Getting Published

Getting Published

However good your images are it’s very unlikely anyone is going to come to you and ask to license them. If you can make a photo editor/journalist/designer’s job easier by delivering images to them on a platter, however,  your chances improve greatly.

What started as a day out at the World Aerobatic Championships at Silverstone has resulted in my getting published in another magazine. This time it’s a double page spread and 6 other images in “Loop“, the magazine for pilots.

I knew I’d got some good images so, inspired by  the advice of Scott Bourne and others, I did a little research, came up with a few aviation photo libraries and magazines and fired off a few emails. Later that day the sale was agreed.

OK, it’s not National Geographic magazine and I’m not able to retire on the proceeds, but it’s another name on the client list and my images and name in print again and under the noses of more potential buyers.

Start small, preferably in a niche market and getting published isn’t as hard as it may first appear.

If you missed the post with the set of images from which these were taken, check here

WAC 2009

WAC 2009

Here are a few images from this years World Aerobatics Championships, hosted by Flying Aces at Silverstone. This was my first time photographing an event like this but it’s not unlike shooting motor racing – just less predictable movement!

Shutter priority was the way to go to keep images sharp but retain some blur in the propellers. Depending on what the plane was actually doing, that ranged from 1/160th to 1/400th. I then adjusted my ISO to get an aperture that gave me enough depth of field to hold the whole aircraft in focus given the speed at which the subject to camera distance changed as the planes flew head on towards me.

Spot metering proved a bit tricky, again because of the speed at which the planes were moving, so I manually compensated as the cloud cover changed to make sure the aircraft weren’t just dark spots against a bright sky.

And one last tip: If you plan on spending all day shooting upwards with a 100-400mm lens – Take a monopod!

The Importance of Being Reachable

The Importance of Being Reachable

The popularity of sites like Flickr and Facebook where you can quickly upload your photos for the world to see has made it easier than ever before to get your work seen by millions. Chances are though, it your image isn’t titled, captioned or tagged it’s not being seen by the people you want to see it.

Back in 2007 I went to my first modified car show. It was all very new to me and I came back with a huge amount of photographs. I picked the best, including some of the promo girls, posted them on Flickr and spent the time finding out the models names and making sure the images were properly tagged.

Fast forward to last Monday when I found myself posting an invoice for an image I never thought I’d sell. Sky TV were looking for an image of Stephanie Holland (a rumoured Big Bother contestant this year) and my image was the first traceable one to appear in Google’s listings. Sky followed that link to Flickr, entered the URL in my watermark and ended up on the “Contact Me” page of this site.

One phone call later, Sky had the image they needed to illustrate the story on their website and I’d made a sale. All becasue I’d taken the time to properly label my photo.

It’s important to get you work seen, but it’s just as important to make it easy for people to find it.

Back In Print

Back In Print

I have a full page, 2 photo, spread in this months (May 2009) Practical Photography magazine.

Deputy Ed, Ben Hawkins chose two images of Wells from my portfolio to illustrate “how  a spark of inpiration and ingenious trouble shooting can keep you shooting through even the most adverse weather conditions”.

How To Mount Your Wireless Off-Camera Flash

How To Mount Your Wireless Off-Camera Flash

OK, so you’ve read strobist.com, and joined the Strobist Flickr group. You’ve gone on eBay and bought your “Cactus Triggers” or “Poverty Wizards”. Now it’s time to put it all together – Just how does tab A slot into tab B? Well here’s what I have settled on.

I currently have the Phottix PT-04TM wireless flash triggers, bought from HKSupplies on eBay. These triggers may not be 100% reliable, but I am getting very few non fires and even fewer miss fires. They are no Pocket Wizard, but they only cost pocket money.

The PT-04TMs are intended to mount onto your cold shoe or umbrella bracket or screw onto the standard thread atop a light stand with the flash mounted on top. The trouble is, this makes the whole assembly very tall and unwieldy and I found the flash would flop forwards and finish up illuminating my light stand very nicely!

So I set out to try and find a way of lowering the overall height to reduce the leverage. Here’s what I came up with:


Obviously there’s the flash. Then there’s the PT-04TM, with the plastic foot removed, velcro’d on top (you do have velcro on your flash head don’t you?)

Attached to the hotshoe on the receiver is a cheap hotshoe to PC sync adapter (designed to let you use a PC sync cord with a camera that has a hotshoe but no PC sync port) bought for a few pounds from eBay. If you have the slightly newer receiver that has a PC sync port on the side, you don’t need this.

Moving down to the bottom of the flash we have a Kaiser 1301 Hotshoe Adapter (designed to let you use a flash that has no PC sync port on a camera that has no hotshoe).

So basically, when the receiver triggers, instead of going straight over a hotshoe to flash connection, it travels over 6″ of wire first. There’s nothing clever happening, it just makes everything more convenient.

The Kaiser 1301 Hotshoe Adapter has another benefit: It has a normal foot so you can use it with all your other umbrella mounts, but it also has a standard 1/4″ screw thread on the bottom for mounting onto any standard light stand, tripod, or in my case, a very small, very cheap Hama 5011 ball head.

It may not be the tidiest setup, but it work for me… at least untill I can get my hands on some of those Pocket Wizard Flex/Minis!