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Q&A for Magazine Submissions & Researching a Shoot

Lesson 9 from: Becoming a Travel Photographer

Laura Grier

Q&A for Magazine Submissions & Researching a Shoot

Lesson 9 from: Becoming a Travel Photographer

Laura Grier

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Lesson Info

9. Q&A for Magazine Submissions & Researching a Shoot

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Class Introduction

15:59
2

How to Break Into Travel & Destination Wedding Photography

08:52
3

How Are You Perceived as a Photographer?

08:42
4

Brand Yourself Before Others Brand You

04:36
5

Activity: What Are Your Photography Goals?

13:50
6

Owning Your Own Style

23:50
7

Preparing for a Photoshoot

23:46
8

The Importance of Research

17:09

Lesson Info

Q&A for Magazine Submissions & Researching a Shoot

I think that we I'm gonna open up to some questions and get in. Does anyone have any questions or what I've talked about here before? I get into more color? Sure. Yeah, I can. I can ask a few always. Um all right, so ah, lot of activity on on the Internet. Um eight. Thomas is saying Thanks for all the tips. They're learning a lot, and, uh, they wanted to talk a little bit about submissions. You were talking about committing to magazines, and we have a couple questions about that. But when it comes to submissions to magazines, do you ever do you ever try pitching and submitting to multiple magazines simultaneously? So I think you did touch on that. But maybe that's a really good question. Yes and no, there is sort of ah, like an etiquette to submissions. Um, I feel OK pitching the different publications at the same time. I've repurposed the story. If I If I said it's not okay to send, like, five magazines, the same story in the same images. A a lot of them know each other and will be li...

ke, Dude, you sent that same story two, like so And so it might look at my Competition magazine like that's not cool. Plus, let's say all five of them were like, Yes, we want to publish it. Then you're like, Oh, and then you have to be like, Sorry, actually gave it to this other person. They will never accept this submission from you again because they're like, you just wasted my time. Like I just went through a whole board meeting and we accepted your thing. And then and then now you're pulling it away. So, um, first, make sure that everyone okay with you submitting it. I've had situations where I've been so excited about a wedding and I've submitted someone's wedding to magazine and then I'm like, Congratulations, Destiny. So I do want to publish to you in the bride and groom were like, We're not really comfortable with that. And they and they said no. And I was like, Ah, you know, so that that's really embarrassing to So you have to make sure that everyone is just excited as you are about submitting that story. But, um, in terms of multiple publications, if it's not like if you submit to a magazine internationally and then nationally the same story. That's pretty OK. If you submit to a travel blawg and then a wedding magazine and they're not really in the same genre. That's okay, Um, but if you're submitting within the same industry like different magazines and you definitely have to, either just submit one at a time and wait for them to get back to you or tweak your story and right three different versions of it and send it out so great. So I can I can keep going on that we have. We have a couple of questions so far, a submissions go. There are a lot of people in our audience who maybe have never done that before, so and they kind of had questions about resolution and my shooting with the camera. That's big enough, you know? Are there certain requirements or things that we should be thinking of when were actually shooting these images so that they are ready to go a question? I don't know about you guys, but I don't really crop. My image is. I think I'm thankful for that because sometimes if you crop your images and submit that the resolution that isn't high enough for some of these travel, stock and publications. I learned on film, so I usually frame everything and expose it like exactly as I as I did in film, because, you know, like you just did everything started on camera back then. So I think with digital that knowledge and that foundation has really helped me with being a little bit of a better photographer. I'm not relying on digital enhancement, necessarily were cropping or things like that. So being able to frame your image the way you want it the first time is very important because you do need as much resolution as you can, um, with travel stock with another tip. And I'll definitely bring this up now because I learned this lesson the hard way. Like like four weeks ago. So, um, I submitted a bunch of my images to a stock. My stock agency, Robert Harding. I was really excited. I got accepted, and they usually only want to go back a certain amount of years on your pictures. Um, probably just because the resolutions gotten better, they for my stock agency, I have to submit the highest rez input of a J peg out of a raw file with my camera shoot with the Canon five D Mark three. So that camera's already pushing it. It's almost like not high resin A. And it's a pretty high res camera, so I probably will have to buy the next version camera just toe. Have more megapixels. Travel stock wants, like hi hi. Resolution, because they might use it for billboard or like globalize so you can't submit a smaller file to them. So here it was, a went through my whole library and I had gone through and repurposed a bunch of images from like years with the hard drives and, like, organizes amazing submission, and I sent it to them. They accepted it. And then they're like, um, like, 80% of these are not high Resident. What? What? And they're like, Well, do you have the original raw file? Yeah, but that's like digging three years of bags of negatives. I mean, this is all digital, the time submitting, but but it still is the same thing. Like I'm going to now find the original raw file for that on the some hard drive somewhere. Like what year was that one that I shot in Peru. And then where and then not only did that too do that. Now I have to. I didn't save like I wasn't using light room as far back as some of the images. So all of my settings for the way I edited them were gone. So I had to literally go through. And then I also re numbered everything when I sent it to them. So I had to blindly go through and find and match up the raw images to my photos and then re at it all of them, and try to match it identically. It took weeks, and I was so mad at myself because what I was doing with before I had clients that were like these piles are too big. Can you shrink them down like I can't open them? And so I started exporting all of my raw files as like, a lower as J Peg just because it was easier toe upload online and and I'm submit out and like, nobody needs to Principal Bird. But then that doing that was a huge disservice to me. I thought it would save me room on hard drives, and now I found out that I had to go back and redo it and expert everything in the highest as possible. And it's so miserable, so moving for it. I've learned that lesson is a very time consuming lesson, but it's great. So now moving forward, I know that I have to give them the most high rez export out of all my editing, and I probably had even have to buy the next generation up camera. And now I know as I'm doing submissions, I pull all the raw files for those submissions, and I keep them separate. And I now have, like, a stock like Hard Drive or it's all in one place and now the big, really 20 hard drives. It was a really it was. I think I'm a pretty organized person. And then that lesson just made me go. Oh my God, I royally messed up on this one, so you can definitely be more organized, but it helps to know, like what? Like I didn't know. I never thought about stock travel stock one. I was shooting this stuff, and when I was organizing everything, so it dependent. So it helps to move forward to be really, really organized with that. Glad you touched on that. Because that's that's a question that I had about for our kind of non wedding shooters. You know, are the submission process is similar Kind of across the board? Yes and no. So, I mean, we're gonna really, really, like, dive into travel photography submissions. I we're gonna talk about like, I'm actually gonna show you. Ah, pitch letter that I dio a sub submission that I've done. I'm gonna show you the do's and don't of what travelers are looking for. And and we're gonna really dive into that before that. Like really honing in on your your voice and your style and we brand yourself and like what your story is. And then from there, you can really start targeting. Like which publications And what you want to dio Um, because again, going back to that whole thing I talked about on the website like like being like all over the place and showing everything you do is is we're trying to like home you down to, like, really focusing on what that is before before you start submitting. So we'll get there s so another question about submission is, Let's see. Oh, it's about how how do you find the right contact person? This person is saying, Lord Laurie is saying that she's finding that it's hard to and she's going through a chain of people before she finds the right person to submit to, and I'm not sure exactly if this is for weddings or otherwise, but it was kind of getting passed around a lot. Okay, I also will kind of shortly addresses later on. But the when you look at a magazine and you look at the mast head of a magazine in the masthead is like that part. Usually it's like a few pages in that list, like all the editors and people in the magazine. Um, mistake that I think some people make as they go, like, straight to the top. And they, like, submit to like the main person. And that would be like e mailing, um, Bill Gates about getting a job like, you know what I mean, like, you don't you don't go to Bill Gates. You go like down to the bottom. And so it's important that kind of looked at the bottom and read which really, which editor. You want Teoh right to. And if you're still not sure, like, it doesn't hurt to write to someone and say I bought this submission and I just wanna make sure that you're the right editor to get it to, like, maybe you could help me afford it around, but, um, it is good to try to really look and see like they'll have a travel editor, a photo editor, and you want to find that person to write Teoh, usually someone lower down. It's not like embarrassing for them to shuffle you around. But I would if this is like a future publication, you're going to write, too. I would keep a database, or like an Excel spreadsheet of all the publications and who the person is. Your contact person is, and all of them have different submissions guidelines to. So it's awesome to kind of gather that information. And I have, like, a Excel spreadsheet, so I know, Um, okay, uh, Conde Nast, once this, they want this many images and they want it submitted a either dropbox. So they wanted into their portal or whatever, and like, I'll have it in a spreadsheets soon. Moving forward I don't make that same mistake. But that is a really popular mistake. Sometimes reaching out Teoh, maybe finding someone else who has been published on them before and reaching out to them and being like, who did you submit? Teoh, Um, not all photographers. A really nice about sharing information, But like, I think that, uh, like I I've gotten a lot of help that way. Just reaching out. People are asking, but yeah, usually the bottom of the masthead started down there is where you want it Start attracting or emailing people. All right. Cool. And in the audience you spoke a little bit about, um uh, uh the resolution of cameras that use and the hard drive. I was curious if you might tell us anything about, um, Are you PC or Mac? And do you have preferred programs for organizing your photos and things like that? Um, I am definitely a mad girl. Uh, and, um, a cannon girl, too. But not to say that everyone else is wrong if they're not. But I love Mac. I am really solely used. Adobe light room. For all my editing, the only time I've ever really used photo shop other than compositing is which is not a large part of my work. Like I would say, my compositing is maybe 5% of the stuff that ideo but for just wedding albums and like fixing, you know, blemishes and things like that are racing exit signs. That's usually the extreme, like part about photo shopping that I do, which is not much so, um, editing and organizing. Everyone's different. I learned another lesson recently. Teoh, about organization for me. I always keep everything organized on separate hard drives, and then I bring in the light room I edited. Export it, and then I keep the exported images separate to, like all the not retouch ones with the ones that are light room. But a lot of people do all the organization within light room. I don't do that. It's not. It just depends on what you want to do. But I was shooting for the summit serious. I don't if you know them Recently and there, like a big global summit of the world's thinkers and scientists and tech entrepreneurs like the CEO of Uber was there, and they do these international conferences, and we were in Tulum Mexico and I was shooting for them. And, uh, they're like, OK, Laura, you're gonna meet up with, like, the four other photographers and dump your images as you go. Okay, so I'm like, going through editing everything in the way that I do and like, just dumping. I'm thinking I'm like dumping Jay pegs and I get there and everyone's like, Well, where's your light room catalog? Like what? And they're like, Well, where you're just dumping raw images like nobody edits there and stuff like we have another. It does it. And I was like, Singer spending all this time editing. And I'm like, But this is my style. I don't just that it was just, like dump raw images and and then they're like, Well, did you meta tag everything? And like I'm like, What? So I I there was, like, three in the morning learning. I felt like, Oh my God, I don't just through 16 years and I feel like I don't know what I'm doing right now because I had just had never organized my images that way before. And so there's everyone's got a different process. This editor wanted everyone to tag their images because they were gathering like five different geographers stuff and wanted to separate them by certain categories and things. And then she was doing on the editing. So it did her like no good to have my J pegs. Anyway, so it just depends on, like, how you're doing it for me. Um, I really Onley store the rahs if I need them later on, Teoh re export something or just as almost like my negatives of, like, the images that I'm going to license the stock. I mean, I save all my other writing, which is, too. But those were the most important for me and, um and I don't do it, Although I didn't organize it on separate hard drives. I don't do it through late room, so I don't know if that's a good or a bad tip, but that's how I organize my stuff. In terms of high resolution lie the stock agencies need a minimum of the file has to be a minimum of 50 megabytes for them to accept it. That's a pretty large file. So, you know, if you're really seriously thinking about getting in the stock, you might want to make sure you've got, like, a good hi rez like big megapixel camera in that one, too. Yeah. Good lessons to learn. So few more questions from Internet. Um, so Sarah is asking what air the resource is and strategies you consider while doing research of the place that you're going, Teoh. And how how do you find all of those spots that you want to go? Teoh? What's what's your favorite way to? Okay. Uh, well, well, I'll diving more later about this, too. But the boards of tourism's of where we're going are like an amazing resource. I don't want to get too deep into it cause I will talk about this later. Uh, they're a great resource on the ground. I've also reached out to wedding coordinators in places I've gone out, too, because usually they know everybody like all the vendors and people like they're kind of a great resource. And they they're so used to logistically pulling the other events that they're really helpful for pulling together photo shoots, um, and or want to be part of them. So that's cool. Ah, certain hotels, same thing. Hotels have con Sears. And if you tell them I'm traveling over there, and this is a project I'm working on. Sometimes they'll even offer to put you up. But if you just use their concierge of the hotel is a resource that's really helpful. What was second part of that question? She wanted to know where. Yeah, how you find What's your favorite way of finding? Okay a couple ways. One, honestly, Google images and just literally like Googling different spots. And like looking through all the images and picking out places I like, sometimes you can logistically find out where they are, like that one. I didn't do a really good job in the desert to figure that one out, but, um, a lot of times I'll pitch a story idea. It'll pull images from locations like I want to do these kinds of setups and and then the people will tell me like, Oh, that's really hard to get to or that's this. And, um so it's good to pull images and almost make like a storyboard of your ideas. Um, believe it or not Instagram because Instagram people are posting if you like, check Hashtags like if I, uh, we went were in India and went to the Taj Mahal. And we're like, I wonder what the weather is like this morning over there, like we really heading over there and you could hash tag, search the house tags for Taj Mahal and see people posting in real time like hashtag Taj Mahal. And you look at me like the weather looks pretty good. And so I've used Instagram a lot like check locations. Or just see what it looks like in real life from people posting images from there, because sometimes you can't tell from a website. But Google Earth is really cool to like, honestly, zooming in on satellite. So if you can tell if there's a park somewhere, there's greenery. Or, um, you can map out how far places are to get Teoh. Yeah, so I have those air all been ways that I've figured it out. But usually I'm just scouring pictures on the Internet. Yeah, me again, this'll kind of question came up a few times and you've talked a little bit about social media, and I'm sure we'll we'll continue to touch on that. But people are asking about water marking. Jackie is asking. She's saying that, you know, maybe I'm concerned about people feeling my images. What is your water? Best practices for your water marking on social media. Okay, this is like a subject that I could go on and on and on about because, um, yeah, this is something that is actually a huge problem. There's now a couple of companies that are trying to address this. I think it's one of the major problems in cyber insecurity. Now is all of none other images or say, if anybody can use a screenshot of something and reuse it, repost it, um there, like, there's really no way to police it. Getting images polices it because they've got a huge team of lawyers that can go after people that are using images and correctly. But the average person doesn't. It's something I'm actually really passionate about. I want to figure out a way to do it. I don't watermark my images because there isn't really usable. Most magazines do not accept watermarked images, something with on your own personal blogged great. But when you're publishing stuff and it's on their instagram and they're promoting you, they they don't accept watermarked images, and I personally think they're just ugly like I don't want my images, the watermark. But then you're leaving yourself open for and I know people that have had watermarks like scrubbed off their picture and stolen to like There's only so much you can dio Um, but there is. I don't have those and you know, that's a very scary thing where you can, like, drag your image into the Google image, search blank and see where it lives anywhere on the Internet. Have you guys ever done? Let's hear images. The scary thing. Okay, take a day off and, like, sitting, try this I One day someone told me about that. Like, you know, you can search your images like you can go into images at Google and you take a photo off of your desktop. Just drag it into the search blank, and it a literally tell you by pixel exactly where that photo lives anywhere in the Internet and tell you the website and everything. So I was like, That's cool. I'm gonna try this and I took that picture of me jumping up macho P choo just for fun. It was the first picture. I tried that because it happened to be on my desktop and I dragged it. different travel websites had stolen that picture, and we're using it. I was literally on the cover like people were like, Click here for your macho future tour and it's like me jumping, you know, And I was horrified that all these tour groups air. I remember talking my boyfriend. I don't know what to do. And he's like, Well, you can like, email them in seasoned assistant. I thought, How like, Who is the time to? That's just one photo like, I'm gonna write 250 times the people and tell them season this system like and I mean literally. I was on the cover like like every Peru travel site, like had that image, and I don't know why that went viral, but, um, so that was his one image, and I don't know how to stop that. The only thing I can say is, I hope that it's out there. I hope that whoever steals it gives you credit, because in a way, that's kind of nice, like they're spreading the word about you a little bit. But, um, you could just have to hope that your images, like recognizable it is not being used anywhere, Major, Like no major publication would do that. Usually it's like a Joe Schmo, and you just have to write them and be like, Please, take that down or pay me for it. But it's time consuming. I don't know. I have a good answer for that one. But it is true. I mean, you can't if you If you're curious about what's being used, you can just use Google image search and, like, check your images and make sure they're not being stolen. Oh, man, that's a tough subject. Like everyone. Whoever discovers how to stop that from happening is gonna make, like, a $1,000,000, is for real. Because I don't No one has figured out how to stop that. Okay. All right. You guys heard it. Ah, any final questions in the in studio audience? Yeah, you mentioned that they stole that photo of you, but you were saying that he also needed a photo release for anybody recognizable. How did they get that? Okay, a lot of people don't care like these are all these moms, like some of them are mom and pop travel tour groups, and they just picked a bunch of images off line and populated their website and and, yeah, they do need a release. Which is why I like if I went after them and said, You can't use that image you need like my likeness and it's like I could try to get money, but they could probably just take the photo often. So is it like, is it worth your time to do that? But yeah. I mean, they absolutely need a release, but like you would be surprised at how many people just take images and use them all the time. Yeah, it happens, unfortunately.

Class Materials

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Travel Gear List

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Art, Life, and Business Discount Code
Writing & SEO Guide for Travel Magazines
Sammy's Photo School Discount Code
Novica Discount Code

Ratings and Reviews

user-670c8f
 

I've been listening for, like, two hours. OMG. Like, I could, like, you know, get more from this if, like, she stopped jibbering and get to, like, you know, the topic? She sounds more like a rambling stream-of-thought teenager than a mature adult giving a succinct organized presentation. In two hours, I have, like, learned about two or three things I can, like, use. Like, Ehhhh...? It's like, bor-ing! Like, whutttt? Is she, like, 15 or what? Sheesh.

a Creativelive Student
 

I have to start by saying that I was lucky enough to be part of the live audience in this class! What Laura has shared this 2 days, is something that will have taken me a few years to learn. Thank you for remanding me that we create our own opportunities and we have to go for what we want instead of waiting for it to happened and will these tips your share in this class, will make it a lot easier to approach editors or potential clients to be able to conquer my goals! Thanks you very much Laura and Creative Live for making all these possible for the photo community all around the world. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Student Work

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