There are many valid reasons for this. First and foremost, it helps us avoid production bottlenecks and assures we don’t miss production deadlines. BLUR is a volunteer project and we sometimes have difficulty organizing the entire staff at the same time. Keeping a healthy reserve of material on stock enables a worldwide team to organize their time more efficiently to get things done. Textual material needs to be proofread, graphically laid out and authorized by you – the photographer – before publication. All this requires time.

One other major reason for doing this is to ensure that BLUR remains colorful and unpredictable. We often mix up the content we receive from photographers in order to keep every issue interesting and fresh. We’re not overly worried about publishing photos chronologically and pay close attention not to degrade the overall quality of a future issue just because it’s summer, everyone is out partying and we receive fewer submissions. That’s why we sometimes keep really good stuff on ice for a future issue – simply thinking ahead.

Posted in: Editorial policy