Back in September I wrote about the week I did covering the Singletrack magazine Readers Holiday in various parts of British Columbia. Well, the fruits of my labour - all ten pages, a dozen photographs and a couple of thousand words - are now on sale in your friendly local magazine vendor for all to enjoy, or online in their PDF version.
Being brutally honest, I’m a little disappointed in the shots they chose, as I considered a couple of other ones I submitted to be the strongest of the set, but hey, I’m sure they know what they’re doing; it also gives me the chance to hawk more images around to other magazines, so it’s not all bad.
It’s another foray into the world of creative writing for me - it’s only recently I’ve started to provide words along with photos, and it’s still a slightly painful process (I’m a chronic procrastinator when it comes down to it) but I’m happy with the end result.
Life has a funny way of making you miss what you don’t have, doesn’t it? If someone had told me two years ago that I’d want the cold, soggy climes of the UK over the panoramic mountain ranges of Canada, I’d probably laugh in their face, but that’s exactly the situation I found myself in recently.
Luckily enough, it being Christmas and my family being back in Blighty, gave me the perfect excuse to get my fix of good ol’ fashioned mud and dank, as Singletrack magazine’s Ben and I popped out on the hills around their Todmorden HQ for a quick snap or two.
No doubt I’ll be sick of it pretty soon, but for now I’m enjoying the trip down memory lane.
If you’re local to the North Vancouver area, you could do a lot worse* than stop by the North Shore Bike Shop, who right now are showcasing a selection of the prints I have for sale. Each print is produced using a high quality Giclée printing process, on fine-art William Turner paper, and custom framed by one of the best framing shops on the ‘Shore.
By far my least favourite aspect of being a photographer (aside from non-paying clients - hey, you know who you are) is the constant deluge of people looking for free work, when by all rights they should be paying; it’s wearing, it’s demoralising, it’s downright insulting.
Seb Rogers posted a fantastic clip of Hollywood screen writer Harlon Ellison intimating the finer points of the how best to deal with the chancers looking for a freebie, in return for “exposure”, “highlighting your work” or the promise of “more jobs down the line”. By the magic of YouTube, it’s here too now:
What made me post this mini rant? The chancer e-mail I received this week takes the biscuit (names removed to protect the “innocent”):
Dear Dan
The staff of [magazine], the luxury magazine of [airline], is in the process of planning our Spring 2008 “Sporting Life” issue, focusing on many high-end products and articles related to health, sports, fitness, and wellness.
We are interested in showcasing ONE of your favorite images of mountain biking, preferably at a location within a couple hours of a destination [airline] serves. Several well-known photographers will be participating in this effort and we hope you might be one of them. We can highlight one of your shots from a past book or project, or from one of your new projects.
Written and designed exclusively for [airline]’s First and Business class passengers, [magazine] offers readers the ultimate guide to travel and the good life. Each quarter 176,300 copies are distributed on board all [airline]’s flights, reaching more than 3.1 million premium passengers. [magazine] is also distributed in all 43 [first class lounges], [airline]’s frequent flyer lounges.
…
We look forward to the possibility of publicizing your work in the pages of [magazine].
Sounds innocent enough, right? Just an honest publishing house looking to purchase stock photography and a few words for their upmarket magazine (albeit one I’ll never even see given its placement). Look again - once you’ve had enough of these e-mails certain words set alarm bells ringing - “showcasing”, “highlight”, “publicizing” - they’re all clues that they’re trying to spin a freebie.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I reply stating that yes, I’d love to license an image for their use, expecting to hear nothing back. Credit where credit’s due, though, they did reply, with an all too familiar response:
Because of the size and scope of this feature, and because it exposes your work to potentially more than three million readers of [airline]’s first and business class publication, [magazine], we are unable to pay for or in any way purchase an image from you.
Unable? One of the world’s biggest and most successful airlines is unable to afford to purchase photography for its commercial ventures? Or do they simply rely on enough chumps out there being desperate and deluded enough to believe a single photo in some fat-cat flick-through will be their breakthrough into the world of megabucks?
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