Kelly Stuart's job at Maxim.com is more of a mixed bag than that of most magazines' online photo editors.

Having come from an art photography background and worked at the site for seven years, she has gradually assumed more and more roles. Certainly her daily duties include sifting through agency images for the site, but she also does a lot of original shooting for the site's features, and writes a photo-related blog for the site.
 
When PDN caught up with Stuart on a recent afternoon in New York to get a sense of what her days are like, she had just returned to the office after spending the morning negotiating to use a 50's-style diner for an upcoming shoot for the upcoming photo-heavy "Hometown Hotties" feature, which is a major traffic generator for the site.

The gist of "Hotties" involves gathering thousands of amateur photographs of sexy women from Maxim's online readers and then selecting the top 10 "hotties" for themed photo shoots (which Stuart was due to shoot herself the following week). Each of the 10 shoots was to be based around a different decade in 20th century American history -- with girls styled to look variously like flappers, go-go girls, discophiles and other archetypes, and shot in appropriate settings.
 
"I was out until midnight last night walking around scouting bars for possible locations," she said, noting that she'd also spent the day before booking a location at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, meeting with a stylist to talk about the series, and talking to a lighting specialist who was to fly in from New Orleans.

In the evening she was to head down to a bar in Manhattan's East Village that potentially would work for an '80s "punk"-themed shoot.


 After we met, Stuart said she would be interviewing a candidate for a photo editing assistant position on her staff. The site is expanding, and she is planning to hire someone to increase the amount of photographic and feature content on the site.
 
She would then spend some time updating her blog on the site, Girl on Film-- which she does at least once a day, and which usually takes up a couple of hours.

"It's a rare story, because I'm a girl who shoots sexy girls … and so the blog gives a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff. … It's a huge stockpile of [work by] photographers who shoot women."
 
After that, she will move on to finding and posting photographs for the site's "Celebrity Beach Watch" blog. Photos for "Beach Watch" are taken from paparazzi agencies like Splash News, Pacific Coast News, and X17.

She says part of her job is to establish and maintain working relationship with those agencies, and that many will pitch their photos directly to her via email or over the phone.
 
"It's gotten to the point where they know the kind of content we want," she says.  "I want good-looking girls and good-looking celebrities in their bikinis, on the beach. So if they get one in, a lot of them will just send it to me right away."

There is a range of prices for these various images, Stuart says, depending on exclusivity, but she will only buy them with indefinite Web archiving.  She says she generally spends at least two hours a day interacting with paparazzi agencies for these types of photos.
 
Additionally, she spends a lot of time doing searches for these types of images on sites like What Would Tyler Durden Do on and off all through the day. She says she also gets plenty of images for the site through an arrangement with Getty, as well as from Corbis and AP.

"If something's available right away, then great," she says. "If not, then you've got to search and search and search. You can spend four hours one day, and then the next day you come in and there's some great photos available so you just spend 20 minutes getting them up."


She says some images also come from Maxim sites based in other countries. "If I'm trolling the sites and I see something on Maxim U.K. or Maxim Singapore, I'll contact their editor-in-chief and get in touch with their photo editor."
 
Depending on whether the magazine has just come out, a portion of her day may be spent retouching exclusive images from the print edition so that they will look better online.

"If the magazine features one person or another, I'll get the entire shoot, go through, and feature three photos that aren't in the magazine; then I'll retouch them and they'll be an online exclusive." In the past this work was outsourced, but Stuart says that over the years she gradually took it on, even though it can be time-consuming. "Especially if you're doing a celebrity -- then you have to be extra-protective."
 
Additional daily duties simply involve the ins and outs of managing her small staff -- assigning and monitoring projects -- and interacting with freelancers. Stuart says that most of the production work and research for images that go with features on the site is handled by the assistant photo editors. They are also charged with determining contracts and permissions.
 
Maxim.com rarely requires Stuart to post photos from home late at night, but she says it does happen "once in a blue moon," when there is a story that the site needs to have ASAP. "When Ashley Dupre's story happened [the prostitute scandal involving former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer], in the middle of the night I was up and posting stuff.  But we're not really a breaking news site."
 
In the end, Stuart says the most satisfying thing about her job is the photo shoots -- which she travels all over the world to do. "I really love it," she says.