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Writing for Photography Magazines – An Editor’s View
A Guest Post by Andrew S Gibson who’s new eBook – Andes – has recently been launched on Craft and Vision (for just $5).

There’s one way to get your photos published in photography magazines that I didn’t mention in my previous post, and that is to write an article accompanied by your photos. There are lots of good photographers that can’t write, and lots of good writers that can’t take a photo. There are far less people that are good at both. Any photographer who can write an article as well as take good photos has an advantage when it comes to selling their work.

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The main benefit to supplying an illustrated article is that you get paid for both the words and photos used by the magazine. If you do it right, you can set yourself up with a nice part-time income and perhaps a future career. You may go on to write for other magazines, or photography ebook and book publishers.

But how do you get started if you’ve never had an article published in a magazine before? The first thing is to work on both your photography and writing skills until you are good enough at your craft to be worthy of writing an article for a photography magazine. This website is an excellent place to start when it comes to your photography skills, so I will concentrate on the writing side of things.

Getting started
While you are unlikely to have the first article you write published in a photography magazine, you can publish it on your own website. There’s no excuse for not having a blog – you can start one for free at Google’s Blogger or at WordPress.com.

Remember your blog is your showpiece – it’s an advertisement for your services. It’s a good idea to treat each post as a commissioned article, it should be as professional as you can make it. You will go through a learning curve and the articles you write in six months time will be better than the ones you write now, but the more effort you put into each article the quicker you’ll get there.

How do you come up with article ideas? A good place to start is with the stuff you know. For instance, if you’re into landscape photography, write some articles about that.

Another technique is to learn some new skills and then write about that. For instance, if you’ve never attempted macro photography before, then research some macro photography techniques, buy the equipment you need to take some good macro photos, then once you’ve got some good photos write an article about it on your blog.

I write articles about stuff I start off knowing nothing about all the time for EOS magazine. I research the topic, try out new techniques for myself, and ask questions of people who know more about it than I do. By the time I start writing the article, I’ve become an expert on the topic.

It can be good to specialise. For example, Syl Arena has set himself up as an expert on the Canon Speedlite flash system. Note the professional design of his website and the quality of the articles.