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How to Work As a Photographer Stringer for a Magazine

All magazines rely on pictures to run with articles. Depending on its size and financial resources, a magazine may not have the sufficient budget to hire all the necessary photographers. As a result, many magazines work with stringers, who are freelance photographers that regularly work with the same publication. Stringers provide images from a particular event or geographic region.

Things You'll Need

Digital single-lens reflex camera
Wide-angle zoom lens
Telephoto zoom lens
External flash

Instructions

- 1
  Contact the magazine's editor or photo editor. Ask for a meeting to show him your portfolio. Research the magazine to see what type of pictures it uses, and tailor your portfolio to match those types of pictures.
- 2
  Show your portfolio to the editor during the meeting and suggest to her how you could cover the region or subject she needs photographed on a regular basis. Once agreed, you need to know the deadline for submitting you work, and the technical requirements for the images you will be submitting, including resolution and image size. You also need to know what information to include in the captions, and how many images from the each event the magazine will expect.
- 3
  Cover the region or events you are assigned. Contact the editor on a regular basis whenever you are heading out to shoot an event. As a stringer, you need to consider yourself an informer for the magazine, advising the editor of events as they are announced in the region you are covering.
- 4
  Shoot the event thoroughly, so you have a number of different options to send to the editor. Include a mix of vertical and horizontal pictures for the editor to review. Edit your pictures to match the technical requirements, provide captions and file them with the magazine prior to your deadline.

Photography