emmett got magazines that make use of bizarre situations like for example, got magazine called beautiful bazaar which has all these really quirky fashion stories and also fine art presentations in them as well. So I would say when you first start looking at magazines, just give yourself time to take in all of these different styles are out there because you need him to take seriously what your style is on dh in the case of when you're starting out, you don't know really know necessarily what that style is. So you're trying to look at what your style is and how it fits into this ever changing world of magazines and it's all about timing it's all about finding that right magazine to submit what you've just made into and there've been loads of mismatches so don't try not to become too path by that because there's a very specific thing they're looking for usually when it comes to their next issue in line with the theme and the season, the look of models, the look of a styling and the quality they want as well. So all of these things attempting to be put off by because there's so many things that have to be right in the synergy between your work and the magazines work, so just give yourself time to get your head round it don't write long e mails work usually speaks for itself, so I would generally say that I'm not saying that language isn't important. I showed you yesterday with the pictures on the pdf, the breakdown of the pdf I showed you about when I was writing about how I would make every part of the shoot work and selling yourself selling your image in your flair, biggin yourself up, you know? Yes, I could do this, I can do it that's important language is important, but I find it's usually a waste of time when you're writing all of that in an email to somebody to try and get them to look at your pictures with the intention of them going in the magazine because most of time the pictures speak for themselves if they like your pictures, they'll ask for them or ask to seymour, so I have found from experience that I just a couple of lines, a couple of polite lines is enough on writing a life story usually, or just go on red. Unfortunately, pictures in the first instance don't need to be polished now. This depends off the this depends on the images. Um, a lot of the time in these fashion magazines, you see pictures that there are heavily retouched, and it may be that the heavy retouching is part ofthe the vision. If you if you are planning on doing heavy retouching in the retouching, is part of the point of the image, then obviously you want to do your retouching and submit it, but a lot of time when it comes to fashion, you shot something where much of the final lock is in the styling already, and you might just do a bit of retouching. I'm gonna be talking more about retouching tomorrow on looking at the different kind of levels. I'm also going to be showing you pictures, a couple of examples of pictures where, you know, barely any retouching is needed on dh. So a lot of the time you shua look and you don't necessarily need to do all those final touches because you can see what the predominant look is going to be, so all you want to do is show those pictures to your potential. Point of publication and they they get the gist they get the gist of what the image looks like and so they can tell whether they want you to submit your story and then you can do all your final airbrushing and a few adjustments of curves or whatever to make it look it's final polished self so what I mean by that is it only be polished unless the processing is a fundamental part of the vision unless you pitched a one in advance send lots of emails so a typical situation is somebody who starting out and they may have already shot some kind of collaborations with people on dh they want teo basically get him out there to magazines that they didn't actually go to to start with and get no the pole letter o have you from that magazine the approval they just want to submit after the fact you know that's that's that's great because that means you can make use of lots of fashion images that you've shot on dh you don't necessarily you have unnecessarily shot them with with the intention of giving them to solve one particular person s so if you do that then you know the world is always to send it out to his many magazines yes you want and if you get one come back to you and you're not sure whether to wait talk to submit to them well, just maybe maybe you might want to wait a little bit to see if you get more responses. If you're happy with that magazine, then you go with them, but try not teo obviously promise the story to be published with one magazine and then send it to another one as well. But as long as your kind of you decide on where you want him to be published, then you consent speculatively to as many as you want and that I think is a really important point because especially when you're starting out, you want to submit to a cz many as possible, I would like I say, start small so you're your e mailing out to load the magazines that you feel are quite approachable. Maybe there are magazines that I just died out, but you might never get reply from most of them, so you need to make sure you kind of put us many feelers out there is past double u don't be standing around waiting for them. You want to do early just to be ableto cut off and say, okay, well, I didn't get this one published, maybe it's try email a batch of more magazines and seve ones interested it no you need is one to get that published and to get to call your image to call your story published and read the rights in terms, a few magazines have been put off because they have very astringent terms where they want kind of worldwide perpetual, irrevocable rights to my image is, and I kind of feel like that's, a bit too far for something they're getting for free from me, that I've put my work and time into so it's up to you. Whether you're happy with giving away your rights to your image is it depends on what you're getting in return from that magazine and the exposure that you'll get as a result, so that something just for your own information, really, and it might be that also they want first rights over your images, and that they don't want you to put them on facebook or flicker or five hundred pics, or whatever before they're published in the magazine and that's something that, again you gotta be happy with, because it's your work, and even if you are starting out, you know you have rights and it's your responsibility to make sure that you submit your work where you're happy to submit it. Something that doesn't put me off about submitting to fashion magazines is the kind of control they expect to get over your images, even though they're not actually paying for anything it's exposure in return, which is a bit of a tricky and gray area, because into the day you know they're using your images of their livelihood is being sustained by your work. A lot of the time, I prefer to publish my work in my own way or not grant exclusivity to somebody and say, well, these images of being on facebook before, but if you know, I'd be happy for them to be featured in your magazine as a piece about myself for a piece about, I don't know, a kind of a fashion story that's already bean in part published, so it depends on what you want and how you feel happy with but make sure you have think about it before you kind of throw yourself open to all of these people who are ready to make use of your work and have patience as well. It's easy to lose patients when you're emailing loads of people and waiting for responses. Um, again, like the passion thing you might be really passionate about starting out in fashion and shooting with models for the first time, but don't forget that always going is always going to be that growth for evolution when I first I shot shoeing fashion models, I just felt like really excited about it, but a little bit impatient as to where I was going to go, but I really have to just, you know, take a breath and think, okay, well, let's give myself time to get used to shooting models, directing other models, and then I could start playing more of lighting, and then I could start ramping up the styling, and then I can start looking for locations that really entrance me. So you build these levels up and don't forget that's what that is great, you know, that's, not a deficiency that's no, a boring part of of life that is life itself, this growth, this evolution and getting to a point where you're really confident with the tools that you're using and you're not scared of shooting a model and having all of these things going on around you because you know where you are and you're confident as the director of the movie, as I said, is the role of the photographer? Um okay, so so these are tools of their tools to use well, so when you do get a publication in the magazine is just a bit of an ego boost really, you can put it out in your portfolio, you know, you sherry on facebook, wherever you are. You give it to the members of the team that you've got there tools, their tools tau show off and to get you your next on your next on your next job or collaboration, wherever that might be that you're looking for next on dh and also this slide. I wanted to talk about reciprocation, so the team is that you're working with at the time off on all of these chutes that you're doing this smaller shoes that you're doing to get experience to get noticed. Don't forget to fashion is all about reciprocation, the people that you work with, two credit them on go ask them to credit you in return when they show your pictures on their respective sites as well, you want really to be building good reputation so people say good things about you and recommend you because you find that you know, lots of model to know each other, and they know make apart the whole network of people out there that you can surprisingly, you know, leap from one part of the web to another simply through working with one or two people and then word about you going out there. So big site about that every time you work with someone new, know that they are the opening to another part of the web, especially when it comes to fashion, because it's such a kind of people laden strand or photography, you know, this is all about working in teams on dh, you know, giving each other, giving each other support on big each other up. So that is the end of my presentation, this time for reals this time, yes, I love that, thank you, what you just said they're at the end that growth is not the boring part of life that is life that really just kind of struck me and resonated a lot. So thank you for sharing that that's what we're obviously all about here, creative life is that ability to grow and change and improve and embracing that is something that is fun and exciting and not something to get through until some mystical I've made it a point exactly, thank you for sharing that.