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Would you like to see your story featured in the ASMP Houston WebLetter?
Have an idea for an article or want to make a point? We'd love to hear from you.

The first step is to contact the editor, Jim Caldwell for additional content guidelines. Then the editor will forward copy and images to myself, your humble webmaster Bruce Senior. Otherwise, if you have a suggestion about the design or function of this site, please let your webmaster know. Gray type on a black background? Flashing neon glows anyone? OK, just kidding.

This site represents a significant amount of volunteer work and each issue begs for new techniques to accomodate ever expanding expectations. That said, anything a contributor can do to streamline the process allows for more time to be spent beautifying the issue. The following guidelines will go a long way toward that end.

Criteria for Webletter articles and images (from the Webmaster):

• Images should be hi-quality jpegs (preferred), tiffs or PSDs.
• Longest image dimension: at least 450 pixels but no longer than 800 pixels.
• The color profile in Photoshop should be sRGB.
• Be sure to tweak your images to your liking in every other way.
• File names should be short and descriptive in lowercase type.
• Twelve images should be plenty for any article, too many for some. If you have lots of images, please provide enough text/story to support those images.

• Text copy can be in the form of an e-mail, a Word document or any simple text editor that comes pre-installed on your computer like Note Pad, TextEdit or Simple Text.
• The only line breaks should be for paragraphs.
• Please DO NOT use the space bar for typing white space. I'll only have to spend time deleting most of them.

Content Criteria (from the Editor):

Keep it simple!
Keep it personal!
Keep it first person!
Check out previous issues via the links on the ASMP Houston site to see the various styles. The Member Profile is more of a personal statement than a sales pitch -- remember most of your audience will be other photographers, along with others in the image business. It's great if this article gets you work, but that's not the primary function -- it's communication with your peers.

THE COPY: Write as you speak and don't worry about punctuation and spelling perfection (that's the editor's job) -- a personal history, some anecdotes, your start as a shooter (amateur or pro), or just a series of expanded captions. Humor is always welcome, but gritty reality also works. Length: make it as long or as short as you wish -- a page or two usually suffices. But, no third person voice, client lists, or press releases!

THE PICTURES: Personal or business, or a mix, b&w or color, a related theme, greatest hits, recent work, anything goes, but NO TEARSHEETS, please. If you want certain pictures together or in a particular order, let us know. Remember, we will NOT crop, adjust or alter your shots beyond slight sizing to fit the page except for the Table of Contents page, where we will sometimes use a portion of one of your shots as a teaser for the article. If images have specific text to be associated with them, let us know! Use brackets and "xx picture here" and we will do our best to accommodate you.

CAPTIONS FOR THE PICTURES: In a word, YES! Not absolutely required but helpful to us and the audience. Use dates only if you wish. Captions can be as simple as the location to as complex as a paragraph anecdote about the picture, but don't duplicate your main copy.

IF IN DOUBT: E-mail Editor Jim Caldwell or call him at 713-527-9121. We'll work with you to make an article you're proud of.