Raw Transcript
having your surf photos published in a magazine is a goal of many surf photographer I think it’s becoming harder and harder mostly because the print industry is shrinking and the surf photography market is growing more people available fewer places to get them published so I’m again this is one of those topics where I have had some luck in getting photos published I don’t submit very often to magazines and a long time but I have had some publish in the local or national UK magazine says wavelength and carve in the UK both surfing magazines and I’ve had photographs I’ve taken published in now show you some examples so um I’ve also had them published in the global South calendar and I’ve had pictures published in catalogs for four products for an su P company various other places so I do have a lot of experience that I’ll share with you now but bear in mind that there are people who out there who will be able to tell you a lot more about the process of certainly ongoing publishing in magazines so from my point of view it was a goal of mine I it was an aspirational thing to have an image that I’ve taken published on the Shelf in the newsagent next to you know all these other amazing magazines and in theme publication as some of these people who I’ve really looked up to and it was a really really nice feeling to to have that happen and I think the process for getting that getting that done is it’s probably different for each magazine but generally the same you want to find out who the person you need to be contacting is a la magazine usually you can find out on their website or in the magazine itself then you want to make sure if there’s any guidelines that you’re following them and I’ll put some links there because they’re some that’s a nice general posts on general guidelines to follow and I’ll give you my how I’ve been sick four and I think it’s generally just common sense but it’s good to note check this list off before you do submit anything I think you’ve got to have an image that is something that the readers of that magazine want to see so it won’t necessarily be the best surf photo ever it won’t be the most technically perfect photo ever necessarily it could be just a really topical image it could be something that is unique and no one else it’s got or it could be related to that area um I think this is where you should focus if you want to start on this process is focus on your local surf publications so perhaps you might have a bit of an advantage like I might have a bit of Vantage in the UK because there’s far fewer surf photographers in the UK than there are in Southern California or New South Wales Australia for instance so if I’m approaching my local surf magazine they probably not getting many submissions from the UK in each month a couple of months however often they publish their magazine so it makes you know it lowers the bar I guess which has allowed me to get to get my my stuff in there um so what I would do is find out the right person I know if there’s any normally they might publish a little thing saying please send low resolution JPEGs and be prepared to provide the original raw file that’s pretty common so as I said in the quick settings you’re probably you’re gonna have your your camera in raw plus JPEG mode because you want to be able to have the biggest possible file with the most possible information available to send to the people who are going to publish it you want to process that file don’t overdo it because quite often they might want to process it themselves or rather they have a look that they’re going for so you’re processing might be fine it might fit into that look but if you really overdo it then it could put them off and it could it could mean that it gets overlooked but they don’t like the colors or whatever so just try and make it true to life that’s my advice for post-processing going to a multi turn the post-processing section so once you’ve done some basic processing get a low resolution JPEG not really really know just so that kind of if it can display full resolution on a HD screen at 1080p screen so that’s 1980 1920 by 1080 so make your longest edge 1920 pixels may be a good guideline they might have a better guideline for you they might say do it low in there whatever needs to be quite small so you can email it easily don’t send low every photo you took of a session send the 1 2 3 best photos you’ve got if you’ve got anything else that goes along with it if you’ve got maybe you’ve got a GoPro mounted on top of your housing and you’ve got some GoPro footage of the same wave mention that to them because a lot of magazines have websites but these days every magazine has a website an Instagram a Facebook and Twitter and all of this other stuff so they might think that’s just bonus for them they might be saying okay this is a little clip we can point Instagram as well as a something we can put in the magazine anything to make their lives easier or to give them a bit of added value it’s great so pick out your top two or three from whatever the session or from the event or from the last few months and put together a nice email double triple check the spelling make sure you’ve got the name of the person right make sure you got the email address right don’t be sending it to the wrong person if you can possibly help it there’s all these little check boxes that you want to check off be polite be courteous you’ve got to use your full name don’t don’t send it from an email address that looks totally random and weird send it from my name at gmail you know you might have to add the usual numbers initials and stuff to get that email address but don’t use a crummy email address make sure that they’re the files are small enough don’t go over I mean don’t go over five megabytes with the attachments and that’s probably more than enough to fit three or four low resolution files that they can get an idea of what your shots are like they will expect high resolution ones but they’ll have a process for you to get those files to them you can deal with that later down the line once they said oh yes I’m interested so beep I make sure you spelled everything right if you if there’s a photo of a surfer get the surfers name and put it in the file name so I whenever I sent starter magazines I put the file name as so Joe Smith underscore – whatever you want so Joe – Smith – name of the spot fish draw beach then by Ben Pascoe so that it’s all there in the file name if if they email it someone else and they lose the original I’ve shot a picture of Joe Smith at fish draw my name is Ben Pasco and I thought it would be nice for you know your magazine it it’s I think it could fit nicely in your roundup of photos from August because it was taken give them a little bit of background to give them something to go on to make it interesting so quite often they’ll want to put a caption next to it if it’s anything like the ones I’ve submitted it’ll normally go into like a roundup of a month or or a session a session more of a spot or a region or something like that they want something they just if you make their lives easier if you if you make it easy for them to put it in mm-hmm they know your name they know the name of the person who was surfing it and a fact that’s not necessarily related to that image so really nice captions usually don’t describe of what the image is don’t say here’s a picture of Joe Smith in a barrel at visceral Beach taken by me Ben Pasco it was a sunny day because they know that because that’s what the picture is so you got to say Joe Smith and I drove 14 hours to get to the beach and we just managed to get thirty minutes of the right tide and the wind swung round for three minutes and I managed to get this one photo and we missed the local sports teams Cup final game on the way home because we were out celebrating or something you know just a little a little one-liner about there the shot some sort of background I think goes a long way to making them want to share that that photo so I think these tips these tips help you get beautiful in the door which is what I’ve really ever done is just you know taking a punt and they’ve they’ve picked up a couple of their shots those sent but if if you can get in the door like that and you can build relationship and you can show that you are able to follow simple instructions ie if they’ve got any card lines on this site or they tell you where to send the things make sure you follow those instructions make their lives as easy as possible and get I’m the other thing I guess is you probably shouldn’t expect to get paid don’t although you probably might well do I mean I have been paid and I didn’t get very much at all it’s more like a token thing gesture in my eyes but the main goal for me was to just have you know I’m just sure I’ve got magazine now and I got a double page spread and I can then show people that and just say oh that was that time that you know we were so and so and I got that shot of soon say but I think here’s the first step for people who’ve asked me in the past any advice on this this is the stuff that I’m telling them it’s just be extra extra careful about the the interactions you have with the people there because they are the people who have the power to say yes or no and if you’ve made their life easy and you followed instructions and you’re capable of also if they get then get back to them as soon as possible don’t let it hang don’t don’t just you know play hard to get show that you’re keen show that you’re switched on and able to make the the make the wheels turn in the right way to get that make what you want to happen happen and I think that’ll reflect really well on you and you’ll end up getting a few shots in the magazines and depending on what your experience is and how you want to push that you can you know leverage that to to do other things you can then say put that on your website published in so and so and so and so and you’ll end up and even my my very very limited exposure on these platforms has led to other things and I’ve had being had opportunities I wouldn’t have had otherwise through getting these little bits of exposure and but I am a complete amateur at this once a amateur I mean I’m not paid to do it I don’t get paid to take surf photos and I and understand that that is not going to happen and it’s not a kind of career goal of mine to be a professional surfer geographer might be for you and and it’s totally possible that to happen but it is very very difficult and requires a lot of hard work so for me it was more about being able to say up to how I’ve done it and if that’s the case then one of those instructions and target your local magazines and I honestly think it’s totally achievable for anyone to get their photos in there the other option publishing is online and you’ve probably all published your own photos on social media these days but I’m getting you can there’s lots of places where you can upload photos and have them selected and looked at by lots of other surfers so Surfline magicseaweed lots lots and lots of other places I’m sure where you can kind of submit your photo for it to be looked at graded and and presented and you might get photo of the day if it’s the best one that’s been uploaded and how much that how much value that is house to you is is a different thing if you are trying to build up a bit of exposure for so you can sell photos to surfers then that’s a great way of doing it and again it’s all about making their lives easier if you can make it interesting and you can be consistent and you can show that you are willing to go the extra mile to get them higher resolution or the next shot in the sequence or whatever or tell them a little bit more about it then you’re gonna you can quite easily you know get into their good graces the editors of these websites and things will lap up anything like make their life easier so that’s my that’s my advice if you wanted to get your your photos published and like I said once you get one thing going it’ll snowball if you want it to if you put in the hard work then I’m sure you can get this rolling and you can get it snowballing and the more photos you take the more opportunities you’ll have and hopefully the more fun it’ll be when you get your photos published