Post Questions for Phil Monahan Here

[Zach Matthews]

Hey guys –

Phil Monahan, editor of American Angler, graciously agreed to answer questions about the flyfishing publishing industry here on the website.

[bryan hulse]

Zach,

I still have the same question I asked of you a couple of months ago. It seems to be common practice among all of the fly fishing magazines to flip pictures. The most recent and obvious occurrence was AA’s spring issue that featured snook fishing in SW Florida. It was a poorly shot, direct flash picture that should have been deleted from the photographer’s card, but was instead flipped and used as the lead photo for the snook article. I ask because I think more readers can spot reversed pictures than can identify bad layout design.

Thanks,

Bryan

[Phil Monahan]

Well, Bryan. (Any Monty Python fan will recognize that intro.) You’re both right and wrong. The photo certainly is flopped (not “flipped”), but the reason it’s flopped is to make GOOD layout design. To not flop the photo would lead to a bad layout. But let’s start at the beginning.

I had this story on night-fishing for snook that I wanted to run. The problem was that the author’s photo support wasn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be. It turns out, however, that there are very few appropriate images of night-fishing for snook out there. I struck out with all my usual professional photographers, and further searching turned up nothing. Of course, there are lots of full-sun snook images out there, but they wouldn’t work for this particular article. So, now I had to make a decision: do I kill the story or try to make do with the images I’ve got. I chose door number two. These kinds of compromises come up all the time in this business.

[bryan hulse]

Phil,

Thank you for answering my question. What I was really getting at doesn’t have to do so much with the quality of a photograph, but–and still using the same snook article for reference–if an editor is put in the position of having to decide between the lesser of two evils why choose the one that is most obvious.
Wedding bands on the wrong hand and reversed lettering are easier to spot than text copied on the left hand page and a subject pointing towards the fold. It violates a design rule, but I would guess fewer people can identify an good layout exception like that as opposed to a flopped picture.

Thanks again,

Bryan

[Author]

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