Category: Blog News

I’ll say this, making your photography, doing your art, is something that for a lot of people is a combination of technical skill, professional know-how, and personal dream and fantasy. Being an artist is this incredibly fantasized notion, and for a lot of people, it’s a place where they put their dreams. When you’re doing that, you tend to forget your practical business skills, or you tend not to think about bringing all the other skills you have to it. Because it’s about being “creative.” To put it in a concise term, being creative doesn’t mean not being professional.

–Ariel Shanberg

via Interview With Ariel Shanberg, Center for Photography at Woodstock.

…The New York Times itself, revenue actually increased by 0.3 percent from a year ago. Compare that to the previous quarter, when the paper’s revenue slid 2 percent. Year-over-year revenue had been negative for eleven of the previous twelve quarters.

What happened this time? The Times put up a paywall on its website and asked readers to pay for its expensive-to-produce news. […]The new online subs helped push up the paper’s circulation revenues by 1.6 percent, where they had fallen 2.9 percent in the first quarter.

via CJR.

I have found my images in every nook of the Internet, mostly attributed and not altered in any way, but often unattributed, remixed, appropriated as paintings or drawings and cropped in ways that offend me to no end. Every time I come across my work presented like this, I cringe a little, but most of the efforts are benign and nobody is profiting off my intellectual property. When someone is profiting, I shut that shit down.

via Amy Stein Blog

Global ad expenditure is now forecast to grow 4.1% in 2011, reaching $471 billion, the same as the peak level of spending in 2008, according to projections by ZenithOptimedia.

More robust growth is forecast to resume in 2012 and 2013, up 5.9% and 5.6%, respectively.

via MarketingProfs Article.

There is no evidence that we are on the verge of a great new glittering cultural age, there is evidence that we may well be on the verge of a new dark age in cultural terms … where the creative world is destroyed and where all we have is cacophony and self opinion, where we have a crisis of democratised culture.

via The Guardian and A Photo Student.

via, Some Clever Stuff

All of the publications are edited by women in their 20s who first built a following by blogging. It may seem strange for young creative types to be starting online publications that so closely mimic traditional magazines, particularly when that means adopting the conventions of print in such a literal — some might even say unthinking — way. But in the blogosphere, it turns out, many see print as conferring a sense of legitimacy and distinction.

via Seattle Times Newspaper

Unless the problem is not really the “mythologizing” or the “exploitation” or whatever other aspect of photography we’re having trouble coming to terms with. Let’s face it, it’s a very obvious statement to say that photography exploits its subjects – but making that statement does not automatically lead to any insight. It’s almost like saying that if you print out a photograph it will be a flat piece of paper. Any real insight can only be gained by taking matters further, by exploring that exploitation, by questioning it, etc.

via Conscientious

The part that I don’t like is when photographers are stagnant (not shooting new work) and then to boot, their way of trying to get things going again is to ask us to set up a bunch of meetings for them. It puts me in an awkward position to set up meetings for someone who is going to show the same work that they have showed for the last year or more. On the other side, when they are shooting a lot of new stuff, the word gets out and people want to meet with them – they want to see the new work – and it isn’t a used car sales job to get them in for meetings. There really has to be a draw for the Art Buyer/Creative/Photo Editor and not just like… hey can I land this pile in your office?

— Agent, Deborah Schwartz of DSReps.com

via christarenee.

The main difficulty in this field lies in the fact of imagining the best coverage visually of an event and to know the photographers well enough to be sure about sending someone capable of bringing back perfect images. This requires a creative part as it is essential to suprise the reader. It is also important to work very quickly and to be able to rapidly make good decisions.

–Kathy Ryan, NYTimes Magazine

via La Lettre de la Photographie.

I know photographers who refuse to act on any ideas other than their own, and while I can appreciate this attitude on some fuzzy, idealistic, purist kind of level, I honestly can’t say I respect it very much. There are few if any original ideas, but there are lots of good ones. Listen to suggestions from your clients, your assistants, and yes even your subjects. You’ll be a better shooter, and I daresay, a better person for it.

via planet shapton.

Stephen Quinn, publishing director of Vogue, said: “Where once it were imagined that digital might kill print, it has instead heightened the level of engagement the reader has with her magazine of choice.”

via Media Week.

So far, Twitter has plugged the hole, in the sense that it has created an opportunity for me to talk to people on a daily basis while I’m at work. What constitutes me being at work is vast swathes of time during the week, where I am sat alone at a computer for hours and hours and hours. The furthest my intellect gets stretched during these periods is when I get to do ‘Ctrl+C’ followed by ‘Ctrl+V’.

via Chris Floyd: Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances..

Despite proof to the contrary, some full-time professionals still believe they are entitled to be primary image providers. It is time to stop the blame game and re-focus on the challenge – how to earn a living by making pictures. Photographers can no longer afford to hang out a shingle with the moniker “good photography at a reasonable price”. The differentiators for success are as follows: highly distinctive imagery reflecting a clear and compelling aesthetic vision, marketing savvy, sharp business skills, adaptability and persistence. Today’s professional photographer must deliver nothing less.

via British Journal of Photography.

The best part of my job is that I do have days when I DO spend all day searching for hot new talent.

Limit the number of times you send emails per month. I get emails from the same group of reps/photographers every week to every two weeks. I think once a month to every 3 months is sufficient. When emails start to come every week, I just end up deleting and not taking the time.

via Jasmine DeFoore

Before I made it to this stage, I spent many years working overtime just to get my work out and there were many times I’ve come close to being broke. It was not an easy journey, but it was definitely worth it.

via Kevin Ou | Feature Shoot

In the process of proofing film I started developing an eye for what works and what does not in a frame. How color and texture are effected by lighting. And how much is needed or not to tell the story or sell the product. There was also a lot to be learned from what photographers were leaving on the cutting room floors.

via  « POP (Photographers on Photography).

Speaking of Apple, Carey downplayed the skirmish between publishers and the software maker, saying that Hearst didn’t understand the quibbles other publishers had over Apple’s 30 percent cut and its refusal to share consumer data. With newsstand copies, Hearst doesn’t get any information about who’s buying them, and only collects 55 cents on the dollar for those copies, he pointed out. “We’ll take a 70-30 split any day of the week,” he said.

via Adweek.