Where freelancing for magazines is concerned, your willingness to write can sometimes mean the difference between selling your photographs or not selling them. Read that sentence again, and notice that I said "willingness" and not "ability".

Why?

Because magazine editors work with words. But magazine editors need pictures. They also need facts -- facts that are appropriate for their magazines -- facts that pictures can "hang" on. In other words, magazine editors need information to go along with any photos they use. And the photos are usually of secondary importance. What's most important to a magazine is how useful the information they print is to their readers. If the readers aren't interested in what the magazine is putting out, the magazine won't keep them. But while information is their main consideration, they don't need a Thoreau, Hemingway, or Ludlum to word that information for them.

In fact, many would-be writers are just that, and have never sold anything they have written because they don't want to deal with facts but live in their imagination and dream about writing a great novel. They want to express their feelings. They want to present their opinions. They want to understand their emotions and explain themselves to people they don't even know. But they don't want to do research and they don't want to observe objectively, which is to say what I've just said: they don't want to deal in facts!

But article writing, the kind of writing generally used with photos in magazines, entails facts. Which means observation... research... finding out.

So here's where you, as a photographer, have the advantage!

First, you are to some degree already an observer.

Second, you can supply ready-made photography involving whatever it is you're observing.

Third, if you can research -- either directly by asking questions or indirectly by using reference sources, including the library -- you can, together with whatever it is you've photographed, provide an editor with everything he needs to decide whether or not what you send him is suitable, desirable, or needed by his publication.

Yes, it will pay you to study the markets, that is to read the magazines you will submit any work to. And, of course, you would slant your work to fit these magazines whenever possible. But the polishing process, the finishing touch, is the editor's job because every magazine has a style of its own -- a style shaped by its editor.

So editors generally don't take something as it comes and use it without revision. In fact, if an editor likes your pictures well enough and your idea is deemed interesting enough for his readers, he may rework what you provide, possibly to the point where you hardly recognize it as your own. I once had this demonstrated to me dramatically.

I had photographed an old-time ice harvest that takes place in a village not from form here. (The harvest has been an annual event for the people in that area since the 1850's.) Besides shooting several rolls of Kodachrome film, I observed, researched, and wrote a 3000 word article on harvesting ice. An editor responding to a query agreed to look at it and bought it.

When I received a copy of the magazine, I was stunned by what he had done! Liking the photographs, he turned what I had said into a two-page photo spread with possibly 300 words of text -- one-tenth the length of the article I had submitted. What was even more revealing was his slant. The edited article emphasized the ice cream social that was coming up in August. The ice, you see, was used in the preparation of the vast quantities of ice cream that would be made for a second event later that year. My emphasis on how the ice was harvested was not the emphasis the editor chose to use even though that's exactly what the pictures showed.

If you've read my manual, Magazine Freelancing, you'll probably remember an over-the-shoulder description of what happens when two photo packages arrive on an editor's desk, one with photographs only and another containing photos accompanied by a story. While you'll find the whole idea presented in that guide, the gist of it is that if a story is included with your photos and an editor likes the idea, you've supplied a ready-made spot for your pictures and your chances of selling them have already improved... perhaps dramatically.

Doing the research can be the tough part. The mechanics of preparing the manuscript are, in themselves, no big deal. You can quickly learn how to prepare a manuscript yourself or have it professionally done. (See Magazine Freelancing for details.)

Do you want to improve your chances as a freelancer? Then study your markets and whenever you're out photographing something, look for an angle, an idea, a theme... then use it as a written "hook" on which to hang your pictures. You really can sell more work that way!

Larry Stepanowicz