If you live in a large city you have the additional opportunities to obtain photographs such as are published in the Mid-Week Pictorial and the Illustrated Review, and also in some of the large national magazines and in the rotogravure-sections of the leading Sunday newspapers. Although the large city offers more opportunities for photographs of celebrities and such, there is much competition. The photographer in an average-size city may not have frequent opportunities for photographs of renowned persons; but he has many other chances for salable photographs, which evens up things.
Sometimes, a notable person does come to town; but I would no more presume to tell you here to camp on his trail than I would dare to remark to a duck-hunter: "Pardon me, old man, but you'd better pull your trigger. There's a bird right where you've pointed your gun."
IV
WHAT NOT TO PHOTOGRAPH
Knowing what to photograph is no more important than knowing what not to photograph. I cannot show you so easily by example the kind of photographs editors will not buy; for a search of any number of magazines will fail to unearth such examples.
Experience is an expensive school; but, sometimes, the others are closed because of lack of patronage. It would seem that when you learn what to photograph you should learn automatically what not to photograph; and, indeed, you should; but you don't. However, there is another way. After sending a photograph to a score of publications, and after the photograph is returned from the same score of publications, you may truthfully say: "Well, I've discovered one thing that those editors don't want."
Editors have very clear reasons why they don't buy certain kinds of photographs. The editor is there to produce a live, newsy, unusual publication. He buys only live, newsy, unusual photographs. What could be simpler?
Publications do not want photographs which are similar to other photographs that they have already printed. The reason is obvious. To take an example from my own early days: a shoe-dealer, for an advertisement, placed a huge pair of shoes, size 35, in his window. I grasped the opportunity to make a salable photograph. It did sell; but not to Popular Mechanics, for the editor wrote that he was unable to use it because he had printed, several months before, a picture of a huge pair of shoes made for a circus sideshow worker. Consequently, the subject of your photograph may be just the thing the editor would want if he hadn't had his requirements already satisfied. Therefore, study those photographs which have been printed, and make newer and better ones.
When the King of England comes to town, it may be all very well to command him to stand still, to look serious or to smile, for a picture of him so posed may be literally "eaten up" by the local newspapers; but a national weekly, such as Collier's, demands something different. Posed photographs are at a discount. They are too plainly "pictures of men having their pictures made." What is wanted are life and action. It isn't necessary to ask the King to stand on his head. Ask him to shake hands with the Chief-of-Police; or let him do something else which shows he has the power of action.