umm... portfolio for magazine?

[candleman]

did you "taylor make" for a specific magazine in their style, or did you kinof create a generic write-up and try sell it to several magazines?

Originally Posted by candleman

did you "taylor make" for a specific magazine in their style, or did you kinof create a generic write-up and try sell it to several magazines?

Tailor it to them.

[MiaRose]

In my experience it's best to find out if a specific magazine has any submission guidelines and then stick to that. A lot of editors won't even look at a submission that falls outside of their guidelines.

Warm wishes,

[Jim Bryant]

Study the magazines style, editorial content and especially their photographic style of tthe photographers submitted works.

[Free]

If it's not too late, why not take some shots specifically for each magazine and send those in? Show you can actually shots as you need them rather than pick the best out of an entire portfolio. Perhaps if you want to get real fancy, find something current in the news and shoot like you would be shooting an assignment?

Just a though.

[BCampbell]

Candleman, definitely design a separate portfolio for each publication. You want to show then that you can deliver results they can use. Submitting food photos to a nature magazine isn't going to help.

Choose a handful of your best work and let them speak for themselves. Don't send them to your flickr if you're like me and have hundreds of photos of all kinds of crazy subjects. You can't be sure they'll find what you want them to see. Don't flood them with images, just choose relevant photos that show your skills with the subject(s).

The way you present your portfolio says as much about you as the images themselves. A striking or creative design tells the editor what they can expect from you. A PDF probably won't tell them what you want. Designing a portfolio site is not a bad idea in general, and you can look around at other artists to get ideas. But these are print publications, why not show them what your photos look like printed? You could print and arrange your photos, but I've been toying with the idea of using print on demand books as portfolios. You have an easily presentable, slick format, and a lot of creative freedom over your layout. I've been looking at the quality of books from Blurb and they're not terrible, but there are a few other services out there. it might cost $30 or so, but you'll recoup that with one sale.

Good luck!