How to steal like an artist

9. Be boring. It’s the only way to get work done.

As Flaubert said, “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

I’m a boring guy with a 9-5 job who lives in a quiet neighborhood with his wife and his dog.

That whole romantic image of the bohemian artist doing drugs and running around and sleeping with everyone is played out. It’s for the superhuman and the people who want to die young.

The thing is: art takes a lot of energy to make. You don’t have that energy if you waste it on other stuff.

via Austin Kleon thx, Keith,

JWT Art Buyer on Email Self-Promos

I get tons of them, at least 50 a day, especially on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays—it’s an insane amount. The problem is that I open and read 90 percent of my e-mails on a Blackberry so if you are sending me images in an e-mail, chances are I won’t see them.

The best e-mails are very focused, event-driven announcements about a show or a new book that’s coming, things of that nature. Keep in mind that creatives are not constantly looking for photographers, we’re doing our other job too.

— JWT Art Buyer Shawn Smith

via Jasmine DeFoore

Artists Statements – Are You Talking to Me?

I spent about five years as a photo editor and was sort of amazed at how self-important artist statements can be. I recognize, and love, that photography can be important, life changing, awareness raising, haunting, process celebrating, but to say something is visceral doesn’t make it so. One person’s poetry is another person’s psycho-aesthetic retching. Self-importance is one of the most common over-reaches in the “language” of fine art photography. I have to admit that my own take is something of a cop out. I love language and I love photography – and I do work seriously – but I sort of refuse to self-celebrate with ten-dollar words. I am not sure I have always done the right thing at every turn as I am still rocking some very chic obscurity but I think I am being honest by not claiming the poetic everything stuff, even if I do hope an image jangles your zipper here and there.

via  HotshoeBlog.

You Can Go From Third Place To First

Our policy is that, no matter what, our photographer must have a call with the creative. Very often, if you are on the ball…you can go from third place to first. That’s happened to us quite a few times. We never do estimates without a creative call – how can you? We have no idea what the expectations are without talking to the creatives. This phone call is where all the stops are pulled out, and what happens before the photographer picks up the phone is critical. Do your homework before you get on the phone.

via Monaco Reps Look Here Blog.

Lynsey Addario: ‘It’s What I Do’ — Why She Will Cover War Again

If a woman wants to be a war photographer, she should. It’s important. Women offer a different perspective. We have access to women on a different level than men have, just as male photographers have a different relationship with the men they’re covering.In the Muslim world, most of my male colleagues can’t enter private homes. They can’t hang out with very conservative Muslim families. I have always been able to. It’s not easy to get the right to photograph in a house, but at least I have one foot in the door. I’ve always found it a great advantage, being a woman.

via NYTimes.com.

NYTimes.com’s Plan To Charge People Money For Consuming Goods, Services Called Bold Business Move

NEW YORK—In a move that media executives, economic forecasters, and business analysts alike are calling “extremely bold,” NYTimes.com put into place a groundbreaking new business model today in which the news website will charge people money to consume the goods and services it provides. “The whole idea of an American business trying to make a profit off of a product its hired professionals create on a daily basis is a truly brave and intrepid strategy,” said media analyst Steve Messner, adding that NYTimes.com’s extremely risky new approach to commerce—wherein legal tender must be exchanged in order to receive a desired service—could drastically reduce the publication’s readership.

via The Onion – America’s Finest News Source.

’80s arcade game themed art piece in which you shoot Koons’ work

The game is set in a large museum during a Jeff Koons retrospective. The viewer is given a rocket launcher and the choice to destroy any of the work displayed in the gallery. If nothing is destroyed the player is allowed to look around for a couple of minutes and then the game ends. However, if one or more pieces are destroyed, an animated model of Jeff Koons walks out and chastises the viewer for annihilating his art. He then sends guards to kill the player. If the player survives this round then he or she is afforded the ability to enter a room where waves of curators, lawyers, assistants, and guards spawn until the player is dead. In the end, the game is unwinnable, and acts as a comment on the fine art studio system, museum culture, art and commerce, hierarchical power structures, and the destructive tendencies of gallery goers, to name a few.

via Boing Boing.

encouraging consumption and always asking for something new, seem to have made producing quick projects ever more common

At the risk of sounding like that old scratchy record again, what I’m looking for in photography is something that turns me into a different person, something that I need to come back to, something that when I come back to it looks and feels at least slightly different even though it’s the same images. I believe such photography comes from a photographer who has undergone a transformation her/himself. In part, that is why some projects take a long time to do: It’s not just that taking the photographs takes time, it’s also that their maker evolves along with the images.

via Conscientious.

Lipstick on an old media business model doesn’t make it new media

The “next, new” media company will disintermediate all these “current, new” media companies by demonstrating the common-sense and obvious fact that continues to allude otherwise smart people: Today, all companies have the power to be media companies.

Moreover, any new media company that is created on the old notion that they sit between sellers and buyers is only temporarily new. They’ll be gone faster than you can say, “ Speedy Alka-Seltzer.”

So, enjoy your day, all you new media companies that send out daily deals to people who are in constant search of a better deal on a day spa. One day, those day spas will figure out how they’re a new media company themselves and will figure out what they really need is to invest in media that helps keep those customers coming back, instead of becoming itinerant day-spa-ists.

via Rex Hammock’s RexBlog.com.

I realized that this is a picture you take once in a blue moon

Believe me, when I looked at the pictures on the screen, my hands were shaking. My heart was beating. I realized that this is a picture you take once in a blue moon. It’s being there at the right time, at the right moment, at the right place, with the right lens. If you want to shoot artsy stuff, you never have the lens for this. If you’re covering the war with a 35-millimeter and a 50-millimeter lens, you’ll never have this.

via Patrick Baz Is in His Element in Libya – NYTimes.com.

How do you get somewhere in photography ?

Making money at photography is a difficult thing to do. I don’t want to discourage you from your dreams, you should always pursue whatever it is that you love doing. The fact is that in the last three years the business has changed considerably. It has gone from being hard, to being very very hard. Success requires considerable luck, a vision that is relevant to the market, business sense and most of all perseverance. There is a certain Darwinian element to it, those who try the longest and the hardest survive.

via Blog: David Harry Stewart.

Elisabeth Biondi – New Yorker Visuals Editor

When I work with photographers, it’s a collaborative process. My job is to translate the magazine to the photographer and the photographer to the magazine. It’s what I see as my role. I believe very much that personality is a factor, in addition to talent. I want to know the photographer so I can pair him with the right person for portraiture, for example. We work with artists, we work with photojournalists, we work with portrait and still life photographers. I’ve worked with all these different disciplines, if you want to call it that, and I love diversity.

via La Lettre de la Photographie.