Elizabeth Roberts the editor of the B+W magazine gave a talk to our club yesterday evening on how the magazine works and some illuminating advice .
Apart from the usual marketing blurb such as circulation, readership and world wide coverage, a brief history of the publication and a list of contributors and interviews with photographers of note, as one would expect, we were treated to some inside information and tips on how a photographic magazine selects and edits images for publication.
Because most submissions are now made on disc, prints taking less and less percentage of the total, she says it's not unusual for some 25+ images to be sent for consideration. It's here that most submissions fail. She says whilst there maybe two or three images of quality in amongst the 25+ it somewhat reflects on the photographer's ability to edit his/her work. Even notes saying that the person is not too sure about a number of images within the submission are included tends to emphasise the point she was making.
You may not agree with what she says, as one person in the audience remarked, but as she pointed out a small editorial team cannot spend their time editing the submissions of all that they receive each month, that's the job of the person submitting the images.
Moral of the story, learn to edit your work and if you submit images for possible inclusion in any magazine, publication or exhibition, make sure they constitute only those that you deem the best, not overwhelm the selector with your possibles. It's a good idea to stick to a theme not a mixture of genres.
It's the submissions that comprise 4-6 images that get noticed.
Now you know. :doh:
Thank you for that advice. Have never submitted anything to a magazine yet, but I'll bear it in mind for future reference.
I'm still very much the person who is often not sure about the final result of a shot, but I'm working on it and have help from several friends, here and elsewhere.
Till I get there, I'll hold my own fantasy exhibition!
Someone else said recently - it's not the shots you take which make you a photographer, it's the choice you make of ones among them.
(I often hear advice to "work the scene" and I do try to do so, very often with the result that I only keep the shot I took first. Perhaps I'd actually worked the scene before getting the camera out...)
Quote from: SimonW on September 13, 2013, 07:19:34 PM
Someone else said recently - it's not the shots you take which make you a photographer, it's the choice you make of ones among them.
Exactly Simon.
I often quote the remarks of an old camera club member whose work was well admired, After someone said "We never see a bad shot from Nobby", Nobby replied "Well I don't show them to you".