Contributed articles are welcomed on Camera Obscura. If you want to show your work on this site and submit an article for publication please read the following instructions carefully.

Guidelines

Introduction

On the Internet, information about the artists and photographers are often very superficial. The idea behind the Camera Obscura is to fill this void by publishing long and in-depth articles about photography, creating in this way, a space where an artist can deepen the analysis and description of their work; a space to develop the discussion, where the words and concepts have nearly the same importance as the pictures.

Article length

The only strict rule to submit an article is to write a text that exceeds 1,000 words.

The limit of 1,000 words is not that much. To give you an example, this guidelines page is more or less 1,350 words long. See how easy it is to write more than 1,000 words?

Articles longer than 1,000 words are welcomed. Right now the longest article submitted is 2,143 words long. You can still try to establish the new record!

Keep in mind that articles shorter than 1,000 words will not be published.

Avoid a general introduction to your work

Please avoid a general introduction to your work like a statement or your general thoughts about photography.

Camera Obscura is above all a space to develop and deepen the discussion about photography. It is more a place to write than a virtual gallery with no text, there are already so many sites like that! In any case the article will link to your site, and because of this a lot of readers will be able to see your complete portfolio and read your statement directly on your site.

Creating a detailed and original article is interesting not only for Camera Obscura readers, but for photographers themselves. You will end up with an original article that you can link from your site and use to explain your vision and work.

Choosing the subject and the images

To avoid a general introduction of your work, normally the focus is on a unique image or series. Please note that it must be a coherent series of photographs.

You can talk about a photograph that has a special history, or one that can describe remarkably well the way you are used to photographing, or one that is completely different and unique. You can describe/share the steps that lead to the construction of a story, you can describe the technical difficulties, or only the aesthetic or philosophical concepts behind the image.

For example you can answer to these kinds of questions: Where did you take the picture? Why did you decided to go there? Who are the people portrayed in the photograph? How did they react? How did you get in contact with them? Why is this photograph is so special to you? Are there any anecdotes about it? Can you tell how you spent that day? How did you start to think of this project? Why? What do you want to express? And so on.

If you want to write about more than one series you are welcome to write more than one article, each one dedicated to a precise photograph or series of pictures. We can, for example, publish an article per month about each one in your portfolio.

All of these are just some suggestions to avoid superficial articles. If you prefer not to discuss individual images, your essay can talk in detail about photographic issues that have a great deal of impact on your work. The article will be accepted even if you don’t describe explicitly the attached pictures.

Avoid duplicate content

Please do no send an article that has already been published on the web.

It is not a good idea to make duplicate content because Google penalizes a website if it finds that the content is duplicated. If I publish an article that is already on your site, we both risk losing some Google traffic.

I know that it is difficult to write original content and if some minor duplicate content is present it is ok, just avoid duplicating large parts of texts.

Language and translation

Camera Obscura is written in Italian, in English, in French and in Spanish. You can write the article using the language that is easiest for you, but consider that you will have more readers if you write in English. If you want to maximize the exposure of your work you can also make a translation of your text in one or more of these languages. It is not a problem to translate the article even months after it has been published.

Article layout

It is not necessary to format your article in a complex way, because in any case it will be reformatted for publication. These format styles are all accepted: section headings, italic emphasis and quotes (in quotation marks in the text or as separate paragraphs).

Please do not include the images directly in the text, but attach them in separate files. If you want to specify the order and/or position of the attached images in the essay just write a paragraph with text like “Here picture number 1″. Please note that for layout exigencies it is not always possible to respect the order or position of images.

The file formats accepted are: txt, doc, rtf, doc or htm. Please avoid sending pdf files.

If you have special layout exigencies we can discuss it and I will try to satisfy your needs.

Preparing the files

The photo accompanying the interview should be in sRGB, minimum size 700px the wide side. No watermark, signature and frame. Color space sRGB, compression 7.

Please name your file in this way: 01yourname_title.jpg or 01yourname.jpg if it is an untitled work. Avoid blank spaces and odd symbols. These files names are both ok: 01FabianoBusdraghi_CameraObscura.jpg or 01fabiano-busdraghi_camera-obscura.jpg. Please keep the title short, if you want to add longer caption you can send a text file with filenames and captions.

The images can be compressed in a unique .zip, .rar or .tar.gz file to make the upload easier.

The number of pictures can be attached to an article depends of the text length: the longer the text the higher the number of pictures. Usually 5-15 files can be attached to each article, if you want to publish more photographs consider writing a longer text.

If you are writing about a unique picture consider sending some crops of the files to focus on important details in the image.

Previously published contributed articles

If you want to have an idea of what has been done before you, please have a look at the already published articles, but remember that you have a lot of freedom: you can write something completely different and original.

Deadline

If you send the article in 2-3 weeks it is ok.

Writing a good article takes time and effort. For this reason, if you are busy it is not a problem. The objective is to publish high quality articles and that you are satisfied by the result, not to publish your article with the shortest delay.

Monetary compensation

CameraObscura is a commercial free project, but has a growing number of readers. Although I’m unable to offer monetary compensation, your work will be seen by lots of photographers, publishers, curators and photo editors.

I don’t earn any money from Camera Obscura, on the contrary it is a really time consuming project, that needs a lot of effort and sometimes even my own money. I decided to write and curate this magazine only because I love photography and I want to help photographers spread their work and share their thoughts.

Need additional help or any advice?

For any question, feel free to contact me.

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