Photo by Ray Potes
Some notes about submissions. We are jammed up. We cannot put out zines and books fast enough to accommodate all the photographers we want to publish. We are working on that, this post is about ways we can speed it up. We’ve lowered page count so we can put out stuff more often, we’ve gotten help in the editing dept, and now attempting to streamline the submissions dept.
If you didn’t know, Hamburger Eyes is a printed publication. We publish a zine that comes out at irregular intervals (we want to be regular, this post is about making a schedule and trying to stick to it kinda) and occasionally we publish books, sometimes we will work with another publisher to make a book.
Some of you are submitting to our Instagram page. Our Instagram page is all photos from pages of our zines and books. Our current format for the zine is staple bind, 60 pages per issue. Around 6 photographers per issue and each photographer gets around 10 pages. Submitting one photo is irrelevant. In fact, I would say we are are looking for photographers more than photographs. We want to showcase your photos, preferably more than once, because we know you are shooting all the time because you are obsessed like us. Please have seen a physical copy of our zine before submitting. It is different.
When we are working on a bigger book project, or side project, or exhibition it is easiest to work with photographers that we have already worked with. That is, have been in our zine before.
We ask for links to websites and/or social media. We bookmark these links. Then, when it is go time, we will contact the photographer and send the specs and discuss what their 10-12 pages might look like. This is easiest when there is a set, body of work, portfolio, photo essay, series, etc. It is also easiest when the photographer has a distinct style. I say this because, as mentioned before, each photographer gets a whole section. We want to make each section stand out on it’s own. We aim for a diversity of styles.
Up front we do not want attachments, pdfs, google drive, dropbox, adobe links, etc. We do eventually, but we want to make sure you have the current specs as per our current format, proper number of photos to send, and have files labeled correctly. We will send that info to you once we know that we can work together. It will save us both time and energy. If you do not understand basic Photoshop or photo editing for publication (300 dpi), then get busy on on some Youtube tutorials.
If you see a photo of a cat in our zine, this isn’t a call for more cat photos, or all the cat photos you have ever shot in your whole life. I think people want to submit stuff that we might like, or that is “Hamburger Eyes,” but what we really want is to highlight a combo of your personal visions and personal stories.
Our zine is still black and white. We will have some side projects for color, we have in the past and have plans for the future. But for now, we want black and white photos. And we are old, we come from the days where if you wanted black and white you put a black and white roll of film in your camera and it was stuck black and white forever. Meaning, we are looking for like minded folk. I shoot mostly digital and once I convert it to b/w, that is it, there is no color version. I guess I am saying, save your color for something else. We want black and white right now.
This is a lot, I know. I think I am overthinking it but also we are getting submissions that have nothing to do with what we do. Also, if you have submitted in the past and didn’t hear from us, please submit again. We encourage it, but consider some of the concepts and ideas written in this post when re-submitting. It is easiest for us to gravitate to an obvious 10 page feature but we also understand we might have to work with you to excavate 10 pages from your archives. We are looking forward to it.
I hope this writing is helpful to you. When I was younger and submitting to newspapers and magazines for assignments or features, I got zero feedback. Actually it was nothing or a hard, “NO.” It was discouraging. (It made me start my own thing though, lol.) And now as an editor I find it hectic to keep up the correspondence with all that have submitted, mailed stuff, emailed or dm’d. It’s not impossible, I could do better for sure. But this writing is meant to hopefully answer a lot of questions.
Here’s some past writings of photo philosophy and psychology, mostly personal opinion and commentary, but also attempts to answer questions. I plan to write on here weekly and keep the discussion flowing.
https://hamburgereyes.com/category/articles/
If you have any questions and comments or concerns, feel free to email me info@hamburgereyes.com and I will try to answer it in blog form.