Hey Travis!
The key is HIGH QUALITY photos. It's become much easier over the last several years, as all the magazines have gone to digital images. In "the old days" a maker would have to send the knife off to a photographer, pay for shipping both ways, wait on the knife and the photos, and pay a pretty hefty price for most photos. The key for makers is to learn how to take your own photos! As with anything we do/learn, it will take investing in a good camera, learning/setting up the lighting, and then learning how to bring it all together to take those high quality photos. The payoff is that the expense of photos is cut dramatically, no more mailing and waiting, and you can have a finished knife up on your website, or sent into the magazines literally, the same day it's completed.
We live in a world today where some are tech-savvy, and some are not. By that I mean that we often spend all our time/efforts focusing on the web, but there is still a segment of knife buyers who don't do the internet....this is where the magazines come into play. For years we have stayed in our little "box", by only sending photos to "Knife" publications. There is a whole wide world of publications out there......from gun magazines, to cooking. If you make a knife that applies to a genre, send them photos!
Sometimes the most difficult part is locating/finding the proper folks to send photos to. In many cases I simple find the email address of the Editor of whatever magazine(s) I think might be interested, and will "cold" send them some photos, with my biography and descriptions. This has gotten me print in some places you'd never think it would.....like The Wall Street Journal, Handyman magazine, several cooking/culinary magazines, and some others that you'd never think about for custom knives.
OK, what about those who either can't or don't want to take their own photos? Well, the first thing is to look through the knife pubs, and see which photographer has the most pictures in the magazine(s) (they will always print the photo credits)....and use that photographer. Why? Historically, those photographers have built a reputation for quality photos, and the magazines will often see who took the photo(s), and be interested in using them. Likewise, if the photographer is somebody who's name the magazines are not familiar with, they will often pass over the photo(s) without even looking at them.
This is also something that isn't "for sure", and may take some time. Before I ever got my first knife photo published, I had others doing my photography, and sent pics in for about 1 1/2 years. Once the ice was broken, I could count on having one of my knives in a magazine at least every other month. This opened the door when I made the transition to taking my own photos, because the magazines recognized my name, and would take a closer look at the photos I would send in.
Fast forward to today......although I have been lax about sending photos for the last year of so, I am now back at it. I think each individual needs to decide what's right for them, but I have resolved to send in photos to all the major cutlery magazines at least once a month. I'm now doing it by email, which means all I have to do is take quality photos, in the highest resolution possible, and then email them to whatever magazines I choose. It takes about 10 mins of my time to describe the images and send off the emails. I never know when or if they will be published, but it's an opprotunity that I would otherwise not realize.
Very often in our type of business, we are required to "self promote". Some folks are not comfortable doing that, and others are OK with it.....at first I was very uncomfortable with it, because I saw it as "tooting my own horn".....but over time I came to realize that if I just sat back and hoped I'd get noticed, it would likely never come. It's only one small facet of promoting your knives, but it's a vital part. It really all weaves together.....going to major shows, sending in photos, participating in forums, and even talking on the phone with clients and other makers. All of these things make you, and ultimately your knives known and recognizable.
