Joe gave a nice introduction to this “stepping stones” series in his previous post. When I first started, it was the age-old dilemma of getting jobs with no clips and not knowing how to get a clip in the first place. I just never mentioned the fact that I hadn’t been published before in my queries. BOOM. I Landed Boys’ Life.
It was the first query I ever sent out. This is not a normal situation, so I’ll talk a bit more about what else I did to get clips–and what I have heard suggested by other seasoned writers. The key is to get something in print that is really good; no matter how small the publication is. Write for your local paper. Check and see if there are any regional magazines in your area that you might be able to contribute to. Believe it or not–travel pieces about where you live could be a great way to get something in print. Continue reading Stepping Stones: Getting Clips 101 →
One of the best tools a freelance writer can own is a good digital camera. Supplying your own images for an article can make you more marketable, and any steady reader of this blog knows we are digital camera evangelists here. Writers who don’t take their own photos wind up cheating themselves out of the extra cash you often get for supplying images together with the story.
“Which camera should I buy?” Naturally this is the first question non-photographers always ask. There are two basic kinds of cameras; the point-and-shoot (P&S) variety and digital SLRs. SLR stands for “single lens reflex” and this basically means that what you see what you look in the viewfinder is the exact image the lens sees.
I strongly advise writers not to buy the cheap P&S model. For professional use, even as a beginner, P&S cameras are too limited and you will grow out of them as soon as you learn the difference between what an indoor shot with no flash looks like at 100 ISO vs. 800 ISO. What does THAT mean? We’ll save that for another article.
Continue reading Photography For Writers: Which Camera? →
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