Brenda Milis began working with photography as an art historian, receiving her B.A. at UC Berkeley and studying photo history on fellowship in the graduate division of Northwestern University. Getting her start in photo editing at Jane magazine, Brenda eventually helped launch Style.com, then moved to Santa Fe, NM to work as a photo editor at Outside magazine. She is currently the Director of Photography at Men’s Health magazine. Shoots she has produced have won various awards and been featured in American Photography, SPD and the PDN photo annual.
Brenda Milis, Director of Photography, Men's Health/Photo by Ayla Christman
Reuel Golden: Describe your typical working day.
Brenda Milis: I am a fanatical list maker and it helps me keep all the elements of my day running smoothly because I work on a lot of different projects every day. To give a quick overview, a typical day at work for me consists of making art plans (concepting and then deciding on appropriate photographer to shoot concept); working on budgets, asking editors for stories/articles I really need more information on; a lot of back and forth with publicists vis a vis celebrity shoot dates, concepts and photographer approval; working closely with both my photo department and the art department; looking at as much photography in as many places as possible.
RG: How do you come up with the photography concepts for the stories that appear in Men’s Health? How do you plan the issue?
BM: Although assigning photographers to shoot the images for features is a pretty straightforward process, I have to approach creating images for each issue’s smaller articles together like a puzzle in terms of setting up photo shoots for all the pages and stories in the magazine. I meet with the whole photo department (there are five of us) once or twice a week to comb through the issue’s lineup to see if we can add an extra shot(s) for a one to four page article to an existing or upcoming shoot. A lot of short articles only require one or two photos, so we plan photo shoots that can cover two, three, or four articles at a time to save both time and money. It’s a huge juggling act as we need to make sure that the photographer is great at creating the kind of images all the stories require, be it still life, food, conceptual, etc.
I spend a lot of my time planning future issues’ art and working on budgets to make sure we’re coming in under budget for the entire issue, so if a couple of stories are going to be very expensive, I plan on where we can spend less money on other art plans. Because the nature of a lot of the articles in Men’s Health aren’t particularly visual in nature and we cover similar health or fitness topics on a regular basis (Try coming up with an exciting art plan for Alzheimer’s Disease or Prostate Cancer. Now try coming up with ANOTHER kind of photograph for the same topics two issues later!). I also spend a lot of time coming up with metaphorical concepts with the other members of the art and photo departments. We work very collaboratively and I love that. So we meet regularly to put our heads together and develop visual solutions for abstract ideas.
RG: Where do you find your photographers?
BM: I spend a fair amount of time looking at magazines, photo books, photo blogs and websites, looking at as much photography as I can as often as I can to stay abreast of who is shooting what, who is up and coming that I may not be aware of yet, and to help me come up with ideas for both assignments and concepts. It is also my way of staying inspired, informed, and keeping the well of ideas full at all times.
RG: What kind of photography do you publish?
BM: Still life (product, clothing, and conceptual), fashion, food, documentary, portrait, celebrity and travel photography.
RG: What’s been a really great recent collaboration with a photographer?
BM: Recently, I had a fantastic time working with Phil Toledano on a September feature about true life, extraordinary side affects of sleeping pills. It wasn’t a particularly simple shoot to visualize and Phil did a brilliant job, not only coming up with the ideas, but also executing them. And the images are gorgeous, haunting, and clever: Phil devises elegant solutions to creating images for abstract editorial topics.
Phil Toledano/Men's Health
RG: What’s the editorial market like right now?
BM: The editorial market seems to be regaining some steam, which may be in part due to the iPad giving the industry hope for the future, giving us all an idea of what editorial’s future literally looks like: Ads are definitely up and I’m seeing a lot more job postings editorially.
RG: Do you look at photographers’ portfolios?
BM: I do look at photographer’s portfolios but I prefer to look at their websites first before getting their book in—it’s not always necessarily to look at their physical portfolio, but it does really help to meet in person, look through their portfolio together. It helps get a real sense of them, which is important before sending someone on assignment.
RG: What are the most effective ways for photographers to promote themselves?
BM: There are a lot more options for self-promotion for photographers these days. Promo cards may be obvious but they are, for me, extremely effective because I check my mail every day and look through it piece by piece much more carefully than I do my emails from people I don’t know.
Taking part in photo contests is important because all photo editors I know pay a lot of attention to them and look to them for new shooters.
Photo blogs as an addition to having a website are great: I am a big fan of the photo blog because they update regularly, may show work that is a bit tangential to the more commercial work–ultimately they give me a better, deeper sense of the photographer.
RG: Which photographer would be your dream choice for an assignment?
BM: This is a very hard question to answer because I work with so many types of stories and so many types of photography. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’d love for Peggy Sirota to shoot just about any celebrity: she always gets it right and makes it look so easy.
RG: Any views on photographers’ websites? What would you like to see more of/less of?
BM: Photographer’s websites should be simple: images should load quickly and be large. Navigation should be easy. I don’t need other elements, especially if they interfere with me looking through your images at a relatively brisk pace.
RG: What’s the next big thing in photography?
BM: This is the $65million question, isn’t it? From what people are investing their energy in at the moment, it would seem to be video. However, many people could quite simply be wrong. Video is here to stay, though, that’s for sure, so I think everyone would be wise to know how to shoot and edit and expand into moving images just to make sure they stay technically relevant.