Photographers Direct and the reinvention of the magazine cover

Photographers Direct is a web site where people or periodicals looking to buy images can ask photographers if they've got suitable images to use.

For example (hypothetically), an editor might ask

I need a wintery-looking photograph of Bugsworth Canal Basin from an unusual angle, showing the water, a bridge and some of the brickwork, but not one of the usual boring pictures you get of the Basin. 

There isn't such a picture, of course.  This is a hypothetical case.  But if perchance you had such a picture, he might pay you well.  (Assuming he wanted one in landscape format)

Photographers Direct makes its money by charging photographers a subscription (£217/yr) or commission (20%) on sales.

Yesterday on Photographers Direct someone pleaded for a photo of the Ponty Aqueduct:

I need a summery, high quality image of a walker crossing the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct on the Llangollen Canal, Wales, preferably with a boat in shot too.  Needs to be dramatic, good light, sense of height and movement.  For a front cover.  As soon as you can please - deadline Wednesday! Many thanks...

Colour images ONLY

Format : Portrait (vertical)

Use : Editorial, cover,  full page

Budget : UK£400

Notes on Budget : 107,000 print run magazine in UK only.

Lesson 1:  Portrait (vertical) pictures are probably worth the most money, because they suit cover pictures. 

Lesson 2:  Portrait is in demand probably because magazine design itself is sclerotic. 

Why do editors feel compelled to have full-page vertical format photos and streams of text on magazine covers?  There's no reason a magazine needs a full pic and a bunch of teaser text on the cover.  There's no reason it needs any text at all. The whole magazine world is ripe for reinvention.

Lesson 3: I need to start taking a lot more photos in portrait, because Granny Buttons is never going to change the magazine world. Not without starting her own magazine.  And she won't get around to it, much as she'd like to. 

Unless a publisher would like to persuade her.

[Thanks to Rob Hudson for inspiring this post]

Comments

[Richard Fairhurst]

There are plenty of magazines these days that run with landscape photos - I think it was Waitrose Food Illustrated that popularised it most recently, but WW did for the very first issue in 1972 and for several years after that.

As for the coverlines - well, it depends on the market. Some magazines are absolutely crammed with them, some take a sparser style. If the picture's strong enough it _should_ overcome even the crassest of coverlines. I try to steer a middle course with WW: we use the top and bottom bars to avoid cramming too many coverlines around the main body of the picture.

(The best way to get your pics on front covers is probably just to put them up on Flickr, tag them well, put an "all rights reserved" copyright on them and make sure you're contactable. We ran a wintry one by Bob Naylor the other year which I found on Flickr... with hardly any coverlines.)

Anyway, I shall away to my blog and fire off some more stuff about how the entire PR world is ripe for reinvention. Except for CCD PR who are ripe for being taken outside and shot.

[Nick Corble]

Fotolibra.com works on a similar basis - you can have ten free photos and then you pay for space and they get calls for photos for all sorts of things from jigsaws to books. Agree about writing all over the photos!

[Kevin]

Photoshop can work wonders - we often added/swapped sky, trees etc to get the right shape. Then there's always good old fashioned cropping. Good fee though - wish I had a picture!