Variety Likes To Take Its Own Pictures

By George McQuade

West Coast Correspondent

"Relationships are critical when it comes to getting a good story and photo placement in Variety," said the magazine's photo editor Lisa Weinstein, at an Entertainment Publicists Professional Society and International Cinematographers Guild meeting in Hollywood. 

Variety, which began running pictures in 1988, "has a whole archive of mug files, and the most important thing publicists can do is update me with their client's photos that the client likes as often as they can," said Weinstein. She warned that editors under tight deadlines often pull outdated photos from the collection. 

Weinstein told the publicists to forget the hats and sun glasses, and send her a picture as a high resolution .jpeg. "When you send me an 8X10 inch photo it needs to be a minimum of 200 DPI, or 5x7 inch image I want 300 DPI, because I'm going to crop it and sometimes it gets blown out.  

 
EPPS Break with Variety

"If you send me a picture that is an 8X10 and the guy's head small on a lot of background, I need that picture to be really high resolution and it has to be color," she explained. 

Weinstein spoke of a recent situation when Variety wanted to side-by-side pictures on the cover. The editors received a good color shot, but the other in black and white. The publicist refused to send another color photo, so the pictures were killed. 

"It was unfortunate for the story, the paper and the guy. And of course the next day we got a call asking why [we] didn't run the photo? And within 24 hours we had a new color photo, but the story was gone," she explained. 

Weinstein doesn't decide what photos to run, but she tells the editors if a picture looks lousy. Bad pictures sometimes run because editors are desperate to fill space. 

 
Variety wants invite 

Variety doesn't use freelancers very often, but it sometimes hires Getty photographers to cover events. It wants to be invited to events, and Weinstein is turned off by publicists who send her pictures from last weekend. "It's too late because it is old news. We want to know at least a week in advance or at least a couple of days and we want to send our own photographer," she said.  

Weinstein says Variety runs pictures of people "interacting with each other." Her advice: forget mugshots, and don't look for a photo credit unless it's a news story.
 

Many publicists send photos to the "Photo bin" which is photos@variety.com. Weinstein highly recommends that publicists identify in the subject line what story the photo is for, and send three to five photos.

In addition, she recommends you copy her, too at: Lisa.Weinstein@Variety.com. The reason is because Weinstein bounces back and fourth between two accounts.