Category Archives: Blog News

It’s the new way of life.

“There are little ways of cutting,” said one staffer, who drank a bit of the McKinsey Kool-Aid. “You don’t need to send an entire posse to Joshua Tree for a shot in the desert! Who cares! If the photographer is good, and the clothes are good, the models are good, it’s fine—you can shoot downtown.”
via [...]

Why did the readers stop reading?

Most of those titles are boring. Editorial direction is dictated by marketing needs, so content is designed to keep the advertisers happy rather than to attract and stimulate readers. The result is that readers are bored, they don’t buy the bland products on offer. And so the advertisers pull out.
via Journalism.co.uk

What is the best advice you can give to a photographer who is struggling to find their voice?

Well if it wasn’t a struggle to find one’s own voice, what would be the point? Struggle is good! I think it helps to be an independent thinker. Be sure of yourself and your intention. Read and read more. The struggle is what makes it worth doing – what gives your voice the meaning.
– Susana [...]

James Thurber on editing

Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, “How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?” and avoid “How can I show him how I [...]

What inspired you to start taking photographs?

I also hated getting up at 7 in the morning to go to work, so being an artist would allow me to sleep late.
I was single at the time and being a good artist seemed like a sure-fire way to attract girls.
Tony Mendoza on Two Way Lens.

Antonin Kratochvil, the Bouncing Czech

“I empathize with people who are being fucked,” he says. “When I photograph them, I am photographing myself.”

via Outside Online.

Publicis SVP Ed Han: Where Photographer Promos Go Wrong

“One of my pet peeves—the biggest one—is that photographers don’t seem to think about the target audience,” he says. “In our business, you’re always thinking about the target and how to appeal to them. So if you’re thinking about the audience, then you have to consider not just the content but how that content is [...]

Understanding the Creative Director

Artist lunchbreath
via  mediabistro.com: AgencySpy.

The massive attention surplus

Big companies, non-profits and even candidates will discover hyperlocal, hyperspecialized, hyperrelevant… this is where we are going, and it turns out that this time, the media is way ahead of the marketers.
via Seth’s Blog.

Has Monocle brought a corrective lens to the business of magazines?

Media owners around the world are scratching their heads, asking why magazines and newspapers aren’t selling anymore. Why? Because you’ve downgraded the experience. When you are competing against digital, which can zoom in and animate? then your print experience needs to be tactile and exciting and, for magazines, a bit collectable.”
— Tyler Brûlé
via The [...]

Two Scholarships Available for Workshop Starting Sunday – NYC

David Turnley Photography Workshops is announcing two scholarship opportunities for the New York workshop being held from August 23 – 29th, 2009. The scholarships will cover the full tuition cost for the workshop, a value of $1550. Winners will be only responsible for a $200 guest speaker fee.
Applicants should send a link to an on-line [...]

Slicing the Bread but Not the Prices

Panera has been bucking conventional industry wisdom during the downturn by eschewing discounts and instead targeting customers who can still afford to shell out an average of about $8.50 for lunch.
The St. Louis-based chain of 1,400 cafes says it has been able to persuade customers to pay premiums because it has been improving the quality [...]

The future of photography is exclusive content

Do not believe there is a “secret”. There is none. That’s the secret.
via The Bohemian.

Nat Geo Gets a Social Director

Robert Michael Murray, the developer of emerging technology platforms for Georgetown University, the 2000 Democratic National Convention and a former tech liaison for multiple TV series, will be in charge of leveraging NG content throughout the new and emerging social media platforms.
via MinOnline.

STOP hoarding all your “secret” information

Photographers of all types listen up ! It is time to STOP hoarding all your “secret” information and START to share it ! I am very upset and disappointed in many photographers today because they think they are Gods gift to photography and that the technique and information they have is exclusive to [...]

You are an artist and then you work around or with that.

There are no guarantees that if you work hard enough, or are talented enough, that you will be successful, be able to support yourself, or importantly, make a meaningful contribution to others. But in the meantime, if you are an artist, the art just comes – weather you like it or not- because you can’t [...]

print advertising sales for the nation’s 15,000 daily and weekly papers will bottom out at $35.9 billion in 2009

Newspaper advertising sales are likely to bottom out after four straight years of decline in 2009, but they aren’t headed back to where they used to be, according to a new projection from Borrell Associates.
via Reflections of a Newsosaur.

There’s a lesson here about the tyranny of click-counting.

“Yes, the home-page story about the Hudson crash might get more clicks than some uniquely incisive analysis of the economy. But it also makes the home page more of a commodity and less of a brand. Paradoxical but true: It’s possible to post stories that make people who come to a web site more likely [...]