I had nothing more to say in photographs

“Ninety-nine per cent of my work was advertising and crap. The people who were hiring me I didn’t like. Keeping a civil tongue up the rectum of a society that keeps you paid is an art which I was devoid of. I had nothing more to say in photographs. I’d taken all the snaps I needed to take. Maybe I didn’t think I was good enough.”

–Brian Duffy

via The Independent and Colin Pantall

up to 40% of sales could be on iPad

Nicholas Coleridge, the managing director of Condé Nast UK, has predicted that in the future as many as 40% of the publisher’s sales will come from apps for Apple’s iPad and similar devices.

via guardian.co.uk.

It’s gotten a little tougher

A lot has changed with the recession and the general downturn in advertising, so the rates have dropped dramatically. For someone like me it’s pretty much stayed the same except there’s less work. Because I would consider myself the B- range, and there are a lot of A guys that are doing work now they wouldn’t have touched three or four years ago. They’re doing detergent commercials. I’m bidding against people that, and it blows my mind. I bid against David Mamet. And I’m just like, are you kidding me? I’m bidding against a literary icon? It’s like, if I were an agency and I had the choice between David Mamet and me, I’d be working with David Mamet, just because then they can walk around saying that they worked with David Mamet. So that’s why it’s gotten hard at an entry level.

via The F STOP

You’re Going To Be Fine

Accept that things will go wrong. When it’s your fault, take the blame, fix it as best you can and apologize. Don’t let it happen again, but don’t beat yourself up over it.

Accept that there are going to be challenges, that you’ll need to do things you’ve never done, learn things you’ve never understood. But you’ll learn them. You’ll work hard at it and, as long as you didn’t promise the insane, you’ll get it done. And if you can’t, hire someone who can and relax.

via Retinart.

Thinner Time magazine still manages to stand out

Sidney Harman, the audio equipment magnate who is buying Newsweek from The Washington Post Co., told the Wall Street Journal last week that he’d be happy to break even in three years. Time, company sources say, is on track to earn a profit of more than $50 million this year.

Time adopted what Stengel calls “reported analysis,” stories with a clear point of view — often left of center — that were rooted in shoe-leather work. Newsweek, which moved more sharply left, bet the ranch last year on more opinionated essays and columns — and lost.

via WaPo.

Onerous New Tax Law Will Effect Photographers

Correction: The new reporting requirements under these amendments apply to payments made after December 31, 2011. ASMP has it wrong below:

One of the provisions of the new healthcare reform legislation will significantly impact the administrative burdens of your business unless the IRS changes it. As of now, starting next year, if you pay any person or corporation more than $600 in a year for goods or services, you must report that to both the IRS and the entity or person whom you paid.

Read how you can publicly comment (here).

May I suggest this…. The “film look” is bullshit

Shallow focus and Rack-Focus is lazy. A ham-fisted and overtly slothful technique with little impetus other than to lead your viewer around by the nose, to force them to look exactly where you want them to look, when you want them to look there. As a tool, like all other cinematic tools at the filmmakers disposal, it can and may be very useful. But as a staple and default way to depict moving images it is as articulate as a house brick.

Shallow focus and Rack Focus is the cinema equivalent of spoon-feeding the audience one small digestible and banal visual morsel at a time. Handing to them a deliberately unsophisticated and unchallenging image platter. It is the camera equivalent of writing only in capital letters and short sentences for fear your reader/viewer may not understand precisely and exactly what you want them to understand.

via Mike Jones Digital Basin : Weblog. Thx, Grayson.

Mannie Drops AP Lawsuit

The photographer, Mannie Garcia, had sued arguing that he owned the copyright to the picture and should be entitled to any profits made from it. Mr. Garcia’s lawyer told the Associated Press that his client dropped the suit because it had “taken a toll on him personally and professionally.”

via  ArtsBeat Blog.

The Secret Law of Page Harmony

This method existed long before the computer, the printing press and even a defined measuring unit. No picas or points, no inches or millimeters. It can be used with nothing more than a straight edge, a piece of paper and a pencil.

graaf

via Retinart.