Details About SNAPSHOTS

Including Full Submission Guidelines

Welcome to SNAPSHOTS! A new Medium publication from C(G), showcasing a wide variety of photography, by you, the writers of Medium. Starting Friday, March 2, 2018, we will be open for submissions.

BACKGROUND & GOALS

Our goal with SNAPSHOTS is not only to showcase interesting and quality photography, but to create a venue that helps to show your audience on Medium who you are, beyond your written words. Sharing your own original photography can bring one’s interaction and engagement on a platform to a whole new level. This is a sentiment that we, the editors, have seen expressed from several of those involved in the C(G) 30 Day Photo Challenge. While online friendships and interactions have long been known to foster a sense of community, this time seemed different. While there are many reasons for that, one of the main ones is actually seeing images from other peoples lives. It’s one thing to read about them, but no matter how well written the story is, it’s another thing entirely to actually see the type of places and things your friends are talking about and invested in. It offers an investment for the viewer, and in the case of writers you already know, there is a sense of intimacy created.

Ultimately, our goal here is to engender and strengthen the sense of community that writers experience on Medium. We hope you will join us in that effort by sharing your photography.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

Original, unpublished photography that you yourself have taken, and hold exclusive rights to. Most of all, we are looking for work that tells a story, that gives us an idea of the things you do, love, value, and hold as important in your life. To give you some examples, the editorial team has spent the last week creating various submissions that may serve as example posts of the range and style we are looking for. If you are not sure what to send us, please have a glance at some of the posts already up.

While our mandate is intentionally broad, so as to showcase a wide variety of work, there are some specific things we are NOT looking for:

• Photography previously published in another Medium publication. Ideally, we only publish drafts, not work already published.
• Text photographs. For example, writing a poem and taking a screen shot of the poem, then submitting it as photography is not something we are looking for.
• Images that are sexist, racist, homophobic, in nature. More broadly, any photos that demean what are immutable characteristics, will not be accepted. Interpretation of what constitutes these categories is at the sole discretion of the editorial team.
• Blatantly sexual, pornographic, or violent images.
• Photos with excessive narration. Defined specifically as no more than 750 words. We are asking that if you include a narrative with your photography, that it serve as an accessory to compliment the photograph. Otherwise, it becomes just another Medium post with an unrelated photo at the top. For pieces that are over 750 words, we encourage you to break your article into a series of pieces (ie part 1, part 2).

SUBMITTING YOUR WORK

For those who participated in the C(G) 30 Day Photo Challenge, you have already been added to the publication. For those prospective writers who would like to submit work for inclusion in the publication:

• Participating in SNAPSHOTS is open to any writer with an active Medium account, AND a device that will allow you to submit to a publication. The Medium phone apps for iPhone and Android currently do NOT allow a writer to submit their work directly to a publication. To participate in SNAPSHOTS you must have access to a device allowing you to submit to a publication.
• If you would like to be added to the roster, please email the editorial team at snapshotseditors@gmail.com and include ADD ME in the subject line. Please include a link to your Medium profile page in the body of your email. One of us will add you shortly, usually within 24 hours.
• Once you have been added, you are free to submit your photography. Please do not submit more than 4 separate drafts per week, excluding specific challenge calls.
• All photography submitted must be your own original work which you full authority over. Meaning you have taken the image yourself, you own the exclusive copyright to it, and it has not been previously published in a Medium publication.
• To submit, use the “ … “ button at the top right of your unpublished Medium draft page, and select add to publication. Then select add to SNAPSHOTS. Please include between 1 and 10 photos per submission. If more than 1 photo is included, the photos should relate to each other and follow a specific theme.
• Please include a title and/or subtitle, directly under your header image.
• You may or may not include a complimentary narrative, up to 750 words, in the style of your choosing.

WE WOULD ASK

• That all writers added to the publication please subscribe to SNAPSHOTS, and follow the editors of the publication so as to be assured you will be advised of any publication updates.
• If you enjoy a fellow SNAPSHOTS writers work, please show your appreciation through generous use of recommends, responses, and / or highlights. No, we are not asking you to blindly recommend everything we publish. We are asking you to be mindfully generous of the photographic work of your peers that you enjoy.

PUBLICATION VOLUME & FREQUENCY

At SNAPSHOTS our goal is to publish several pieces a day, initially somewhere between 4 and 6, rarely less, and occasionally more. The specific length, style, and tone of work chosen will be intentionally diverse. As such, submissions will not be published on a first received basis, thus time between submission acceptance and appearance on the homepage will be highly variable by necessity. Generally, your work will be published anywhere from the same day to within 3 days.

CHALLENGE CALLS

To make posting in SNAPSHOTS challenging, original, and fun, the editors will occasionally post call for submissions (challenge calls) that will relate to a specific theme. For example, a “blue” challenge may ask for photographs using the colour blue as the dominant theme, a “poetry” challenge for a photo with a specific poetic style narrative, or a “pet” challenge showcasing the animal in your life. Participation in these challenges is completely voluntary.

TAGGING

Please tag all your regular submissions with the photography tag, and any other 4 tags of your choosing. If applicable, you may add tags to match our navigation sections. Currently, those are black and white, travel, social justice, art, and animals. We may add more sections or change the current ones in the future.

Please tag all submissions to a challenge call with the PHOTOGRAPHY tag, and the specific challenge tag indicated in the original call, as well as 3 tags of your choosing.

PEOPLE IN PICTURES

In the C(G) 30 Day Photo Challenge, there was a strict rule that the only people allowed in the images were that of author themselves. Since SNAPSHOTS is intended to be a permanent publication and not a limited time challenge, we have amended that rule as follows:

• You may showcase individuals as subjects in your photos if a) if the image is yourself, the person submitting the photo. b) another individual, provided they are 18 years of age or over. c) the individual in the photo provides the editorial team with a signed statement indicating they are aware they will be featured in a photograph that will be published in the SNAPSHOTS publication on the Medium platform. This statement should be via email to snapshotseditors@gmail.com and should include a return email address the team may use to verify. Photos with other individuals besides the author will not be published until we have the above email on file.

CHILDREN IN PHOTOS

Generally, we would prefer not to publish photos of anyone under 18. That being said, we do realize that parents occasionally want to showcase their children in the photos they publish. We will consider photos of children on an individual basis if they are the child of the person submitting the photograph, and that person is the legal guardian of the child. Please be aware that once an image is online, anyone with a computer can download it and use it for any purpose they choose.

While this may be blunt, the reality is that the adorable picture of your three year old splashing in the tub could quite easily end up in the hands and collections of people with a much different appreciation of your photo than you intended. Thus, a high level of discretion should be employed anytime one posts images of minors.

PUBLICATION DECISIONS

Though we expect it to be extremely infrequent, the editorial team reserves full and final authority to not publish submissions at any time, for any reason. The specific reason for the decision to not publish a photo will be provided to the individual submitting the photo.

Any questions not answered here, please feel free to send an email to crossingenres@gmail.com, and we will get back to you with an answer shortly.

Sincerely,

The SNAPSHOTS Editorial Team ( Allan Rae (alto), Sherry Kappel, Dennett, David Montgomery)

Linking to all those who participated in the C(G) 30 Day Photo Challenge. You are now free to submit here!

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