World's Largest Clock.
Making Microphotographs.
How Cartoon Movies are Made.
A Miniature "Sky."
Curing Soldiers' Ills with Electricity.
Largest Electric Crane Lifts Complete Tug-Boat.
Wintertime Uses for the Electric Fan.
Monster Italian Searchlight.
These are articles written around several photographs--not merely
illustrated by them. Besides the classes of magazines mentioned there
are numerous others--almost any publication that uses illustrations in
fact--which are in the market for illustrated articles. Such magazines
cater to outers, hunters, sportsmen, business-men, physical culturists,
travelers--almost every class of reader.
Having produced and sold articles written around the illustrations, the
writer-photographer cannot other than form an idea, now and then, of an
article a magazine should want which may be illustrated; but to which
the illustrations are supplementary rather than basic. In such cases,
the writer will have greater chance of acceptance if he, by means of
his camera, makes several photographs to illustrate the text.
Even if an article is acceptable without illustrations, it will bring a
bigger cheque nevertheless if it is illustrated. If the lack of
illustrations makes the article unavailable, then the photographer has
the means of making a cheque grow where none grew before. His camera
stands him in good stead. There is no editor but prefers an illustrated
article to an unillustrated one--unless his magazine is pictureless
from policy.
Then, from having his pictures printed without his name attached, the
photographer blossoms into a writer whose work appears under such a
head as "_'How Fruit is Raised on the Moon_,' by John Henry Jones,
with Illustrations by the Author."
Although the jump from the making of photographs to the writing of
non-fiction is easy, you may slip at the first attempt. But hammer away
and soon the nail will go in. "For know ye, there isn't a
magazine-editor in the business who wouldn't buy an article from his
worst enemy if he thought it was good stuff for his magazine."
The photographer must not only "smell out" news; but he must, by the
sensitiveness of his "nose" tell just how much the news is capable of
being worked up. He will find it comparatively easy to write
illustrated special-articles where before he sold just photographs. And
such ability stands not far below that of the fictionists.
XV
THE HIGH ROAD
Not much of an exalted vocation, the selling of photographs? Not,
perhaps, proclaimed from the housetops as a handsomely paying vocation;
but one which may be cultivated into almost anything having to do with
inveigling publishers into writing cheques.
When you receive your first cheque your sensation is something like
that of the man who has passed through a cyclone and has come through
with his "flivver" still in the barn. But when the first contribution
is _printed_! The world is yours! You have broken into print! If not
into type, at least into printing-ink.
When the excitement wears off there are many branches that beckon. The
press-photographer may specialise--he may devote all his efforts to
some one branch of the work, as the making of photographs of
celebrities, of microphotographs, of almost anything. Witness the
amateur photographer who quietly went about photographing the interior
of every church in New York, and who then "cashed in" on them to the
amount of $4,000. You may even obtain a position--or job--as
press-photographer on a big metropolitan daily, with all the world
before you and part of it dropping every Saturday afternoon into your
pocketbook.
Then, you may be sent overseas--and be paid great oodles of money. Or
you may devote all your time to the making of calendar-photographs, or
to illustrating stories photographically, as is the fashion now with
some magazines, see _True-Story_. There are so many opportunities
to grasp that if you look about you and select the specialised branch
in which you desire most to work, there is no reason in the world why
you should not do it--and, perhaps, earn $10,000 a year at it. "Do one
thing better than anyone else and the world will beat a path to your
door."
Having broken into printers'-ink, it is comparatively easy to break
into type. From selling photographs one may easily advance to the
writing and illustrating of non-fiction. And your fame as a
non-fictionist, together with the training you have gleaned, may cause
you to forward a work of fiction to an editor acquainted with your
name--and lo! from the ranks of the "snap-shooters" you have risen to
the highest class of scribe--the successful fictionist.
And that, too, is not difficult for him who wills and works. "And work.
Spell it in capital letters, WORK," advised Jack London. "Work all the
time. Find out about this earth, this universe; this force and matter,
and the spirit that glimmers up through force and matter from the
maggot to Godhead. And by all this I mean work for a philosophy of
life. It does not hurt how wrong your philosophy of life may be, so
long as you have one and have it well.... With it you may cleave to
greatness and sit among the giants."
Another agrees: "Draw long breaths of confidence, of faith in yourself
and your work.... Strike 'despair' out of your dictionary! Get into
your chair! Do your stint! Be just as much of a fool as you like. It is
your privilege and mine. Then you will have amusing reminiscences. No
great writer but can look back and say, 'What a fool I was!'"
Realisation results from "ten per cent. inspiration and ninety per
cent. perspiration." A liberal quantity of this mixture will bring one
to the High Road. The High Road is smooth. But anyone may travel it who
wishes--and works sufficiently hard. Not much, the making and selling
of photographs? The start of the trail may be barren and unpromising;
but the persevering fellow who follows it persistently will find that
it suddenly widens and blossoms and lo, opens full into the High Road.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Making Your Camera Pay, by Frederick C. Davis