How to sell photo to magazine
How to Sell Travel Photos to a Magazine
I'll be honest with you magazine work is hard in travel photography it's not like
we just go out take cool pictures and then people magically buy them. there's a
process there's a lot of work that goes into selling your work to a magazine or
newspaper for a story and news flash very little of it is taking photos we
arrived in Taiwan a couple days ago and I thought to myself since I'm not
vlogging daily anymore it would be fun to try to work at the same pace I used
to before I had the vlog back when I was selling the articles to magazines and
newspapers and doing a lot of editorial work and honestly I forgot how much work
it is after just a couple of days I've exhausted and it kind of made me realize
that it's probably a lot of good valuable information not a whole lot of
people have a lot of experience selling articles and photos to travel magazines
or newspapers or things like that so on this episode this is essentially a
complete guide to how to sell a story or photos to a travel magazine or newspaper
okay let's get into it if you want to put together a story for a magazine or
newspaper you need well a story or at least some sort of an angle it could be
something like the food maybe that story is local festivals
where the nature or hiking opportunities it could be about day trips to do
outside that city or culture and architecture having an angle might make
selling this story easier but if you're really clever you'll actually photograph
multiple things you'll cover lots of different things because then you can
double dip on a trip and sell multiple stories so what's the process of
actually selling your photos to a magazine or newspaper or editorial first
you have to decide if you're gonna pitch before or after you travel somewhere and
to be honest pitching beforehand only really works if
you have a working relationship already with the newspaper or magazine or the
editor for example I used to do a lot of work for the Toronto Star so before I
would go somewhere I would say these are some ideas for things I want to do and
some articles I want to put together and then they would come back and say yes
that's a good idea or no that's not a good idea and it works really well and
as easy but like I said it really only works if you already have a working
relationship with an editor the other way is to pitch after you get back from
a trip so just for simplicity sake let's say that we're doing that for this video
the second thing you're gonna need to do is think about some magazines or
newspapers that you want to pitch if you're really into food maybe think
about a food and travel magazine or a magazine that focuses on food or even
just think of a food and culinary magazine that might take a travel story
third you need to plan your shoot you can't really waste time when you're a
travel photographer because every day costs you money it costs you money in
your hotel your food you've got to make the most of it so plan your time usually
you do this before you go somewhere but you can do it when you arrive like we
are basically I sit with my computer open
and I try to plan out a day's schedule where I want to shoot sunrise the
markets I want to shoot the museums I want to shoot basically everything I
want to cover and then I try to figure out how I can do it in the most
productive way possible I don't want to waste my time I need to be productive
and then forth and finally we get out and shoot we do the fun part here's the
thing if you want to get into magazines and newspapers these days you need to
write as well long gone are the days where you could drop a series of images
without words to a magazine and they'd find a writer to attach to them
that's what stock agencies are for but luckily we live in an increasingly
visual world than a high quality imagery almost takes priority to good writing so
don't be disheartened if you're not Ernest Hemingway get out and shoot when
I finally get out to explore the destination I like to have a bit of a
shot list to follow it includes places like this this is Liberty Square here in
Taipei it's absolutely beautiful and unlike kind of what you've maybe
seen in the vlogs and videos before when I go to a place like this when I'm
shooting editorial I'm not trying to just get one big epic hero image
I need a variety of shots I really need four or five or six up to ten images of
every single location I shoot I need that hero image yes
but I also need shots of the details I need shots of people interacting
within the space shots of the space interacting within the city
and when they do things like the raising of the flags
I need photos of those moments as well
that way when the magazine or newspaper finally puts together the story they
have a bunch of images to choose through I took it dozen or so photos of Liberty
Square and then Jodi and I went off to explore the city and Taipei is actually
well kind of awesome I honestly had no expectations for this city when I
arrived which actually makes it a little bit easier to be intrigued and I'm
intrigued I'm drawn in by the massive temples and monuments I love the subtle
bits of history dotted around I love the narrow alleys the constant
street food and interesting characters it kind of feels like a melting pot of
all my favorite Asian cities wrapped into something that's distinctly
Taiwanese and yes there are plenty of photo ops
back in the early days when I was really searching to find editorial work I was
shooting everything and all day I was literally taking pictures and running
around 16 to 18 hours a day and well things are definitely calmer these days
who are getting around here in Taipei as well we're seeing as much as we can pack
into these three days and now we're actually heading just outside of Taipei
to a place called geophone I think which is an old village and it's supposed to
be really cool so let's head that way
we arrived in chill van in a heavy cloud of fog and drizzle and rain and honestly
we were a little bit worried we wouldn't be able to photograph anything but
luckily the town is so densely constructed that the rain can hardly
squeeze down into its alleys the chaotic nature of chief and I'm told is a result
of a gold brush in the late 1800s at that time town grew so quickly that
there was no time for planning a lot of the constructed ends
tea houses and shops are still here to this day
Jody and I taken a traditional tea ceremony wade through crowds of people
and try to capture the five on the streets the other thing I should mention
before we have to eventually leave Taiwan is that when you're shooting
magazines or newspapers editorial in general you shoot a lot portrait
orientation I know things tend to look better landscape orientation but
magazines are shaped in portrait orientation newspapers are shaped in
portrait orientation and they tend to buy a lot more portrait than they do
landscape so landscape might look better but portrait actually sells better the
other thing is there's no harm in doing both shoot one portrait and switch it up
and do landscape don't delete one or the other because it looks better because
you'll be surprised that many times an editor comes and says hey I like this
photo but you have it landscape or portrait orientation so yeah shoot both
do you ever pick up that phone stop it
trying to make the most of one last morning here in Taipei I've just logged
up Elephant Mountain to try to capture a sunrise which was a bust but it is our
last day in Taiwan and I'm trying to make the most of it
but I'm also kind of exhausted after shooting for three straight days I have
no idea how he used to do this six days a week every week but still I'm enjoying
the work the city and the sights regardless of how odd they become Jody
and I are eating at a toilet restaurant for lunch yes you heard that right
then after losing our appetite we jump in an uber ahead to Shi fen where I'm
promised lanterns and waterfalls
I wish we had to find all the things I can't say bye
I think I actually shot as many photos as one possibly could in three days so
it's time to do the bulk of the work we're flying home early in the morning
back to Manila I'll take you with me the actual work is still to come over three
days in Taiwan I shot nine locations I took about 600 photos and I'm leaving
with about a hundred keepers I'm exhausted
some might even say delirious the world's smallest escalator enjoy your
ride
okay I'm a home in Manila and now the real work begins as one of my travel
writer friends always says this is where the misery begins in my opinion this is
where you decide if you like making photos or if you want to be a travel
photographer it's fun taking pictures in the field we all love that part of it
but it's hard when you get home and you have to face the reality that it's a job
that you have to pitch you have to find magazines you need to work and then on
top of it you need to face a lot of rejection so I'm gonna try to quickly
very quickly run through what now happens once you get home first of all
you find magazines step one find the magazines the way I do it is I open an
Excel spreadsheet and I kind of list them based on category that way in the
future if I'm looking for magazines again I don't need to research for
everything and where do you find the magazines well I don't want to sound
really sarcastically snarky but Google you google it you google things like
travel magazines or if you're doing a story on food you google something like
food travel magazines or a list of food travel magazines something like that and
you'll find that there's a ton of magazines out there so once you do find
them then check them into your spreadsheet step two is you submit your
story but of course how do you do that well the good news is that basically
every single travel magazine and newspaper out there has a list of
submission guidelines out on their website so go to their website and find
the submission guidelines or another trick is to go to google.com and enter
the URL of the magazine with a colon after and then add submission guidelines
to the end of it and it should help you find that page that you need it's also
smart to add that link to the submission guidelines to your Excel spreadsheet
that way you don't need to search it in the future those submission guidelines
will tell you exactly what you need to do to submit your story follow those
things step three is to plan your submission now even though you have
submission guidelines that you need to follow you really do have the
opportunity to still pitch and I'm gonna put a link to an old video up here about
how to pitch but basically be brief be quick and try to somehow show your
credibility as a travel photographer in like the initial email that you send
them really be careful about things like spelling errors and grammar and not
following the guidelines as soon as you like don't follow the guidelines and
editors just gonna delete the email a lot of times you'll need to do a quick
blurb of your story so like a hundred word blurb from your article needs to go
into that email so just be prepared for that
number four what about the photos again follow the submission guidelines because
they're gonna tell you how to do it but usually it's via a Dropbox or onedrive
or something like that most of the times I send like 8 to 12 images I don't send
all like a hundred that I took on that trip because I want the editor to be
able to focus on the best images and images that are relevant to the story I
also never watermark the photos because I think it looks tacky
I send full-sized images because they're not gonna steal an image nobody's that
stupid and finally I don't crop the images I keep the images at normal size
because if they want to crop it down they can later themselves but they're
gonna want the whole image to work with for their design and in general just
don't send weird like Thomas heat and configured crops to magazines just send
them the whole size number five is to submit so you just hit hit Send on that
email and you sit and you wait and you wait for number six which is rejection
rejection happens a lot in fact sometimes it's even worse because you
don't even get the rejection editors just don't get back to people you'll
send a piece to ten twenty thirty different publications and you'll never
hear back from them maybe you'll hear one or two when they'll be rejections
rejection is a part of this industry and you just need to take it and strive you
also can't take rejection personally if somebody says
you're writing these improvement improve your writing work on it if they say your
photos aren't good enough get better at being a photographer take the rejection
learn from it and grow and remember that if you get a lot of rejection that's
normal everybody has this happen to them and also remember that even if you get a
hundred rejections it only takes one or two like positive emails for you to
eventually build a relationship with an editor and the more you do this the more
you pitch and the more relationships you build with editors the easier the career
becomes so what do you think about being a travel photographer now do you still
want to be a travel photographer it is a lot of work it's a really hard work but
it is so rewarding there's nothing cooler than opening a magazine and
seeing your photo giant across two pages or on the cover of a magazine or
something like that it is so rewarding when you do make it happen so if you
want to make it happen go up make it happen there's nothing holding you back
you don't have to go to Taipei to make a travel story there's travel stories in
and around your hometown wherever you live in the world I guarantee you that
so that's it for today's video I'll see you guys on the next episode on Tuesday
where I'm gonna talk about the Canon RP crazy little camera talk about that in a
couple days I'll see you there peace
