The following interview is part of a series of Q&As with photo editors, directors and other creatives in publishing who are responsible for finding and hiring photographers. In these conversations, we dive into what you need to know to get on their radar.

Previously, we spoke with Leonor Mamanna, a senior editor at Bloomberg Businessweek, Jennifer Laski, the photo and video director at The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard, and Lyne Lucien, a photo editor at New York magazine and The Daily Beast. This time, we sat down with Emily Keegin, a photo director at IBM (formerly of The FADER and No Man’s Land).

Describe your current role at IBM. What kinds of shoots do you typically assign?

With my corporate clients, I help conceptualize their photographic vision and overall photographic direction. Then I guide production on shoots that help articulate this vision.

How do you find photographers?

I learn about photographers primarily through Instagram.

Which photographer has caught your attention lately?

Kennedi Carter is one of my favorite photographers right now. She creates strong, dynamic, images that still feel intimate and emotionally honest. It’s photography at its best: smart images that are at once classically beautiful and gaspingly present.

What has been one of your favorite shoots in the last few months?

Gioncarlo Valentine’s photograph of Naomi Campbell for The New York Times was great [seen in the gallery above]. This shoot is the best use of the “COVID-Zoom-photo-shoot” trope. The way he uses his screens as layers turns the image into a digital photo collage, and I love it.

Everything Paul Kooiker is doing right now is bonkers and brilliant. This is the kind of contemporary surreality that I find totally thrilling. I especially love his fashion story for M Magazine.

While he’s trapped at home, Aaron Wojack is using quarantine to experiment with still lifes, and the results are divine. It’s exciting to see what happens when people push themselves and try new things. 

Kennedi Carter’s portrait series for R29 Unbothered x Target Swim takes my breath away. The images remind me of both Rineke Dijkstra and Mitch Epstein.

How are you working with photographers during the pandemic and ongoing social distancing?

Right now, safety is the top priority. Which is to say, everything takes much longer to organize. There are also many more cancelations as on-site conditions continue to change.

The best thing for photographers to do right now is to create safety protocols for their teams to follow both on set and at home so that all assistants and techs stay healthy:

1. Get comfortable working smaller and faster. Find ways to keep your set to five people or less. This may mean setting up a digitech in a remote location or simply doing less complicated setups.

2. Require mask usage for everyone on set, and if you aren’t able to shoot outside, make sure your space has adequate ventilation.

3. Provide hand sanitizer for everyone on set and eat catering outside.

4. I would suggest chatting with your insurance provider to make sure your liability insurance covers COVID-19. If not, consider providing your client with a COVID-specific liability waiver. 

What’s the best way for photographers to reach out to you? And what do you look for when they do get in touch?

Email is best. Instagram DMs are okay, too, though I only check Instagram once a week. Best practices for email:

1. Use a straightforward subject line that won’t make me think you’re spam.

2. The email should be simple and to the point. Imagine you are emailing a dyslexic goldfish who hates checking her email. MAKE IT SNAPPY.

What are your pet peeves for getting in touch?

Long emails full of art-speak are the worst. Unless your work is 1,000 photocopies of Barthes’ Winter Garden, please keep ruminations on “photography’s inherent indexicality” to a minimum. If you are pitching me a project, you should be able to sum it up in a single sentence that is clear and concise. That sentence should be your opening line.  

What key elements do you look for in a photographer and their work before they get hired?

I am looking for photographers who aren’t assholes.

Photography is a highly social and collaborative medium. I don’t believe in the “great man” theory of art and deeply believe that there’s no room for such a concept in photography. We are only as good as the community that supports and inspires us. I am looking for photographers who understand this.

Photography is also a medium steeped in a history of gender and racial discrimination, manipulation and fetishization. It is critical for photographers to understand photography’s history and their place within it. I am looking for photographers who are conscious of these issues and are helping to make the industry a more just and diverse place.

What kinds of photos are you going to be looking for in the future?

I fear COVID-19 has forced us all into Plato’s cave. I am now flooded with images of a world I can no longer touch or engage with. In this moment, I am craving photography that feels as real and human as possible.

I’m currently living in the countryside, and this evening I watched a doe nurse her two fawn on my back porch. I had never seen this before. It was simultaneously surprising and the most natural and beautiful thing in the whole world. I am looking for photography that can elicit this same feeling. No pressure.

What’s something few people in the industry know about you?

I make ceramic milking stools.