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Shoot! Interview: George Pitts - A Picture's Worth | PhotoShelter

What’s one warning you would give to a wide-eyed photographer just starting to shop her book around to editors?

I guess put forward your strongest work, and show it to those with related tastes, be it a magazine, a gallery, or even a website; and to publications that one admires. Try to notice if you’ve developed a distinctive visual sensibility, and ask yourself where could it be explored?  In some instances, perhaps you need to be clever; in others a fidelity to your specific visual imperatives, your truth, has more meaning for an editor. Since the Fashion picture, especially, can be so many things now, it’s common sense, to ask yourself, what can one contribute to the genre? Or can one’s hard won experimentation with light, location, or in the studio, lead to something? Is there enough of a sign in someone’s body of work, to anticipate what will develop if you gave them an assignment? It’s often disarming and touching, to be wide-eyed; but it also helps to be a ruthless but sensible editor of one’s work, which can be a lot to ask, yes, but beneficial.  Then you at least proceed from a position of being aware of your better moments, regardless of whether it gets you that first job. Inevitably, your voice will speak to someone.  Then there’s the issue of being a professional, and creating work which carries an obvious level of technique, and an assured visual style that objectively speaking, the work is just, well done, more than competent, singular in its way. That’s a path open to a greater range of photographers. And such photographers are always in demand.