As part of the article the attendees on my workshop put together for Sport Diver magazine, the editor, Mark Evans, asked them to put together a box out on it.
Prior to the workshop, most of the participants were captivated by the lure of being sent on a commissioned assignment to an exotic dive location or defraying some or all of the costs of an occasional dive holiday with a magazine byline. Our instructor quickly doused that dream with the icy water of reality. The leading diving publications have a small cadre of proven photojournalists they rely on. It’s extremely tough to break into the ranks as an unpublished freelancer.
A novice will probably spend years honing their skills on peripheral publications, such as club newsletters, columns and websites, before breaking into a major diving magazine. The workshop offered budding photojournalists the opportunity to shorten this apprenticeship period by learning from the instructor’s publication experiences.
Some examples of the topics and exercises covered in the workshop included scrutinising contributor guidelines, submitting proposals, avoiding multiple submissions and examining magazine images. Naturally, images stirred the most interest for the photographers. Participants learned what image types intrigued readers and editors. Perhaps the biggest revelation was to learn editors were not ogres who savoured eating the flesh of freelancers while using their manuscripts as napkins, but dedicated professionals with unrelenting publication schedules.
The writer workshop was held in the late evenings after finishing other evening activities: night dive, dinner, photo workshop assignments and camera maintenance. Needless to say, the participants were exhausted before the writer workshop started each session. The workload from both workshops ensured working through midnight on most nights. Fortunately, the instructor and topics were lively and relevant enough to keep the attendees attentive and responsive.
The workshop had the support of Mark Evans, the editor of Sport Diver. He issued each participant a commissioning letter. The letter stated that the magazine was interested in publishing a feature on Puerto Galera from just one of the participants, providing the text and images conform to Sport Diver’s usual high standards. The letter became a powerful incentive to follow up on the lessons gleaned from the weeklong workshop. Writing for this publication took a great deal of hard work and dedication; the pros make it seem so easy.
Before attending Brendan’s workshop I thought that only professional journalists and celebrities get to write in diving magazines.
Now I know better – it was explained to us that you don’t need to be a super-diver or a TV personality to write about diving trips and destinations, but you have to be able to write. This ability can be developed but it does take a lot of time and effort. Equally important, budding writers benefit from having some insight on how to approach magazine editors and by figuring out the house writing style.
The workshop covered the important aspects of writing for commercial publications: how to structure and write an article so that it’s interesting, informative and keeps the readers glued to it until the end. Brendan went over the annoying bits of coming up with a good story, such as getting the beginning right: grab the editor’s attention from the start and there’s a good chance that he may read the entire article; bore him to tears and two months work ends up in the bin. There were sessions on how to get the article to flow smoothly from one paragraph to the next, anecdotes and themes, how to end it and about interview techniques, for those important quotes to make the story come alive.
Brendan also talked about some of the inner workings of magazine and newspaper publishing, how articles are selected and photographs sourced. It has changed my perspective: I now read travel magazines and try to figure out what kind of material they are likely to consider. For example, a magazine that routinely prints stories about budget destinations is unlikely to publish anything about the diving at the Seychelles.
A training pack was provided and this consisted of contributor guidelines from various diving publications (printed and online), interviews with magazine editors and a few sample magazine articles.
The diving photojournalism workshop was an optional extra for attendees of Michael Aw’s Digital Underwater Photography week in Puerto Galera which took place during March 2008. Ideally it would have been organised independently, allowing participants more time to take part in writing exercises or log a few more dives. Brendan is aware of these issues.
Post-workshop support has been impressive, including a blog for posting general questions and comments (www.brendiversworld.com ) quick replies to attendees’ queries via email, as well as critiques on article drafts.
Diving photojournalism is unlikely to be everyone’s cup of tea but if you are the kind of diver who likes writing, the workshop is definitely worth a go.
