GALLERY SUBMISSIONS: First, check out our page on Photographing Your Bike. This will give useful advice on the quality of images we require. As we are flooded with ever-increasing amounts of gallery submissions, we absolutely have to be more selective about what we accept. People come here to see good, clear photographs of interesting bikes; and that's what we want to give them. To restate our current policies: I. Finish the bike before you send us a photo of it. Finished means that it is painted and equipped the way you intend it to be. We occasionally run photos of "Works In Progress", but not in the Gallery. We do not accept images of bikes with factory paint jobs and decals. This 'zine is about kustom bikes only, not accessorization of stock bikes. 2. Take a decent photograph of it. If you don't have a camera which can take an in-focus picture, borrow one from someone else. If you are unable to properly operate a sophisticated camera, get someone else to do it. 3. Try to compose the picture so that it looks like a picture of a bike, not a picture of your garage or neighborhood with a bike somewhere in the photo. These are pretty simple, logical policies. If your bike is worth being in our gallery, it is worth photographing properly. Also important is that you label each photo with a filename which gives us adequate information to identify it. We find it especially irksome to get in a pile of images direct from someone's digital camera with the original camera image filenames, such as MVC15031, 2, 3, etc. with no other identification. For utmost clarity, rename the images with your last name and a number for each one ie: jones 1,2,3, etc. For the un-initiated, this may be done in Windows Explorer, or any program which allows you to look at an image. How To Easily Rename Your Photos So That We Can Use Them: 1: Open the photo(s) in the program you normally use to view them. 2: Under the "File" menu, choose "Save As". 3: Choose the folder in your computer in which you wish to save the photo(s). 4: In the "File Name" window, the original, totally useless, filename of the image ( typical examples: "my bike"or "chopper") will be highlighted in blue. Type in the new filename you want to assign the image. This should be your last name and a number, if you are submitting more than one image. 5: If the program has a choice of image file types to choose from, choose ".JPG". This is best for us. We especially despise .BMP (bitmap) files, and .gifs pretty much suck for photos, also. 6: Click the "Save" button, and the photo is ready to send to us. See, wasn't that easy? Certainly a lot easier for you to do it a couple of times than it is for us to do it several dozen times per issue. By the same token, when you send us an E-mail with attached images, try to follow some simple steps: 1. In the Subject field, key in "For BR&K Gallery", or something similar. This tells us that it is a gallery submission, and not just a question, comment or whatever. We read everything that comes in, but not necessarily at the moment it arrives. When we see that it is a gallery submission, it makes it simpler to save it instantly to the current Gallery folder, so we can dig it out when putting the next issue together. 2. Within the body of the message, have your actual name and your E-mail address. E-mail programs have become increasingly cute in their treatment of this sort of information, with the result being that we have to work to get it, by clicking on the username and opening up a send message window, copying it and pasting into a .txt document. Even then, it sometimes doesn't give an actual E-address or name. Also in the body of the message, tell us the name of your bike and whatever you call this type of bike, if it matters to you. Our readers appreciate knowing some information about the individual bike(s). You don't have to write an encyclopedia entry for it, although we have no limits on the amount of information you can include, but do try to tell something relevant about it. People like that sort of information. "This is my bike" lacks reader appeal, if you catch our drift. DO NOT SEND US A HUGE NUMBER OF PHOTOS IN ZIPPED FORM! We have been swamped with virus messages in Zip form lately, so we no longer will open zipped files sent us by strangers. Many virus messages which come to us originate from E-addresses containing the word "bike".Also, if you have so many photos that they need to be zipped, you are wanting to send us too many. We like to have a profile shot of a given bike, maybe a shot of someone on the bike, maybe one or two close-up shots of interesting features or details. If you want to send us photos of several different bikes, send them in different E-messages. Each message should contain your actual name and information about that particular bike. Also regarding including your actual name in the body of the message: this is especially important if you are sending from someone else's computer. Their name will be at the top of the message, in this case, and we will assume that they built the bike. We really love it when we have the cover and the gallery pages all published, with names in place, and later hear from some dumbass, after he's seen the issue, that he sent it from his friend's computer and didn't think to include his own name in the message. Guess what's going to happen to dumbass' page? If your guess is that we will go back and change the name in several pages you are probably mistaken. It's much easier to delete or not bother to do anything about it at all. Regarding the text you include with your photographs: We are happy to do a certain amount of copy editing, so you don't sound like some sort of reetard. However, we draw the line at material which is written in all caps, or that which is written without benefit of the shift key. Fixing all-capitol copy involves completely re-keying the entire thing. Adding capitalization isn't quite as laborious, but it's still a flaming pain in the ass. We will reject for either of those reasons. Anyone capable of building a bicycle should certainly be capable of recognizing that the Caps Lock key is engaged, or that there's a Shift key on the keyboard. |
About Submissions To Webzine. |
GALLERY SUBMISSIONS: First, check out our page on Photographing Your Bike. This will give useful advice on the quality of images we require. As we are flooded with ever-increasing amounts of gallery submissions, we absolutely have to be more selective about what we accept. People come here to see good, clear photographs of interesting bikes; and that's what we want to give them. To restate our current policies: I. Finish the bike before you send us a photo of it. Finished means that it is painted and equipped the way you intend it to be. We occasionally run photos of "Works In Progress", but not in the Gallery. We do not accept images of bikes with factory paint jobs and decals. This 'zine is about kustom bikes only, not accessorization of stock bikes. 2. Take a decent photograph of it. If you don't have a camera which can take an in-focus picture, borrow one from someone else. If you are unable to properly operate a sophisticated camera, get someone else to do it. 3. Try to compose the picture so that it looks like a picture of a bike, not a picture of your garage or neighborhood with a bike somewhere in the photo. These are pretty simple, logical policies. If your bike is worth being in our gallery, it is worth photographing properly. Also important is that you label each photo with a filename which gives us adequate information to identify it. We find it especially irksome to get in a pile of images direct from someone's digital camera with the original camera image filenames, such as MVC15031, 2, 3, etc. with no other identification. For utmost clarity, rename the images with your last name and a number for each one ie: jones 1,2,3, etc. For the un-initiated, this may be done in Windows Explorer, or any program which allows you to look at an image. How To Easily Rename Your Photos So That We Can Use Them: 1: Open the photo(s) in the program you normally use to view them. 2: Under the "File" menu, choose "Save As". 3: Choose the folder in your computer in which you wish to save the photo(s). 4: In the "File Name" window, the original, totally useless, filename of the image ( typical examples: "my bike"or "chopper") will be highlighted in blue. Type in the new filename you want to assign the image. This should be your last name and a number, if you are submitting more than one image. 5: If the program has a choice of image file types to choose from, choose ".JPG". This is best for us. We especially despise .BMP (bitmap) files, and .gifs pretty much suck for photos, also. 6: Click the "Save" button, and the photo is ready to send to us. See, wasn't that easy? Certainly a lot easier for you to do it a couple of times than it is for us to do it several dozen times per issue. By the same token, when you send us an E-mail with attached images, try to follow some simple steps: 1. In the Subject field, key in "For BR&K Gallery", or something similar. This tells us that it is a gallery submission, and not just a question, comment or whatever. We read everything that comes in, but not necessarily at the moment it arrives. When we see that it is a gallery submission, it makes it simpler to save it instantly to the current Gallery folder, so we can dig it out when putting the next issue together. 2. Within the body of the message, have your actual name and your E-mail address. E-mail programs have become increasingly cute in their treatment of this sort of information, with the result being that we have to work to get it, by clicking on the username and opening up a send message window, copying it and pasting into a .txt document. Even then, it sometimes doesn't give an actual E-address or name. Also in the body of the message, tell us the name of your bike and whatever you call this type of bike, if it matters to you. Our readers appreciate knowing some information about the individual bike(s). You don't have to write an encyclopedia entry for it, although we have no limits on the amount of information you can include, but do try to tell something relevant about it. People like that sort of information. "This is my bike" lacks reader appeal, if you catch our drift. DO NOT SEND US A HUGE NUMBER OF PHOTOS IN ZIPPED FORM! We have been swamped with virus messages in Zip form lately, so we no longer will open zipped files sent us by strangers. Many virus messages which come to us originate from E-addresses containing the word "bike".Also, if you have so many photos that they need to be zipped, you are wanting to send us too many. We like to have a profile shot of a given bike, maybe a shot of someone on the bike, maybe one or two close-up shots of interesting features or details. If you want to send us photos of several different bikes, send them in different E-messages. Each message should contain your actual name and information about that particular bike. Also regarding including your actual name in the body of the message: this is especially important if you are sending from someone else's computer. Their name will be at the top of the message, in this case, and we will assume that they built the bike. We really love it when we have the cover and the gallery pages all published, with names in place, and later hear from some dumbass, after he's seen the issue, that he sent it from his friend's computer and didn't think to include his own name in the message. Guess what's going to happen to dumbass' page? If your guess is that we will go back and change the name in several pages you are probably mistaken. It's much easier to delete or not bother to do anything about it at all. Regarding the text you include with your photographs: We are happy to do a certain amount of copy editing, so you don't sound like some sort of reetard. However, we draw the line at material which is written in all caps, or that which is written without benefit of the shift key. Fixing all-capitol copy involves completely re-keying the entire thing. Adding capitalization isn't quite as laborious, but it's still a flaming pain in the ass. We will reject for either of those reasons. Anyone capable of building a bicycle should certainly be capable of recognizing that the Caps Lock key is engaged, or that there's a Shift key on the keyboard. |
Editor-In-Chief BikeRod&Kustom |
ARTICLES: We welcome article submissions to BR&K. After all, it's less work for us, innit? However, there are certain procedures which will make the process much smoother for all of us, and ensure that your submission actually ends up in the 'zine, rather than in digital limbo or our recycle bin. Put it into a form we can use. We can accept attached MS Word documents (.doc) or Notepad or Wordpad (.txt) files, or straight e-mail text. When we see other filename extensions we don't recognize, we assume that they contain viruses, and we trash them, instantly. Be sure that your actual name and E-mail address are part of the document. Giant .JPG images of handwritten pages won't cut it, nor will giant scans of typewritten pages. Based upon our experience, it is impossible to read scanned text and handwriting on a web page, at least in a size which fits our page format. If you think that we have a huge staff of MicroSerfs and attractive unpaid interns around here to convert that sort of thing into digital text, you are way wrong. Likewise, we don't have the staffing to take snail-mailed typewritten manuscripts and convert them to digital text. Yes, we have OCR (optical character recognition) software. Using it on a manuscript page or publication page clipping is possibly a little easier than manually keypunching it all in- just barely; but not enough for us to want to hassle with it. It always requires a hideous amount of time correcting the errors which invariably creep in, and we don't have that much time to spare. If your article has photos or illustrations which accompany it, they should be in the form of digital image files. They should be individually titled, preferably with your last name as part of the filename, and in the numeric order in which they should appear. (jones1.jpg, for example.) Articles submitted to BR&K are your intellectual property. By sending them to us, you are granting us permission to use them in this webzine. You retain all other rights to them. You are also welcome to give anyone else the right to use them, should you wish. However, be advised that we like to have a certain amount of exclusivity; and we really don't feel the need to publish something which is already out there on a lot of other websites. FAILURE TO FOLLOW THESE GUIDELINES WILL RESULT IN AUTOMATIC REJECTION. There you have it, everything you need to know to get your work into BR&K. We, and our audience appreciate your sharing with us. By following the above guidelines, you will ensure that it will happen. Thanks very much for your co-operation and participation, |
