Let’s get this straight from the start. Magazines choose who they want to commission. They contact the photographer, outline the commission, state the fee/budget and the photographer either says, yes, or no. It really is that simple. Photographers get themselves into the position to be contacted by building a relationship with the magazine, by showing their portfolio, by building a website and getting people to see it, one that contains work similar to that which is already appearing in the magazine. Please do not listen to anyone who says otherwise.

That is how it works and has worked, for at least the last forty-two years that I have worked within magazines, as an art director, editor and photographer. The magazine will have found the story, arranged for someone or somewhere to be photographed. Booked the models, arranged the clothes, and decided upon the writer. The stylist, make-up artist and location may also have been handled by the magazine. Every decision will be based on increasing sales and earning advertising revenue. Magazines are a business and they make decisions which are based on their financial interests. Nothing more, nothing less.

In fashion for example, they will know which clothes have to be included in a shoot to keep their advertisers happy. They will give credits on the page to beauty brands to keep them happy, even if they have not been used. It is a game of smoke and mirrors. The editor of the magazine will make the final decisions, along with the art editor or art director, as to how the magazine should look and which images they will use. These are mostly subjective decisions, based on their own personal likes and dislikes. The photographer has no, or little say, at best, in any of this.

Getting commissioned is based on personal relationships as well as your portfolio, but it is the personal interactions which are the most important. However, strong your work is. If you are a pain to work with, you will not get commissioned. You may have a perfectly ordinary portfolio, but if you are a fun, kind, polite, considerate and professional person, you will get the gig everytime. This is worth remembering.

If you do not have the connections, are not willing to spend the time making them, or think that you do not need to, then you may think that submitting your work will lead to success. A lack of understanding of how the industry works may also lead you to the same inaccurate conclusion.

Your success in submitting will depend on the type and level of magazine you are submitting to. Some, without budgets to pay photographers rely purely on submissions. If you get lucky and accepted by one of these you may get published, but not paid. Some may even ask you to pay them! Hardly a sustainable practice for any photographer. Those with budgets, commission, which leads you back to the process I have already outlined.

Let me put more ‘meat on the bone’ as to why submissions rarely work. Let’s start with the fact that the chances of you making work and that work being exactly what an editor is looking for is remote at best. You will not know what their editorial direction is, what they have already planned for an issue, what they think their readers want to see. You need to know all of this before you submit any work to a magazine and be aware that a monthly magazine is working at least three months in advance, not only in planning their editorial, but also in designing pages and getting an issue to the printers. Despite all of these barriers, you might still think that your work will fit into a magazines editorial pages, but if it did they would have commissioned their own version. If they haven’t, then they don’t want it! It isn’t because they haven’t had the idea.

Now, let’s deal with the commercial aspect of every magazine. Features are chosen to compliment, please or inspire advertisers. In short, they create a ‘happy home’ for advertisers to put themselves in. They are carefully curated to please a defined readership profile and that audience has to be one that advertisers want to reach. Therefore, any editor has to be commercially, as well as editorially aware. The chances of a photographer going off and making personal work that they enjoy, or consider worthy, meeting this criteria is again remote. Magazines commission photography because they need to be in control of what they publish. They are not there to please photographers, or act as a showcase for a photographers work. Their masters are the advertisers, and they come first. I have seen very few photographers understand this when showing work and asking as to who they should submit it to. This is why submissions fail. It is why they don’t work.

I am not being negative here, or trying to burst anybodies bubble. I am just outlining the truth, the cold hard facts, to prevent photographers from wasting their time and money hoping to achieve something that will not happen. I see so many people on social media asking photographers to submit, collaborate to submit or collaborate on their submission, that I felt I needed to explain some facts. Facts which if you have never worked in a magazine, or for a magazine that you may be unaware of. Some magazines will accept submissions of work, but let me say for a second time, those that do will not pay you. Magazines such as Vogue, GQ, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Harpers etc. That have money to commission, will not accept submissions. So, the next time you see someone on social media suggesting that they do, or will, may I suggest that you call them out and maybe point them in the direction of this article. They may be unaware, they maybe confused or they may just be trying to sell snake-oil!

PS. As we are no fans of the gatekeeper mentality, why not look out for our new series of conversations with those who commission and curate photography. Posting the first week of every month, on the A Photographic Life podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8 magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), and What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.

©Grant Scott 2026