A friends daughter dropped by the office for a little career advice a little while back. She recently graduated from college with a degree in the arts and is interested in becoming a photo editor.
(Okay, first off I find it fascinating that someone would choose photo editing as a career path. Aren’t we all failed photographers? Ha, ha, industry joke.)
She landed an internship at a magazine’s photography department which is the obvious first step and it sounds like a good job because they’re understaffed so she will have many duties not usually given to interns… unlike the boring shit I make our interns do: sending out tears, returning art and calling PR flacks for photos (editors idea).
Anyway, my whole point here is that I came up with a few tips for any aspiring photography editors out there:
1. Develop your eye for photography. Unless you were born with the golden eye you need to edit tons of photos because wading through all the crappy images to find the gems is what develops your eye for what makes a good image. It’s also helpful to track images from your edit to the final printed product so you can see which images make the final cut… unless, your editor and/or art director suck and then all the great images never make it on the page but that’s another story.
2.Keep a list of editorial photographers. You need to begin learning the names of all the great editorial photographers and try and keep track of the various shoots they’ve done over the years. This means visiting the newsstand and writing down the names of photographers who’s work you like. If the only photographers name you know is Annie Leibovitz, who by the way is under contract with Conde Nast, you’re up shit creek because you will never land her to shoot a 1/4 in the front of the book. I’ve tried. It ain’t pretty. The list of top editorial photographers is not long and you should know who many of them are.
3. Work on your institutional knowledge of photography. Being able to recall the photographers who shot Demi Moore in the last 5 years is valuable, not only if you need to find pickup images that aren’t in circulation but also to help inform how you will photograph her for the story you’re working on. Also, as an aside, editorial story meetings generally devolve at some point into a pissing match where people try to outdo each other with their knowledge of who wrote or shot this and who’s cool and what has appeared where… etc., etc. Rapid fire name dropping is a great skill to have (just don’t be that annoying guy who does it all the time).
4. Develop relationships with photographers. In the end, you will be hired to work at a magazine based on your relationships with great photographers. Not everyone can work at a glamorous magazine with massive budgets and movie stars to take pictures of and so you will need to develop relationships with photographers, especially when they are young and hungry, so that later on you can rely on them when you’re in a bind.
There’s more but by this time I think she was completely bored out of her mind. Oh well maybe she’ll try and become a photographer first.
Comments 17
I think it’s a great idea to first work as or with a photographer.
Posted 26 Sep 2007 at 10:02 am ¶Haha, when I interned at an agency (one on your list actually, maybe we have spoken) the boring shit they made me do was call photo editors and get tears. I’m glad to hear that that was passed on to another intern.
Posted 26 Sep 2007 at 11:55 am ¶I never understood how someone can graduate from college and step into being a photo editor. I mean what do they know? It’s like the kids who get a masters right after their BA and then become photo instructors!
That is great advice to get the internship and to develop your eye. But that kind of thing takes YEARS, not one or two internships. I have done some live sporting event shooting and editing and looking at 10 rolls of film from the first half, you just have to be able to pick out those great images right away, no time to look it over 3 or 4 times. Experience is the only way to learn this.
Great advice and a great blog, It has become a daily read for me. Keep it up.
pt
Posted 26 Sep 2007 at 11:57 am ¶“….photo editing as a career path. Aren’t we all failed photographers?”
Sometimes I feel like it’s the other way around. Since I don’t have those skills you prescribe for a good editor, I have to stay busy shooting continuously since that’s the one thing I can do!
Posted 26 Sep 2007 at 1:38 pm ¶“….photo editing as a career path. Aren’t we all failed photographers?”
I’m surprised to read that, as I’ve never heard that, nor even supposed it.
I have a friend who’s a creative director director and he always waxes poetic to me about how being a photographer is the best job ever. I don’t know, photo ed or C.D., you guys have to put up with photographers, and photographers have to put up with themselves. And all the fuss for, as a man much wiser than myself once said, tomorrow’s fish wrappings.
Tongue in cheek, of course.
Posted 26 Sep 2007 at 3:28 pm ¶Thanks for a great refresher course… I haven’t been a photo editor in about 10 years, and I’m not looking back….
Great blog!
Posted 26 Sep 2007 at 5:44 pm ¶“(Okay, first off I find it fascinating that someone would choose photo editing as a career path. Aren’t we all failed photographers? Ha, ha, industry joke.)”
Firstly, I just found your blog and am thrilled. Secondly, you may find this crazy but I went to school for photography and have always wanted to be a photo editor… Which I now am. And I feel like people always expect me to be a “failed photographer” who happens to be a photo editor. Whenever I meet with photographers, this idea seems to come up. Perhaps I haven’t hit bitter and cynical yet, but is it so wrong to want to be a photo editor that photo editors always seem to profess some strange shame at it?
Posted 02 Oct 2007 at 8:30 pm ¶Don’t forget that those “photographers” you went to school with probably don’t have health insurance, much less an office, can’t collect any unemployment (for when work gets slow) and still probably live in the same apartment with the same roommates they had when they were in college. Not to mention the benefits employees of SOME corporations (*cough timeinc*) give their employees while they pay freelancers doodley squat.
So don’t feel bitter or cynical. My only other suggestion would be to become an advertising creative director instead or maybe an agent. They make a lot more money.
Posted 03 Oct 2007 at 2:38 pm ¶4.Develop relationships with photographers. In the end, you will be hired to work at a magazine based on your relationships with great photographers.
Sigh….how nice it would be to live in the rarefied world of the photographer who’s courted by editors hungry and appreciative of his/her work. Although I certainly have great relationships with my editors the idea that I’d have to be sold on doing a job and wooed to accept an assignment (from a later post) sounds like some heavenly situation not unlike having to choose between fresh foie gras and caviar.
Posted 12 Oct 2007 at 1:37 pm ¶I want to thank you for your presence on the internet.
I am learning so much from you.
Could you possibly do a post on the general structure
of a national magazine in regards to photography work?
(that’s worded poorly, let me explain)
For instance, you are a photo editor and apparently it is your job
to hire photographers for your magazine, correct? then what? Do you see
the photos first? Does a team see them? Do you make the decisions
as to which photos are used or is there someone else who does this?
Or a team of people? And what are their titles?
And is the structure and system basically the same at a newspaper?
I guess I’m looking for a general overview on how things work.
A post about this would be terrific!
Right now I do volunteer photography for a weekly paper here in Seattle called ‘Real Change’. It’s a homeless issues/social justice paper, wkly circulation 15,000) My editor calls me, tells me what he needs and
when I make the photos I simply email them back to him, usually
giving him a choice of between 2-6 photos. He chooses which photo
gets in the paper and that’s it. I guess I had no reason to think it was
different elsewhere but apparently it’s A LOT different and more complex than this. I think it would be very good for me to understand this business more.
Anyway, thanks again for your posts and being so open to our questions.
Katia
Posted 20 Oct 2007 at 2:39 am ¶editors at most magazines do not want photo editors. they do not respect the position nor the OPINION of the photo editors. its a changed enviroment from days gone by. photo editors, the good ones help shape the vision of the magazine and partner with photographers to bring in a great shoot, next!
Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 4:29 pm ¶I’m a photo journalism major and was considering looking into the career of a photo editor however after reading most of the above it seems a bit daunting…I was also thinking about a creative director, which I think would actually suit me and my skills more, but do you think I could do that if my major is photo-j? It’s almost time for me to find an internship and get into gear brainstorming what I will be doing after school, so I’m lookng for any advice.
Posted 31 Mar 2008 at 4:53 pm ¶Such as randi, I am also eyeing a career in photo editting even though I am still in my first year in college. I never knew this position really existed until I came across a really awesome picture with the description that it was photographed by whom and editted by whom. I am still strongly considering this.
It may seem ridiculous, but my interest in this is birth from current times. My photography lecturer said that with everything heading towards the digital age, with digital cameras, people are learning the basics of composition etc. etc. really quickly with a many clicks of the cam. But the difference here, I was told, that the quality changes because the fear of wasting film does not exist. And he says that photo editing softwares just can’t make it as real. True, true, true. But are we trying to make photos look real? In my opinion, the most impressive photos are the most surreal.
Photo editing softwares nowadays are amazing! How do you make a photograph of a heart mechanically operated? I’ve seen it. People are doing it now.
I love photography but I love editting them more.
“….photo editing as a career path. Aren’t we all failed photographers?” No, with both positions at hand, the most wow pics (pigs) come to life.
Why would randi wanna turn to be a creative director? Love or money? Passion births more money than the chase for it.
Thanks for your post sir. I respect and admire your job postition
You’re gonna hear my name in the near future! 
Posted 01 May 2008 at 1:55 pm ¶Do you need a portfolio to become a photo editor? If so what does it consist of? Is it just a book full of photographs?
Posted 07 May 2008 at 1:55 pm ¶Thank you so much for the reply!!
Posted 08 May 2008 at 9:45 pm ¶b.t.w. has anyone seen retoucher Bianca Carosio’s work. That’s one I’d consider!
Posted 15 Jul 2008 at 4:44 pm ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 2
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