Your First Editorial Photography Assignment – Part 1

Editorial photography is still alive and well, despite what the cynics will tell you. It no longer has the budgets it used to, and there are not as many publications to go around, but you may still get called on from time to time to shoot a series of images for a magazine. Editorial assignments can be extremely varied, and a challenge to do successfully, but they're extremely rewarding and often lead to meeting interesting people along the way. But where do you start when you get the call? 

Your first assignment can be quite daunting. Often, an editor will contact you about a story with a broad idea. Sometimes the story may not even have been written yet. It can be difficult to know where to start, but this guide should give you a compass point for beginning an assignment. Let's get started.

Do Your Research

This is crucial, and should go without saying. Know your subject when you arrive. If you've been assigned to photograph a businessman, look up his biography. A band? Bring their music up on YouTube and their biography up on Wikipedia. Sometimes the subject may be extremely broad, and may require you to hit the ground with a basic idea and improvise.

I recently received an assignment on durian in Penang, Malaysia. I had 24 hours to prepare myself before flying. This can happen with editorial assignments, and I didn't panic. I grabbed a cup of coffee and found everything I could about durian in the area. I contacted the tourism agencies, scoured the internet, and chatted to a Malaysian friend. This gave me no idea what I would find once I got there, but it did give me a background with which to understand what I would be shooting, and allowed me to ask the right questions when I arrived.

Not only should you research the subject, but you'll also want to research the publication. What sort of images do they publish? How do they design their layouts? If a publication that usually publishes candid, natural light moments receives a collection of posed studio images from you, they may not be very happy when you turn in your images. Likewise, consider their target audience. Rolling Stone is not known for its tame, simple images. Their audience expects to be challenged. For the above assignment, I'd seen a lot of smiling faces, lots of details, and an abundance of shallow depth of field in previous sections of the magazine. I knew that I would need to work in at least a few shots that could essentially 'replace' what the magazine had used previously, and then add some of my own spice.

Shoot Graphically

This is something I try to do on every assignment. I try to find some sort of graphic element to include in my frames. This may be a background for a portrait, or an abstract repeating pattern. Whatever it is, try to look for something graphic. These sorts of photographs make for great backgrounds, or double-page spreads in magazines, and designers always appreciate form and shape that they can work into their pages.

On this assignment for Shinhan Bank's VIP Magazine, I was asked to photograph a local entrepreneur in one of his Reebok Sentinel Gyms in Seoul. As with many of Seoul's businesses, it was underground and the space itself was functional rather than design-oriented. I used a 35mm lens to bring focus to the subject while still including the background, augmented the light with an off camera flash, and used the graphic element of the human figure on the wall to create a repeating pattern. I shot wide, knowing this was the sort of thing the designer could use as an opener to the story. I also shot a portrait with my subject in a suit, and some closeups of other products he sells to accompany the article. Which brings us to the next point, variety.

Shoot a Variety

Variety is the spice of life. It's also a designer's best friend. You may have the best frames possible of your subject, but if they don't work with the design, they may not get used. I like to approach this by varying things like focal length, shutter speed, depth of field, and angle on the subject. This gives me a multitude of different ways to approach any given subject.

For this article on Chef Jin Ho Lee for SCMP 48 Hours Magazine, my assignment was to get him to provide foodie travelers with a 48 tour of Seoul. This was a fairly broad directive, but the obvious starting point was the man himself. I started with a portrait of him at his restaurant, and then went to have dinner with him at his favourite market. Here we got shots of the food, the drinks, the atmosphere, and the store owners. He then gave me a list of his favourite restaurants and dishes in the city. I spent a day eating and drinking at his favourite establishments, grabbing interiors, close-ups, portraits, and street scenes to compliment the story. This sort of variety means that your editor and designer will not have a story that looks too repetitive.

So, that wraps week one of this beginners guide to shooting your first editorial. Next week we'll look a little deeper into longer editorials and shooting a story. For now, if you're looking to get into editorial photography, your local publications are a great place to start. They're often smaller operations, and work on a much more human level. Set yourself an assignment you think might work for the publication (something you're interested in – that will give you the initial motivation), develop a set of images and possibly even a writing pitch. Using the above two points, you should have a great place to start work.