Building Your Professional Pedigree
Do you have dreams of selling your photography to the likes of National Geographic, the Smithsonian, or BBC Wildlife? When I talk to photographers with aspirations of breaking into the business, often this is where the conversation eventually ends up. The only problem with this is that if every wildlife photographer on the planet wants to shoot for these magazines, then that means you are in competition with every wildlife photographer on the planet.
Honestly, I have no idea how many photographers there are out there making a living with their wildlife work. But I do understand the basics of capitalism – especially the concept of supply and demand.
None of this is to say that you aren’t going to work with these publications. None of this is to say you won’t see your photograph on the cover of the Smithsonian or BBC Wildlife one day. Work hard, create beautiful work, make a name for yourself, and you will find that getting published in the top tier publications is an obtainable goal. National Geographic licenses at least 4 or 5 photos from me every year. If I can do it, so can you.
But if all I ever did was work towards the end goal of selling photographs to Nat Geo, then I wouldn’t even be able to afford my truck payments, let alone those other little details of life like my Adobe subscription plan for Photoshop and Lightroom, food, insurance, or a mortgage.
For most working wildlife photographers, bylines in big publications help market their work to other publications – but they rarely pay the bills. We all want those bylines. We all need those bylines. But the bread and butter of making a living as a working photographer has always been the seemingly infinite number of smaller magazines across the globe. As the saying goes, little and often fills the purse.
If you want to work directly with magazines, regardless of their size, the hardest thing to do is get your foot in the door without any sort of pedigree.
Editors and art directors typically want to see examples of previously published work – especially if they are going to hire you on an assignment. Can you deliver? Can you meet deadlines? There is a finite amount of time to make everything come together. You can’t go back next year. Magazines are tight ships. Either you can show up, follow directions, deliver the photographs no matter how challenging, no matter what the weather is, no matter what, and do it all on time, OR you can’t. It’s generally that simple. These things are quite black and white. There is often little to no room for error or delay.
In all the years I have done assignment work for magazines, only once was I given another chance. And the only reason this occurred was because I had been seriously injured on assignment, almost needed to be evacuated, and nearly lost my eye. The only other thing going for me regarding this mulligan I was given, was the fact that I was also writing the article as well. The editor took pity on me, and we bumped the story back an entire year – seeing how there was only a 2-week window of time that the assignment could actually be photographed.
So, how do we get these sort of bylines in order to break into larger and more prestigious markets?
Well, there are basically two proven routes.
1. Start pumping stock agencies full of your best work.
2. Seek out and work with local wildlife magazines.
Both options work. Both are guaranteed to build your pedigree. But only one is going to be lucrative from the start and prove that you can handle the job at hand.
Stock photography is a numbers game, as I have written about before here. If you want to make money at this, then you will need a large number of photographs and a bit of time for those images to work their way through the stock agencies’ algorithms. A mere 50 photographs are not enough. Nor is 100. If you have top tier work, you can make money with 200 photographs. But for most wildlife photographers, you need to look at numbers with at least an additional zero. A thousand or more photographs is where things begin to happen.
Companies like National Geographic have a need for hundreds of photographs every month. Remember, this company isn’t just a single magazine wrapped in a yellow border. Instead, they have several magazines, special editions, posters, guidebooks, maps, a daily news service, a daily blog, and so much more.
Outside of the flagship magazine, much of National Geographic’s photography is sourced from stock agencies like Getty, Alamy, Nature PL, and so on. Make a sale through Getty and you get to tell the world you have published with National Geographic.
Editors from national magazines know how this business works, however. They understand the nature of stock photography. Sure, you might be able to create technically proficient photographs that grab people’s attention and maybe even tell a story. But stock photography doesn’t equate to your ability to do assignment work. Big named editors know this. The pedigree still helps, but only to a point.
It's for this reason that magazines often ask for tear sheets.
A tear sheet is an old school term that came from a time when photographers would literally tear pages out of magazines they were published in as proof of their work. Often these would either be photocopied, or a package would be sent to a magazine filled with slides, 50 or so tear sheets, and your note to the editor on the most expensive stationary you could afford.
Even though this is an old school concept, editors will still often ask for such things in digital form today.
Stock photography is not going to provide you with these options. If you sell through a company like iStock, you can see who is buying your work and how it is being used. But if you sell through the other companies, including iStock’s parent company, Getty, this is not the case. In your monthly statement, you get a list of the “parent companies” that purchase your work, the amount it was sold for, and what your payout will be for those sales. To actually see your work and how it was used requires an intense amount of research and time on your part. And still, depending on lead times and how things are published (often there are no bylines with stock), you may not ever find or see how your photographs were used.
This is why there is no substitute for gold old fashion direct to client magazine work for building your pedigree.
But as is often the case with business, you need experience in order for them to take a chance on you and give you that experience you need. It’s a catch 22.
However, one very large market for wildlife photography typically does not require such experience to get your foot in the door – and that’s your local state wildlife magazine. Hands down, the easiest way to break into the business, begin building a name for yourself, start earning a paycheck, and build up those necessary bylines and tear sheets, is to publish with your local wildlife magazine.
Here in the States, at one time, every local Fish & Game or Department of Natural Resources maintained a small, for profit, publication about nature, wildlife, hunting, and fishing. Over the last decade, however, many of these publications have dried up. Maybe it’s because people don’t read any more. Maybe it’s because people spend less time outside. Maybe it’s because people stopped prioritizing a work life balance. While some states no longer maintain these types of magazines, MOST continue to do so.
Another most? The number of career wildlife photographers I know who got their start by working with these magazines. Even today, I prioritize a big chunk of time for feeding these magazines new photographs every few months.
These magazines have titles like Montana Outdoors, Wyoming Wildlife, Colorado Outdoors, Wildlife in North Carolina, and so on. Each one has its own needs, voice, feel, and slant. And their readership is not always limited to the people who live in the states they are associated with.
Take Wyoming Wildlife for instance. The state of Wyoming only has around 500,000 people in it. It was 500,001 but when I moved to Montana years ago the population crashed (joking, of course). Just because Wyoming has a very small population doesn’t mean that Wyoming Wildlife has a small readership. By far, the vast majority of subscribers to this magazine do not live in the state of Wyoming. Alaska magazine is the same way (though this isn’t a state wildlife magazine). And so is Montana Outdoors.
Typically, these magazines pay around $500 for a cover photograph. They typically pay around $500 for a 1,500 – 2,000-word story. Smaller photographs vary in price. And best of all, you will likely find yourself with significantly less competition to get published.
But there is a catch here. Getting your foot in the door as “just a photographer,” can, at times, be challenging.
This isn’t different from working directly with any other magazine, however. It’s just that you have to remember a couple things:
1. Photographers, or at least people who fashion themselves as one, are a dime a dozen these days.
2. When you are attempting to sell unsolicited photographs to a magazine, it can be a little bit like playing the lottery.
I don’t think I need to dive into problem number 1 for you. You get this already. But number 2 may need additional explanation.
When magazines purchase one off photographs, meaning one’s they haven’t assigned a photographer to produce, they are doing so for one reason and one reason only: to illustrate a specific thing in a specific article they are publishing which they don’t already have photographs of. That’s it. No other reason.
It doesn’t matter how beautiful a photograph of an elk you have. If you send this to Montana Outdoors or Wyoming Wildlife, for instance, and they don’t have an immediate need for that photograph to accompany a particular article within the next 6 months, then they have no reason to buy it.
Thus is why I say it’s a bit like playing the lottery. Or maybe rolling dice is a better analogy.
There are things you can do to increase your odds, of course. Understanding that most magazines, especially these state wildlife publications, operate on a 6-month lead time, you can put together your selects for a submission accordingly. I’m writing this article at the beginning of September. This means that all my submissions going out, both to magazines and stock agencies, are currently spring themed images. That amazing photograph of a bugling elk? Editors won’t be thinking about subjects like that until next spring (with autumn and the rut being 6 months away). And if I were to submit that now, it would just go into a black hole of photographs that are rarely looked at by the photo editor. For writers, this is called the “slush pile.” For photographers, it’s even worse. And often it’s called the trash bin.
Slush pile. Trash bin. The names say it all.
Historically, most magazines maintained a Photo Needs List. This was an ever changing and always evolving list of photographs editors knew they were going to need based upon their editorial calendar. Again, magazines know what they are going to be running at least 6 months in advance and many are working on even bigger lead times. They know what photographs they have. And they know what photographs they are going to need to source from other photographers. And it’s these photographs, the ones they know they need, that will make it to the Photo Needs List – which is then emailed out to a bunch of photographers.
Not all magazines do this anymore, partly because those gaps can so easily be filled with stock photography from places like Getty. But many still do (Montana Outdoors is one such magazine). For this reason, it’s always worth reaching out to the editor or photo editor directly to find out if they keep a needs list like this. If they do, and you can get on that email list, then you always know exactly what photographs these magazines are looking at any given time.
The Photo Needs List takes the guess work out of the equation. You know that a magazine is running a story of sea otters in June now. So, you can pull together photographs to send over to the editor that meet her specific requests and a few others that you think she might be interested in for that article.
Sending unsolicited photography submissions and responding to photo needs list are both ways in which working wildlife photographers get their foot in the door with publications.
But there is a better way to do this. There is a way to fast track the whole process. And that’s to pitch a story to the magazine.
As mentioned above, photographers are a dime a dozen these days. But writers, well, that’s a completely different story.
If you can string together complete sentences with the basic understanding of essay writing such as introduction, body, conclusion, then you have what it takes to pitch stories to these publications. And the thing about writing a magazine article is that create a market for your photographs that did not exist before.
Some magazines do not like working with writer / photographer combos because of the belief that writers can’t photograph, and photographers suck at writing. However, you will learn very quickly that most, especially smaller publications, absolutely prefer to work with people that can fill both needs in one single packaged solution for them. And since these magazines always need new articles, that also means they always need your photographs to go along with them.
Even if you do not want to be a writer, this is still a rock-solid strategy for getting your foot in the door with a magazine. The process of publishing with a magazine demands a lot of back and forth between you and various editors at the publication. This puts you on a first name basis with them. This makes them personally invested in working with you. And these relationships always open the door for more sales and the possibility of assignment work – even if all you ever did is write one single article for them and then invest yourself into only selling photography to the publication.
I have written about this whole “write for magazines” strategy before. But for the sake of being thorough, this strategy has the potential to turn what may have been only a $50 sale into a $3,000 sale.
Maybe you happened to submit a photograph that met a very specific need for an upcoming article. If it’s a quarter page image they purchase, you’ll get paid around $50 – give or take a bit depending on the size and budget of the publication. But if you submit the article yourself, then the economics of this changes dramatically.
First up, they are going to pay you around $500 (average for state wildlife magazines). Then, they will likely purchase around 10 or so photographs to go along with it. $50 here. $200 there (for a double page spread). Maybe another $500 for the cover. Possibly another photograph to go into another issue advertising your upcoming feature article. And as you can imagine, it’s a lot easier to make a living stringing together $2,000 and $3,000 sales than it is $50 sales.
If you are a photographer who is still trying to pick up bylines and tear sheets to prove your capabilities and pedigree to larger publications, then state wildlife magazines are the easiest way to begin working in this market. And this is a proven strategy for every working wildlife photographer in North America.
The competition is low. The need for articles and stories is very high. The pay is not half bad (all things considered). And there is nothing like going to the mailbox to find a magazine in there with your photograph on the cover and feature article displayed inside.
For those of you who are Mentorship Subscribers, we are building a list of editorial contacts for you as we speak. Email addresses of editors. Links to submission guidelines. And notes about working with those publications. Everything you need to reach out and begin selling your photos to those magazines without all the additional time and research involved to unearth this often-hidden information.
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You can always upgrade at a discount here:
https://www.businessofwildlifephotography.com/mentorship-upgrade