Great stuff!

Since I've been through the process once, I knew most of this without reading the tutorial... Ahem, I'd be one of those guys who neglected to include full contact information!  DOH! 

All MRH knew for sure was that " class="bbc_img" rel="lightbox[1330967983]">

To add to the excellent info above, I think John probably also included a recent photo of himself and a short bio, just in case his submission was accepted.  That way the MRH crew didn't have to chase him down for it with a deadline looming.

Guys and Gals, give writing for MRH a try.  The biggest hurdle is taking quality images and video.  I found the experience to be a lot of fun and quite rewarding, both personally and financially, but of course individual results will vary.

Kevin's right - also include a bio

Kevin's right, also include a bio - a recent photo of yourself and a couple paragraphs about yourself: how you got into the hobby, what you like best about the hobby, and what you do in your day job.

If you can give us a photo that shows you doing something train-related as well, all the better!

If you are careful and include the complete package of what we ask for, you will immediately stand out because most people try to cut corners on what we ask, hoping they can skate by. All that says to us is you're not that serious about doing a thorough job and you'd rather make us do more work to use your article.

If you instead do everything we ask - that really gets our attention and your chances of making a sale of your article to us are quite good.

If you always remember that you're trying to make a sale of your article to us and providing your potential buyer with less than they ask is a good way to lose the sale!

What if you are not a photographer....

Ever since i have been in the hobby, I have always wanted to submit how-to articles for submission to the printed model railroad magazines, but the ONE thing that was the stumbling block is I am not a photographer.  The amount of equipment needed to purchase, the special film, getting that film properly developed, etc, always became cost prohibitive, ESPECIALLY considering my skill as a photographer are still very novice.  I realize MRH would want the same quality photos as the print magazines, so for those of us who are novice photographers, what do you recommend if we still wanted to try to submit articles to MRH? 

Thanks

Ken L

What if you're not a photographer

At one time in my life I was a professional photographer. In those days you needed lots of equipment. But today you don't because the digital process makes having a drak room, among other things unnecessary. All you need is a computer and software that will let you put those digital images on the Internet. Most of you who read this already have the computer and the ability to upload your photos to the Internet.

Digital cameras are cheap today but if you want all the bells and whistles you can pay as much for it as a good midsize car. Most will never use all of the bells and whistels anyway so why bother unless you have  money to burn. You can get a good didgital camera for under $100 which is about what you'd pay for a single loclomitive for your railroad. Leraning how to use it is another things since you'll have to read th"fine" manual it comes with. But most of teh basics of photography most of us seem to be born with since they consist of two instructions: (1) aim the camera and what you want to take a picture of, and (2) puch the button on the camera to take the picture. The fine points of focus and depth of field you'll learn about the more photos you take.

And one final point you need to realize. Most pictures taken today never come off the card they are stored on. Why? Because most people are either too lazy or would rather be doing something else.

By the way, it is realtively easy to fix photos these days. Of course for those of us who have access to Photoshop or the equivalent, you can make your worst photograph better looking than anything people used to take with the old Instamatic cameras. But even if you don't have Photoshop or something like that, teher sre other sofware (inexpensive) paclages that can let you fix things such as Photdshop Elements. But that is another story for a different kind of magazine.

It isn't uknown for most publishgers to take your cartrdge or memory card and use the photos on there to get photos to accompany your writting.

Irv

Articles & photos

I encourage all to try to submit articles even if you're not an experienced photographer (which I'm not).  As stated by others, you don't need some fancy camera - a medium priced digital will work fine.  I have found that there are three main things to keep in mind when doing photos:

1.) Lighting - the most important thing!  Generally you can't rely on your train room lighting to do a good job.  I use a number of cheap clamp-on lights with 150 watt bulbs to help light the subject matter.  I place them in such a way to minimize shadows (unless that's an effect I'm trying to achieve).  By the way, it's generally NOT a good idea to use the camera's built in flash as most times it will put unnatural reflections on the subject matter.

2.) Composition - "frame" the picture in such a way that it is interesting and "tells the story".  This is a matter of practice.

3.) Focus & depth of field - Make sure the "star" of the picture is in sharp focus.  Usually it's o.k. to have some areas out of focus if those areas aren't important to telling the story.  You can have a photo that has great composition and lighting, but if it's fuzzy, it's no good.

When submitting articles I usually try to have a number of photos for each point so that the guys can choose what they think is best.  An an example, if the subject is the front of my roundhouse I might submitt three photos and name them "RndHsFnt-A.jpg", "RndHsFnt-B.jpg", and RndHsFnt-C.jpg".  What ever you do, make it easy for the guys to know what goes with what in your article to improve you chances of getting published.

Rick

Not a photographer...

I'm no photographer either!

First, forget film.  Digital is the way to go.  No film wasted, take as many shots as you want at different settings and have the ability to edit the image after the fact.  Just a couple of the benefits over film.

I bought a top of the line consumer level Nikon digital SLR that has made life so much easier.  I've never taken such great pictures with a camera before!  That being said, you don't have to buy a DSLR to take good pictures but I disagree with the statement that you can buy a "good" digital camera for under $100.  I think it takes a bit more money than that to get a camera that's well suited to taking good closeup photos, which is mainly what article photos are, IMO.  Still, you don't have to break the bank either.

If you don't have a decent camera or can't seem to take good shots with it, you may be able to find someone who can take them for you, that would be willing to collaborate on an article and be credited with taking the photos.  Of course you may have to share the proceeds with that person too but I don't see that as being a big deal.

One of the must haves for doing article photography, IMO, is a tripod.  Even with excellent lighting you need to be able to hold the camera absolutely still.  I also use the self timer on my Nikon all the time to avoid shake from operating the shutter release button.

I'm getting better with practice.  I doubt I'll ever take pictures like Charlie Comstock can, but I did learn to take good enough pictures to submit.  Of course, I still give most of the credit to my camera.  It's the real pro!

Joe can you Make this Post a sticky That's on top

Of "Create General Content" in the forums main index? That way it will be much easier to find the requirements we need to follow in order to submit an article to MRH.

Dan

Submissions and Photos

Thanks for posting the requirements for submissions, Joe. They are easy to find on the site, but reminders are never amiss.

I can't emphasis the need for members considering submissions to read the submission requirements several times and to read them again before sending a submission off. Yes, we are all in a hurry, but attention to the detail of an article is what will get it sold. Taking that extra day or two to sit on the article and reread and amend it again will make for a better article. An article needs to be edited several times to make it as concise and informative as possible. Of course the editor can and likely will change things a bit to fit the requirement of space, that's their job, but if they have to do all the work then your chance of having an article accepted is very slim. Joe and the staff at MRH have made things pretty easy and clear cut compared to the requirements of other publications, or publishing houses.

As for photos, I am a novice at best. The point, pull and pray method makes taking pictures for me quite a chore, but a fun one. Still lots to learn in this department for me.

Dan's suggestion to make this a thread a sticky is a good one.

Anyway, just my thoughts. Now, to come up with another idea?

Roy

The clamp on lights are a good idea

But instead of using 150 watt bulbs, you can get color balanced bulbs at any decent camera store.  Such bulbs used to run about $8 apiece and fit into standard sockets.  This will give you more true color.

What if I go through and

What if I go through and write up an article and submit it to MRH. If the editors at MRH decide not to use my article, does that mean I can submit it to other publications? Will an editor contact me with that information after a few weeks?

Submitting articles to MRH

Our ideal is to review submissions at least monthly but with Charlie stepping down as editor and us training several new staff right now, we're not keeping up very well on anything but the monthly issue production. Hopefully that will change as the new staff gets up to speed over the next couple months.

That said, if you submit something to us and you don't hear from us after about 6 weeks, then just email us and ask if we're interested or not. If we say we're not, then you're free to submit it elsewhere. It's your work, and you own it. However, it's also considered poor practice to submit the same work to more than one publisher at a time.

Compensation

Yes, we pay for articles

Yes we pay for articles - figure about $35 - $45 per page on average. The more media you include with your text, the more your payment goes up. So if you include more photos and video clips, we tend to pay more for that.

The largest single author submission check we've written so far has been just under $2000. So if you are ambitious and can take decent model photos / shoot decent video, you may be able to fund some layout expansion with your submission. (wink)

Preparing Articles for Publication -- Blog Entries

I'm working on an article.  I submitted an idea and got an answer, "we're interested".  I started looking for guidance and found the Submission Guidelines.  And the link to this blog.

One comment about this blog thread:  Someone suggested making the very first entry in a thread very short, because it gets repeated on every page as your read the blog. If you need to make a long entry to begin the thread, then immediately post the first comment and include the rest of your entry.  Then only the opening paragraph gets repeated.

This thread is an example -- the original post is repeated and takes over half of page 2.

Information wise, this thread is great.  I've learned a bit from it, and the Submission Guidelines.  I'd like to add a tip.  i wasn't happy with the sharpness of screen images I created with Print Screen in Windows.  I found on the internet a comment that you can do better by using the Snipper Tool and saving the capture as a .png file.  The result looks sharper to me, so I'm using it to create my article.

To clarify

There's compensation for articles published in the monthly magazine.  There's no compensation for items individuals post on their own blogs on this site. Other than the acclaim of their friends and the satisfaction of sharing.

Joe Brugger

MRH gopher

do you always respond to a query?

regardless if interested or not?    and if not, why?

Query system is broken right now

We aim to always respond but our query form is broken right now ... spammers have found it and the captcha mechanism on Drupal forms isn’t that tough for a robot so we’re getting inundated with trash queries, sometimes one per hour. So we turned the query system off, pending building a replacement.

Unfortunately that leaves email and we get hundreds of emails per day and it’s hard to not miss something. On top of that we find our email system is sending more and more legit email to spam, which is very frustrating.

Finally, we also routinely have replies we send go to spam or get blocked on the other end. It’s extremely frustrating to get a great query, to respond only to find the person we responded to coming back with ... “hey, aren’t you ever going to answer my email?” Then we keep trying to respond only to finally get something like, “I’ve had it, you guys never respond to your emails, you are sure unprofessional, I never want to deal with you jerks again!”

That’s why we ask you to send your phone number too. I’ve taken to calling folks because that generally works better. Although it can be really annoying to get “this number has not yet set up a voice mailbox. Goodbye.” Or “this number's voice mailbox is full. Goodbye.”

And sometimes we just plain let something fall through the cracks. My request is that you give us the benefit of the doubt and just ask again, or even post something on the forum since we monitor the forum closely.

P.S. We've also had a rough time since late January with first getting flat on our back sick (me, then Patty, not COVID but still pretty harsh stuff), then my mother passing, and then a week long power and internet outing putting us way behind. Still working hard to catch up and then our hosting provider for ad banners goes down hard (out for 4 days now and counting) so we are standing up a brand new replacement and will be giving the old hosting provider the boot.

They claim 99.99% uptime, my eye! That’s a few min of downtime per year, and that claim is totally false. Even 99.9% uptime is a few hours of downtime per year, they’re not even close to that at now approaching 100 hours of downtime and still will give me no ETA claiming the server power supply failed and corrupted the disk, resulting in a deep disk scan needed to recover the data. 

It’s stuff like this that keeps us behind when we keep trying to get caught up. It’s been a very hard couple of months.