I am extremely gracious that Jasper Pride, Whistler Pride, Lethbridge Pride, Medicine Hat Pride, Central Alberta Pride and this year Banff Pride, that my costs are covered to be able to travel to those destinations to photograph their events. Some of these groups use local tourism dollars or sponsorships to arrange it for me. Without this, I would not be able to go to these events that GayCalgary sponsors.

This year was the first time also I was able to arrange something for Edmonton through Tourism Edmonton for the Great Canadian Bear Weekend. Every year since we had expanded to cover Edmonton, I have had to pay for transportation and accommodation. It quickly gets expensive, which is why for the last several years I usually only attend major events in Edmonton. Previously when a couple Edmonton bars and businesses were advertising with the magazine, I could afford almost weekly trips up to cover events. Unfortunately, times change.

When I do these trips to pride destinations, I also do a complete travel article for them. It is part of the arrangement: you’re showcasing Pride AND the area/city in which it occurs. Expect more of those types of articles appearing in upcoming editions of the magazine. I am very happy to be able to do coverage for these groups and destinations because I do feel they appreciated what the magazine does to help promote and showcase them.

Calgary Pride weekend had me running off my feet - after the weekend was over, I had downloaded all the photos and videos that I took over 5 days. It was close to 11,500 files and I was at about 25 events. In addition, as I had been out at all these events, I also realized that I had close to 1,000 unread emails to sort through as well that accumulated over the weekend.

Or to put it another way – from 6pm Friday to midnight Sunday, that was the equivalent of taking 3.5 photos a minute, while getting a new email every 3 minutes.

So, while most people are either partying, or are working at the events (and making money), I’m working. This means no alcohol as I am operating a camera and working around people – some who may be intoxicated and oblivious of their surroundings. You may be partying, but I am trying to line up a great shot, or concentrate on the next act on stage, or getting audience reactions all while trying to keep myself and my camera safe.

Being a real media outlet, I do get the chance to take photos of concerts, the Calgary and Edmonton Comic Expos, the Junos and other events. However, at events like this, we are told in advance by media reps or public relations on how long we are to photograph for, what we can photograph and so forth. With the type of control, we strictly follow the rules as we may sign contracts with penalties outlined if we breach the rules – this can include being blacklisted from covering future events.

What’s the big deal, you get to go to these amazing events, you take pictures, how hard is that you are thinking.

OK. This is my set up at concerts: usually located by the sound and lighting booth which is located all the way in the back. A crowd of people sitting or standing in front of me. People holding up their smartphones for pictures (which I need to then need to compensate for and avoid). All media is there for ONLY two or three songs then we’re escorted out (oh, hey, enjoy the rest of the concert...bye!). This gives me five to ten minutes to get as many photos as possible while holding my camera above my head (keeping as still as possible) and zooming in to take my shots. I know that concerts will have great lighting, the performer is usually in a locked spot for those numbers I am photographing which also helps for great shots, but still I end up hoping there are some pictures I can use.

With the Junos, it’s an even tighter, controlled atmosphere: each celebrity stops on the red carpet for about 30 seconds to a minute for photos and you hope that you get something. Other bigger media outlets will sometimes have two to three photographers to increase the odds of getting a good photo. Any and all people identified as media must stay in the designated area. For example, we can’t just decide to run off and take a selfie with the talent if the rest of the media is in a cordoned off area. Everything must be approved (no drive by photos or interviews).

But, I hear people say, ...it must be great to make so much money covering these events.

You may want to sit down for this.

Never once has a venue, event promoter, or non-profit group has ever paid me for the photos I take, or the additional press that they get when I post the photos in the magazine and on our feeds. As I take photos at a lot of events, there are also photographer’s that either get drink tabs or payment, where I just get free cover. When you are trying to run a magazine to provide coverage of Alberta’s LGBTQ community, finding out that others are getting paid for work that you are already doing along side of you is not a great feeling. A lot of the times the venue or event promoter had not even purchased advertising which helps me keep the magazine running.

Some people do though get confused and assume that advertising pays for covering the event. Advertising is strictly just for the ads running in the magazine, online and in the social media feeds. If they want to pay for us to do photos, that is totally separate, but no one has paid me for that service. It would be not fair to the businesses that don’t do events that are paying the same rate as a venue that does to events for me to give them additional exposure by photographing their events.

As a free magazine, my revenue comes from advertising. That you can read this is due to businesses advertising with us (which is why we stress you always patronize our advertisers and tell them you saw their ad in GayCalgary).

People also forget that I am car-free. I walk or take transit to and from these events. While I could call for either a taxi or Uber home (or back to the hotel if I’m covering a story in another city), it’s not cheap, and therefore not an option if I am not making money doing these photos.

People do complain that I don’t have the pics from past events posted yet. Unlike the other photographers who got paid to take photos, I still must run the magazine throughout the day. I have lots of emails to deal with, posts to social media, updates to the website, the weekly email blasts, writing articles, layout of the magazine, programming of the website, and tons more.

I have scheduled a couple nights a week after 10pm to sort through photos I take. Besides any other considerations listed above, I manually have to review the pictures and remove bad pictures. It takes about 15 to 30 seconds for each photo depending what else I am doing at the same time. Think about that 11,500 photos I took during Calgary Pride weekend. Assuming I’m really flying and doing four photos per minute. That’s 240 pictures per hour. If I worked 24 hours straight, that would be 5760 pictures. It would take me two days to sort through all those photos. Photos which I did not get paid to take, sort through or process.

Ask yourself – do you therefore think i have any time to apply Instagram filters or photoshop them?  When I started posting photos on GayCalgary.com, the photos got a contrast and noise correction on them. That was all I would really do as any fixes are a huge time suck.

Furthermore, the photos are sometimes being used for posters, ads, coronation program guides and Facebook profiles too, so it is best that I keep the original versions up - you can edit how you see fit. The main reason why the photo gallery is there is for the performers, fans, venues, non-profit groups, tourist destinations and others to see what our community is offering. The photos are not locked, so they can be downloaded and enjoyed. They are watermarked with the GayCalgary logo, but if someone needs the original hi-res version of the photos, they just ask.

The magazine is my full time and only job. The only way I can cover the costs of providing the LGBTQ+ community the coverage that we do is advertisers buying and paying for ad space.

There is no other staff - everyone else is freelance. I wake up in the morning at about 9am, and work away on two computers with four monitors in front of me until about 3am or 4am. The multiple servers that host the websites are in another room. I will get up to do personal things like eat, shower, laundry and such, but most of my day is on my chair in front of those four monitors 7 days a week. I leave the house to cover events or content for articles, go grocery shopping, pick up cheques, go to the bank, and that is pretty much it. I don’t have time to do movies, or have a social/sex life, or go to a nice restaurant to have a meal, or getting a hair cut. There is always work that needs to be done. I do hang out on social media, several other sites and apps lurking, but it is more like looking at doughnuts, long johns and Timbits through a glass display while being on a diet and not being able to touch or taste what you see. I don’t usually get a chance to interact with the outside world unless it is magazine related.

The reason why I bring all this up about doing all these photos is so you can see how much the community and gay businesses want (pretty much for free) out of one person. It does not help that I have a work load that just does not stop but also with limited amount of money coming from advertising, I have everything budgeted down as tight as possible, which leads me to...

As a result, I have a huge task list of things I want to get done and I can’t do 10 magazine editions a year anymore. It takes at least a week every time to create an edition. There is just not enough time in the day to do that plus create the articles and sort through photos with all the other daily tasks that I need to do. For 2018, just like other Canadian LGBTQ magazines that still produce PDF/ISSUU editions of their magazines, GayCalgary will also produce 6 editions per year.

Instead of waiting for the magazine to come out, some articles will appear right away on the GayCalgary website, but other articles will only appear once the magazine goes online. The weekly update emails will continue filling the need of upcoming events throughout Alberta, new articles and press releases that have been posted, prize draws, and photos added to the photo gallery. The magazine will get a lot more pages since there will be more articles, photos, travel, interviews and more of what our readers love about GayCalgary. PDF/ISSUU/Magzter/Online version of the magazine will remain free, but for those who wanted hard copies of the magazine it will still be $8.95 a copy. You can order hard copies directly from the GayCalgary website, and I am still working on the logistics of selling them at gay establishments since I still have not heard back from several of them.

With these changes, a new media kit will be introduced over the next couple of weeks which I am hoping will get more advertisers on board.

I want to say I do appreciate the people who want to help and have supported us. We need advertisers, more than anything right now.

I do appreciate offers of rides. I don’t mind working my ass off walking to and from events, however, at the event if it’s at the end of a day, ask me if I want a ride home. Grab me some water or a non-alcoholic beverage (if it’s the end of the night and the camera is out of my hands, I may even sit and have an adult beverage with you).

Another big change I’m working on is to get a way for people to "tip" the magazine for what it does in the community. A couple of mainstream media sites are doing this. I had been holding off hoping that eventually the gay businesses would come on board more regularly to help support local gay media, but the response has been limited. Many creators of content (artists/writers/musicians) are embracing this model as well (see sites like Patreon). This way if you like what you see, if you like supporting local media, you can tip what you think will help support gay media coverage for Calgary, Edmonton and Alberta.

GayCalgary is not a non-profit organization, so I can’t get corporate sponsors, get casino money, or do a fundraiser in a bar to help cover our costs. This is my only form of income, and I love doing it...I’ve been putting out the magazine for over 14 years. In that time, I’ve seen several people try to emulate me, but when they realize the effort involved in staging a multimedia publication platform, they quickly vanish. Everything that started GayCalgary Magazine, happened over 25 years ago, so prior to the magazine starting I did have full time jobs, but there was no way of running a monthly magazine and have a full-time job at the same time.

Further advertising changes....I know that on the website, people see major company ads popping up along side of gay community ads. During the last 3 or 4 years of those ads appearing on the website through third party sites we have never received a penny for them. Google and companies who supply those ads receive the money instead. I had set them up in hopes of additional revenue for the magazine, but after seeing that only a very small number of websites receive payments for these type of ads, I will eventually remove them. If those companies want to advertise to the LGBTQ community, come to us directly since this is one of the reasons why all media (mainstream or gay) is hurting for ad revenue.

When I started Men for Men BBS and then the GayCalgary.com website, I had jobs in the computer industry for most of it. For the first several years of GayCalgary Magazine, we had a lot of business in the LGBTQ+ community, and it was great to be gay media. As places started closing their doors, some of them burnt us up to $5000 in unpaid ad revenue, it did not make things easy. I am hoping with these changes, it will help keep me from getting any further behind as well as create a stronger version of GayCalgary.

Related Articles

Contributor Steve Polyak |

Locale Calgary | Edmonton |

Topic History | Publisher's Column |