How To Get Your Wedding Photography Published
For many wedding suppliers having your work featured not only feels great but is also a great way to help promote your work and services within the industry.
Submitting your wedding to be published and featured can take time, be overwhelming and also frustrating if it is then not published.
With that in mind it is important to take the time to submit your wedding, but also make sure you are not wasting your own time by following this guide to increasing your chance of a wedding being published.
How to Submit Wedding Photos to Publications
Our guide and key steps to helping you get your work published.
Find the right publisher for your wedding
Every wedding is different and with different photography styles it is important to submit your wedding to the right sites and magazines. Don’t just do a blanket submission to all sites, look at the wedding you wish to submit and look at which blogs would it suit, not which you would like it on.
A fun relaxed DIY wedding will be more suited to some wedding blogs than a luxury fine art photography wedding.
Picking the right site and publisher is crucial and the first step, so look at which sites this wedding would look perfect on and the audience it would suit.
Tell a story
When submitting your wedding you will need to share photos for them to review, don’t just submit a handful or ‘wow’ photos, submit a story of the day, if they ask for 10-15 photos submit a story of the day in 10-15 photos, from getting ready through to the first dance.
It is important that the publisher can see and get an overall feel for the wedding, the style and emotion of the day, this way they can see if it is suitable for them, and also gives you the best chance of being featured.
Don’t forget the details – The story is key, but don’t forget the details, from table décor, flowers and unique arches, the little things that make it unique and different.
Follow the guidelines
You’ve picked the perfect site for this wedding, you’ve got the photos ready to go, now what?! Most major wedding publishers online or offline will have submission guidelines to follow when submitting the wedding. Do not ignore them!
Ignoring these guidelines is a quick way to be rejected and the editor to quickly move on to the next submission.
Guidelines could be about the image size, number of photos, supplier lists, information about the wedding day itself or quotes for the couple.
Take time to read and follow these guidelines as they can vary between publishers.
Key points to follow
- No water marks on photos
- Give as much information as you can
- Submit the supplier list, names and website addresses
If you have had your work featured on their site before, let them know and share a link, this will give them the bigger picture and help refresh their mind of your previous work.
Don’t just duplicate
Once you have taken the time to submit your wedding, don’t just duplicate everything you have sent to other blogs, a blanket one wedding to all approach is not good practice or etiquette.
It is not fair to then have to tell an editor you are withdrawing the wedding as you are being featured on another blog.
What about styled shoots?
Some blogs will feature styled shoots, while others won’t, so if you have a styled shoot you are looking to share make sure the publisher features these and consider how it would look on their website and the other types of styled shoots they have published in the past.
Why was it still not published?
Even after submitting everything perfectly and what is a stunning wedding, sometimes it still may not get published. Now this could be something that is out of your control, for example the site or magazine may suddenly have an influx of submissions and just not have the capacity to publish it within their schedule.
Another common reason and issue can be a lot of the same style of weddings being submitted or published, the publisher may already have similar style weddings lined up to be published, or have already been, or perhaps there are a few submissions that are of the same style, and therefore this is the reason it did none get taken forward.
Don’t be put off
Finally, don’t be disheartened and don’t give up. If you are not selected don’t worry, they may not sue it now but they maybe in touch again in the future.
No one wants to not be chosen, however be kind and build a relationship with the editor, there maybe things you can do to improve your submissions going forward, things the editor is currently looking for that you may also have coming up or just shot, so work with them and be understanding.