Category Archives: Working

Interviewing Candidates For A Magazine Job

There’s something strange about the magazine business, in that the people working at magazines are very good at editing or designing or copy editing and generally very bad at the very basics of running a business. Skills like leadership, managing people, managing budgets, running meetings and conducting interviews are not why most people have the [...]

Pickup the Dang Phone

When I worked as a Photo Editor I never answered my phone. I’m sure eventually at some DOP job down the line I would have finally gotten an assistant to answer it for me. There’s two ways to go about this in the photo department of a magazine and if you choose to answer the [...]

Look Out For That Cliff

The timing of a nuclear meltdown on wall street and uncertainty as advertisers try to find a strategy online could not be worse for magazines:
Ad spending across the major U.S. media fell at its steepest rate since the industry’s last recession in 2001, according to new data released this morning by ad tracking service TNS [...]

What If Your Still Camera Also Shot Great Video?

Vincent Laforet emailed me about this new Canon camera that supposedly shoots high quality video (his blog post here) because he thinks “It has the potential to change our industry.” My only thought was that other than the convenience of no longer having to carry a video and still camera, it seems rather insignificant to [...]

The Dangers of Oversold Stories

Assigning photography to oversold stories is a very painful lesson to learn in this industry. All stories are sold to some extent, because no one is sitting around in a pitch meeting carefully outlining all the reasons why something might not work but some bear the onerous distinction of an idea that only looks good [...]

Outdoor Sports Photographers

UPDATED, Outdoor Sports Photographers List.
Some of these guys have moved on and most can shoot more sports than I’ve listed but all will blow your mind with crazy action or travel photos.
Jackson Hole, WY
Wade McKoy- Skiing
Andrew McGarry- Climbing
Chris Figenshau- Skiing
Greg Von Doersten- Climbing, Skiing
Greg Epstein- Skiing
Jimmy Chin- Climbing
Gabe Rogel- Climbing, Skiing
Jeff Diener- Outdoors
David Stubbs- Outdoors
Jonathan [...]

Running The Best Photo

Well, of course, everything is cool when the photographer and magazine are aligned because there are two goals with selecting a picture for a story. The first is running an image that serves the story. Something that is surprising, insightful and arresting, an attention grabber that will get the consumer to read the headline, then [...]

Who Should We Put On The Cover?

In my career I’ve gone from “let’s see which of the stories we have this month will make a good cover” to “we’re going to call every single A list celebrity that has a movie this month till someone says yes” and then of course, task some writer with throwing a story together in a [...]

An Endless Stream Of Photography

The stream, it’s more like a fire hose really, so whatever you do don’t try and take a drink from it. I found these two posts by Liz Kuball (here) and Robert Wright (here) on the sheer volume and mediocrity of photography on the web quite interesting. Interesting because there’s a side to this business [...]

Get One Of Your Pictures On A Credit Card

This new feature at Capitol One (here) where you can get a credit card with one of your pictures on it totally rocks.

Now can you edit your work down to one image?
Via, Swissmiss.

Can Visa pour l’Image Remain Relevant?

For the past 19 years photographers and photo editors have gathered near the Spanish border in Perpignan, France for a grand festival to celebrate photojournalism. This years festival from August 30th to September 14th will mark the 20th such meeting and I have been handed an interview with Jean-François Leroy the festivals founding and current [...]

Photo Lucida- Photo Editors Resource

I just rediscovered Photo Lucida and their Critical Mass project (here) which is a good resource for Photo Editors looking for new talent. I highly recommend working as a juror because then you are exposed to all 150 photographers that make the first cut and there’s truly some amazing work from people you’ve never heard [...]

SPD Photography Winners 2008

Here are the GOLD winners from last weekends SPD awards (more here) in Photography.
Magazine of the year

The New York Times Magazine (over 1M circ)
Director of Photography: Kathy Ryan
Photo Editors: Kira Pollack, Luise Stauss, Joanna Milter, Clinton Cargill, Leonor Mamanna, Stacey Baker
Wired (500k to 1M circ)
Photo Editors: Zana Woods, Carolyn Rauch, Anna Goldwater Alexander
Blueprint [...]

Same Cover Different Mag

Daryl Lang over at PDNPulse catches Esquire running the same Platon shot of Obama that Time did 6 months ago (here) and asks:

We wonder how the Esquire editors failed to get an exclusive Obama portrait for their cover. Awesome type treatment notwithstanding, are they honestly satisfied making the same visual statement Time made six months [...]

Keren Sachs- Director of Photography

Keren Sachs is the Merchandising Director of Photography for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia in New York City. She got her start as a Photo Editor at National Geographic Kids spent time at the Wall Street Journal and then as an Art Director at Corbis where she refined the more commercial aspect of Photo Editing that [...]

I Want A Photo Editing Award

Not me personally so let me explain.
The National Magazine Awards were last Thursday (here) and the big winners for photography were Gourmet (overall photography), National Geographic (photojournalism) and Vanity Fair (photo essay). I’ll also include Wired who won for design in this group of Ellie (the statue) bastard children because you see the National Magazine [...]

Pitching the Photo Editor

In general pitching stories, that aren’t photo essays, to the Photo Editor is not a bad idea. Everyone on staff at a magazine can contribute to the line-up so the Photo Editor can get something made if they’re in the mood to take it to the right people and make sure something gets done about [...]

My Dream Photo Editing Job

125 blank pages of edit with an additional 85 pages of ads (yeah, it’s a dream but we still gotta turn a profit).
A line-up with a wide mix of interesting subjects to assign: far away places, inspiring people, beautiful objects, crazy ideas, elite sport, humor, conflict, mystery.
Complete autonomy with the selection of photographers and final [...]