The Queen of Versailles

The opening-night film comes to Sundance with the kind of publicity for which Harvey Weinstein would pay dearly. However, Lauren Greenfield’s genius move lay not in PR strategy but in her choice of subject. David Siegel’s the kind of guy who not only thinks it’s sensible to build a 90,000-square-foot mansion (just before the real estate bubble burst, as it happens), but also thinks it’s a good idea to file a lawsuit threatening Greenfield and Sundance the week before the film premieres, complaining that the movie makes him look bad. (Never mind that the attendant press attention and public record about his $11 million foreclosure in May 2011, serves to make him look… well, bad.) All that aside, Greenfield also has an eye for candy-colored disaster that is never anything less than incisive and entertaining.

via indieWIRE.

If you get afraid of making mistakes, you are toast

A lot of what you do at National Geographic is you’re an arbiter or taste. And of course what we want to do, I don’t want to be elitist, unapproachable, inaccessible, but I want this to be an experience of high taste. That you can’t get any place else, and of course when you tap into that gut reaction knowing that there are times you’re going to be wrong, admit your wrong, move on, learn. It’s very analogous to being a photographer in a field, and everyday making decisions.

via Interview: Chris Johns, Editor, National Geographic Magazine | burn magazine.

Can I earn a living as an actor?

It may take several years for a beginner to earn a living as a performer. You must have a substantial cushion of savings to fund your quest and/or secure consistent alternate work to support you during the early stages of your career.Even the most talented performers may do everything right and still not end up with acting jobs. Success in this business is an unpredictable combination of talent, training, residence, “look”, energy, attitude, and the completely uncontrollable factor — luck!You must not take rejection personally! Even a working professional may not earn their income performing in just one medium.

via Getting Started as an Actor FAQ | Screen Actors Guild.

What Is The Most Difficult Thing For You About Your Photography?

I don’t like to hurt people. I go after something and I start pointing the camera at somebody, looking for those hard, edgy things I know I am going to find. My pictures will be out of bounds in terms of the convention of how this person wants to be represented. It gives me pause. I don’t feel I have the right to do that. But I do it nevertheless. After all, a picture is not a murder. It is simply a moment which suggests so many things.

via A Moment With Larry Fink – NYTimes.com.

Still Images In Great Advertising – John Fulton

Still Images In Great Advertising, is a new column where Suzanne Sease discovers great advertising images and then speaks with the photographers about it.

When I saw this ad, I reached out to Blake Pearson, John Fulton’s agent. It caught my attention because it required the viewer to stop and look a little closer. You see the hula dancer and then you read the headline- very creative! I also like that this creative ad is done by a smaller agency showing folks you really should market to everyone in multiple platforms. I researched John and found out that he lived out of Savannah, GA but shot all over the world. A lot of times, you can live where you are happy and have a successful career.

Suzanne: I love the fact that John Fulton lives in Savannah, GA and has been featured in the Communication Arts “Fresh” feature. How did you join forces?
Blake: I noticed several of John’s images in PDN’s photo annual and felt he had great potential. We met in person a few weeks later and have been working together ever since.

The ad is a wonderful mix of John’s landscape style and humor- but this time instead of a person we have a humorous prop- Did John have a lot of say in the propping of the typical Hula Doll?
Initially, we thought surely a witty toy maker would have already made a geriatric hula girl, but no such luck. To make the elderly hula doll John photographed a dozen different dolls on location to attain as much source material as possible so it could be built digitally. Often, he does all his own retouching but in this case we sourced Chris Bodie (also with VISU ARTISTS) who has a background in illustration, to help with the actual build of the doll. John and Chris worked in tandem with the art director to dial in the final look of the image. The ad has been such a success for the client that they’re currently having elderly hula girls fabricated for several other promotions.

How did Brunner find John?
Brunner discovered John through a mix of personal relationships, direct mail and online marketing. John is wonderful to work with and we have developed a great relationship with Brunner. He’s photographed campaigns for several of the agency’s clients over the last couple of years.

 

Note: Content for Still Images In Great Advertising is found. Submissions are not accepted.

John studied at Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, CA and presently works out of Savannah, Ga. He is currently featured in American Photo’s  column “One to Watch” and was named to the Archive 2012 – 2013 Best Ad Photographers Worldwide. He is represented by VISU ARTISTS.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s, after founding the art buying department at The Martin Agency then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies.

Introspective, navel-gazing nitpickers

So rather than complain about the introspective nature of photobooks or the endless discussions on the nature of work, we should not follow others but should instead go out into the world and find work that interests and inspires us on its own account, not the account of others. And if we can’t see that work, or find that work, if it’s not available to us except through the word of others, then perhaps we should just let it pass us by. If you can’t touch it, it’s not really there.

via Colin Pantall’s blog

Is There a Mass Market For Good Journalism?

There’s a new great post by Clay Shirky titled “Newspapers, Paywalls, and Core Users” that investigates the metered paywall that the NY Times and others have deployed to stem shrinking profits. As he’s talked about before Clay discusses the bundling of desperate content that a newspaper represents and the tough reality of unbundled content on the internet; where Dear Abbey, horoscopes and crossword puzzels are more popular than investigative journalism. The metered paywall gives national papers the ability to attract a large audience interested in a few things and still charge hardcore users. Currently there are two successful models to charge people for media content: mass, where you go for that largest possible audience and advertisers who want to reach them and niche, where you carefully define your audience and advertisers who need a very specific demographic. Combining the two is the metered paywall where you get a massive audience and a readily identified hardcore group willing to pay.

Clay goes on to say:

This is new territory for mainstream papers, who have always had head count rather than engagement as their principal business metric. Celebrities behaving badly always drive page-views through the roof, but those readers will be anything but committed. Meanwhile, the people who hit the threshold and then hand over money are, almost by definition, people who regard the paper not just as an occasional source of interesting articles, but as an essential institution, one whose continued existence is vital no matter what today’s offerings are.

Unfortunately this is not a good solution for smaller papers because “they produce so little original content.”

So, is there a mass market for good journalism?

There has never been a mass market for good journalism in this country. What there used to be was a mass market for print ads, coupled with a mass market for a physical bundle of entertainment, opinion, and information; these were tied to an institutional agreement to subsidize a modicum of real journalism.

The metered paywall appears to solve this problem.

Publishers Feel Abandoned by the U.S. Postal Service

More than any other USPS customers, publishers are feeling under the gun because USPS claims it loses money on the Periodicals class. Its latest numbers show that Periodicals revenue covered only 74.9% of the class’s costs in Fiscal Year 2011, down slightly from 75.4% in FY2010.

via Dead Tree Edition.

2012 – Success Or Die Trying

I think everyone is feeling the same thing about 2012, “time to go kick some ass” and I wanted to point out a couple posts that I saw from the end of last year that I know you will find helpful. Before I do that I want to emphasize my own commitment to finding and reporting on success in media and photography. Being unsuccessful is easy. Lets look at and talk to people who are having a career in the middle of the information revolution. And lets not get hung up on the path they took to get there.

I have two pieces of advice for you to begin 2012. Go to this wonderful list of business books and pick one out (http://personalmba.com/best-business-books) to read. Don’t worry about reading it cover to cover or memorizing everything or taking notes. This is not college. You’re in a unique position of owning your own business. You can discover an idea or principle and put it into action immediately and move on. It’s an awesome position to be in, so take advantage of it. One of the books I read last year was “Blue Ocean Strategy” and learned that all things being equal between two competing companies the only thing left is to do is lower your price. To avoid this Red Ocean scenario, get rid of something others find valuable and use that time/energy/money to create something nobody else has.

The first post I found comes from Luke Copping and is titled Lessons For 2012:

Stop hanging around people who have given up

I see it all the time on blogs, on forums, at industry events, and any other place that photographers and creatives might gather en masse – an overwhelming sense of negativity that pervades this industry like a virus. What the finger of accusation is pointing at seems to change weekly, and complaints about clients, rates, technology, MWACs, pro-sumers, students, the internet, micro-stock, and the economy all start to sound the same after a while – a jumble of depressing but comforting noise that can suck you in and have you spouting the same rhetoric back at others. But, if you listen to that noise long enough, one crystal clear idea starts to creep through – that this is ultimately about blame. The underlying mantra behind so many of these complaints can often be reduced and simplified to one statement; “This is not my fault, this is caused by something beyond my control, so I do not have to act to fix it.” This kind of thinking may bring some small amount of cathartic relief, especially when joining in with the masses collectively laying blame on something else, but it will do absolutely nothing to remedy the situation.

I am so over it, and I don’t want to be part of that culture of excuses.

That is why I am so grateful to have made a conscious decision over the last year to surround myself with people so against this type of hive negativity that the idea of giving up and giving in is completely alien to them – either because of their unrelenting positivity, or their indefatigable passion pushing them to take actions that they believe in to find answers to their problems.

Read the whole thing here.

And, this gem from Leslie Burns titled “10 Things to do for Your Biz in 2012 (the gloves come off).”

Forget about old selling tools like “elevator speeches.” Look, no one gives a shit who you are or what you do when you shill.

Fuck SEO. Seriously, unless you are shooting weddings/portraits and/or your work is specifically related to your geography, fuck it (and even for those of you who do weddings, etc., don’t spend too much time at it).

Get out of your office/out from behind your computer and interact with people. Social media is a form of connection but it’s a weak one. You want to get work, you need to meet people in real life.

Go check it out (here). It’s plenty incendiary and a great way to get in a kick-ass mood. I wish everyone “success or die trying” in 2012.

 

Adapt To Survive

I’ve found the last couple of years the most difficult since I started out – but not fatal. Can the new opportunities replace the fading print market and collapsing library sales? Probably not for everyone. However, many of the old rules still apply. Quality and originality still have value. Niche specialisms are always in demand. Surviving as a freelance in the digital age requires new skills and an openness to new markets, but it is possible – and at least the scrabbling around should feel familiar

via BBC News.

Email Subscription To APhotoEditor

If you are subscribed to receive emails from APhotoEditor each time a post is made I’m moving to a digest format so you can get all the posts in a single email (not 3 emails a day 5 days a week). You can go here to sign up for the new digest format from feedburner: Subscribe to A Photo Editor by Email and cancel the other account. There’s also signup links on the sidebar and up in the header with all the other subscription options (everything is reposted on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook if you prefer reading news on those services).

Book Publishing Is An Organized Hobby

1. Please understand that book publishing is an organized hobby, not a business.

The return on equity and return on time for authors and for publishers is horrendous. If you’re doing it for the money, you’re going to be disappointed.

via The Domino Project.

Brands Need To Embrace A Culture Of Creativity

most big businesses do not allow the time, resources or culture to benefit from the failures necessary to develop an innovative, entrepreneurial streak. He claims: “To get anywhere near achieving a culture of creativity that can make your business stand out, you need people who are more excited by what is possible than they are scared of looking foolish if they are wrong.”

via Marketing Week.

Still Images In Great Advertising – Ron Haviv

Still Images In Great Advertising, is a new column where Suzanne Sease discovers great advertising images and then speaks with the photographers about it.

Sometimes it amazes me what a small world it is in this business. I was asked to write an article for Resource Magazine on “Reps for Hire” and reached out to Frank Meo, Clare O’dea and Jess at Wondeful Machine. In the bios for “reps for hire”, Frank Meo of www.thephotocloser.com, mentions an example of hiring of drug consultant for a pro-bono project. Then weeks later, I am researching powerful still images in advertising and I come across the work of Ron Haviv and “The Meth Project”. I reach out to Ron and he includes Frank in the conversation of how the project was shot. Small world, or what?

Suzanne: These are incredibly compelling images- are these real users? if so, how did you find them? How did you gain their trust?

Frank: The kids in the ads are not real users of the drug. We did our casting via high school students and with some great casting contacts from our producer, Tricia Moran from Branching Out Productions. We got their trust by Ron, as always, being involved right from the start. This I believe was one of key elements to the success of the campaign. The kids, right from the video casting got direction from him. I’m sure that the familiarity between Ron and the talent from the earliest stages played a intricate role in getting these kids to buy into the concept.

Then we hired a drug consultant to be part of our team. This too was a major factor is the success of the campaign. Having a recovering addict on set was in an intriguing way a stabilizing force. His presence brought gravitas to the entire experience. Who better then a person who’s been to hell to convey what that trip is like?

Several other points about this:

1. In the five print and TV bids that the agency received no one else put in for a drug consultant.
2. This idea and results were so well received by the client and agency that they reached out to us for his contact information – they hired our guy for the TV shoot!
3. I’m positive it was this line item that secured us in winning the project.

Suzanne: I understand this is a pro-bono campaign but did the client realize the costs involved to pull this off? And what has the impact of these images had on the Meth problem where they were run?

Ron: This is I think the 6th version of this campaign. By many accounts the impact on meth and potential meth users is enormous. Research has shown that in the past there has been an effect on reducing meth usage where the campaign has been shown.

Frank: The client was great – right from the start. The realized that this was going to cost money to produce. I’m sure that the agency, Organic is the reason for this. From the outside looking in you could see the mutual respect in this client / agency relationship. After working in this business for many years you know a good fit when you see one. More to the point, I believe there’s a direct correlation between great work and a great clients – we were sure glad to be part of this.

The results from the images have been amazing. From all quarters we heard positive reactions. Most importantly the client sees them as “authentic”. The client knows their audience better then anyone. That single comment to Ron and I is the most beautiful music we could hear. Authentic is why I want people to hire Ron.

Suzanne: You have a photojournalistic style that does get you hired for campaigns like IBM, Intel, BAE Systems and ESPN- how do you create that natural feel while staying true to your documentary roots? Do you work with the same producer?

Ron: While each campaign has been different, the client’s overriding desire is for the capturing or recreating moments of reality. Working with a light footprint and letting the subjects, whether models or real life, become immersed and unaware of the camera is about as true to my documentary roots as I can be. The trick in doing so is reaching that point when you have the client and the creative team working with you hand in hand. When it works I feel the results have a great effect.

I’ve been lucky enough to do most of my campaigns with the same producer (Tricia Moran) who has helped me take the projects to the highest level possible.

Frank: All the clients you mentioned and American Express hire Ron based on a rather simple premise. They want reality based imagery. They want to know that he can produce the job at a high commercial level and that he wants to shoot for them. My job, as I see it is to eradicate any doubts and bring insight to how Ron approaches each job.

I believe the results seen on his website and my reputation as a commercial rep does that. Let’s face it, being one of the most respected photo journalists of our time is heavy stuff. I understand that. I must convey to the client that Ron embraces each project with passion and genuine understanding of each clients needs and their audience. Further I also ask Ron to write a creative brief as part of our presentation/estimate/bid offering. This too was part of our successful presentation for the Crystal Meth project.

Our producer, Tricia Moran and Ron work extremely well together as they both see the world the same way. She too is someone who “gets it” and has become an incredible reliable resource for Ron and myself. Having someone whom can produce, inspire and has a “get-it-done” attitude is a tremendous asset to all involved.

Note: Content for Still Images In Great Advertising is found. Submissions are not accepted.

Ron Haviv is the co-founder for the photo agency VII and has been producing images of conflict and humanitarian crises since the end of the Cold War.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s, after founding the art buying department at The Martin Agency then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies.

A Very Special Thanks To My Contributors

I wanted to take a moment before we get to cranking out blog posts in 2012 to recognize all the awesome contributors here at APE.

The Daily Edit, is a column I think will someday outgrow APhotoEditor. The idea was sparked by conversations with advertising art directors who told me they love editorial photography and my own need to get back to what I loved about photo editing. Looking at lots of pictures. I never gave a second thought to how they were made or what the steps were in the hiring process or what was it exactly it was about the photographer that caught my attention. I just looked at pictures and hired people who made ones I liked. So, I hired Heidi Volpe to go to newsstands and browse the magazines. Whatever she found interesting (a magazine you didn’t expect to have good photography, a new take on an old subject, a photographer she’d been following getting hired by a magazine she respected, pictures that rock), she bought and took a picture of the layout for me to publish. The best part is, I never know what it will be until I look first thing each day. Heidi has great taste and her reaction to images is based on years of experience working at magazines as a creative director, plus she loves editorial photography like I do. I hear from photo editors all the time how much they love it, so I know we’re on the right track.

Jonathan Blaustein started writing for me over a year and a half ago. Originally, he was visiting some photography events and interviewing people working on the fine art side of things. Recently though, he hit his stride with writing that is highly entertaining and self aware. I really love going inside his head as he visits art exhibits and pages through photography books. I’ve spent plenty of time looking at pictures, exhibits and books thinking, WTF, people like this. Jonathan has been expanding my mind and helped me see the underpinnings of this crazy genre. An unexpected bonus has been the recognition his own work is receiving, giving us and inside (the head) look at a career on the move.

Amanda Sosa Stone and Suzanne Sease were plucky enough to realize I had a bunch of photographers hungry for information about advertising and if they helped me find answers the goodwill would pay dividends. What started as a column called “ask anything” where questions and answers were exchanged anonymously and honestly has evolved into Suzanne Sease with a series of “state of the industry” posts and a new column looking at great advertising images. What I absolutely love about this series is how connected she is. She gets people at the top of the food chain to answer questions! I’ve also gained an appreciation for the difficulties facing advertising photography, but Suzanne handles it with such aplomb and a no BS attitude to boot.

Several years ago I asked a photographer I was talking with to send me the estimate for the job they’d just won. I said I was going to black out the identifying information and post it up on my blog to see what people thought. Well, I can only remember a couple other posts that set off a firestorm of comments like that one. I tried to get my hands on more estimates without much luck until the people at Wonderful Machine contacted me and said they be happy to provide them as a monthly column. It was a perfect match because I needed more estimates and they provided an estimating service to photographers. What I truly love about this column is how gutsy it is. Very few people could withstand the scrutiny of thousands of photographers looking at and downloading their latest estimate. Special thanks to Jess Dudley for keeping it alive.

So, here’s to the contributors, all your postings are honest, heartfelt and gutsy. My original mission, to talk about photography from inside the industry is alive because of you.