Category: Events

It was brought to my attention that Lou Lesko founder of the popular bidding software for photographers http://blinkbid.com recently started a tradeshow for people who shoot video with HDSLR’s called PhotoCine Expo. Looks pretty cool and it’s happening in LA September 25th and 26th. I thought I’d ask Lou a couple questions:

APE: Can you give me a little background and tell me how blink bid came about?

Blinkbid started as “Blink”, but I couldn’t get the URL so it evolved into Blinkbid. As I was directing more commercials, I had less time to do my own photography bids so my producer and I went on the hunt to find easy-to-use software so we could delegate the bidding. There really wasn’t any available so I came up with a design for a work flow and I had a custom database made. After looking at it for a few months we thought that we might be able to sell it as a product.

My accountant thought it was going to be a big tax write off and indeed the first iteration wasn’t ideal, but by version 2 we started to see a few more sales and we started getting valuable input from the community. We went from there to the point where we could give back to the photo community via APA and ASMP support.

APE: Now what about the Photo Cine Expo how did that come about, the timing seems perfect?

About eighteen months I wrote an article titled “Will Video Kill the Photography Star” for Digital Photo Pro magazine. I was much maligned for my opinion that photography and video were going to converge to the point where I got a few nasty emails decrying that my ability to call a trend had atrophied. Three months later, video exploded in the photo industry and I want from ass to prophet over night.

About this time Michael Britt and Tom Stratton saw the same trend as me, and were in the nascent stages of producing the Collision Conference, the first conference of its type bringing together HDSLR video and photography. They saw my article and asked me to speak. Ultimately we agreed that were like minded and so in 2010 we started PhotoCine News and the PhotoCine News Expo.

APE: Obviously you think there’s a big future for HDSLR filmmaking can you give me some thoughts on that?

Ahh the future. I’ve always held that photographers make amazing cinematographers and directors. It is our trained attention to detail that comes from having a single frame scrutinized that gives us an edge. However, there are a couple very valid reasons why photography has always been seen as the red headed step child of the entertainment industry.

The first is beyond anyone’s control. Movies and TV shows have massive audiences which translates into a lot of money for the studios which in turn put huge marketing muscle behind their products.

The second is an issue that I’ve been on evangelistic crusade about for the last year. Narrative thread. In the early days of photographers shooting video I have seen a huge number of vignettes. Stunning imagery in motion like you would expect from a photographer. The downfall to these vignettes is that they have no story. No matter how short your piece it should have a beginning, a middle and an end.

One way to get an easy introduction to the three act story structure of movies is to read “Save the Cat” by Blake Snyder. Snyder goes through visual story telling by offering heaps of examples from movies you’ve seen. If you want to get more existential and learn about the archetypal hero, there is no better book than Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.”

As far as the immediate future, conveying a story in motion, and the ability to write a treatment are both becoming absolute necessity to landing advertising jobs. Video is now an integral part of being a photographer. The danger on the horizon for photographers are the cinematographers that are looming on the periphery of our stake in advertising world. Agencies only have eyes for those who can deliver what they need. If photographers aren’t in a position to offer video they’ll start looking at the cinematographers, all of whom are reasonable photographers if they put their mind to it.

I’m incredibly optimistic about the extended future. Never before in the history of the visual arts have there been more opportunities for photographers. There are more distribution channels for original work, more ways to monetize non commissioned pieces, and more opportunity to achieve a level a celebrity based on your efforts.

I always like to stick my neck out with a prediction. In the next three years we’re going to see the decline of reality TV to see it replaced by documentaries and docu-dramas shot by photographers. Because there is something about being a photographer that gives you a unique visual perspective that can’t be found in any other discipline.

Correspondent Jonathan Blaustein is back with a report from the summer gallery shows in Santa Fe.

Since the last article I wrote for APE, I’ve spent the summer doing the usual things. Making new photographs for “The Value of a Dollar,” weeding in the yard, and running after my young son. Average summer duties. Beyond that, I released a limited edition print to benefit the UN World Food Programme through the collect.give, had the opportunity to hear public lectures by Jonathan Torgovnik, Mary Virginia Swanson, Christopher James, Cig Harvey through the Santa Fe Workshops.

But unlike New York, which quiets down in Summer, in Northern New Mexico it’s high Season. That means busloads of tourists. And tourists like art. So many of the big blockbuster photo exhibitions take place now, rather than in the Fall or Spring. The book designer and blogger Elizabeth Avedon did a blog post previewing the Santa Fe summer scene a couple of months ago, so I thought I’d go see what was on the wall, and report back to the APE audience.

I began my little adventure at photo-eye, which is undoubtedly the photography institution in Santa Fe. The owner, Rixon Reed and his crew recently celebrated their 30th Anniversary. They offer a lot to the community, including a great photo-book store, a sleek photo gallery, and a program of public events and artist salons. The current exhibit in the gallery is a three-person show featuring work by Edward Ranney, Mitch Dobrowner, and Chris McCaw. All three work in black and white, and have differing perspectives on the landscape.

Edward Ranney, a long time NM resident, just published a book with Lucy Lippard that investigates the nearby Galisteo Basin. It was home to pre- and post-Columbian Native American culture for centuries. Ranney’s stark photos are printed without heavy or dramatic contrast, and create the impression of timelessness. Some images depict remnants of earlier cultures, and some do not. Together, they give the impression that the land, with its volcanoes and rocky cliffs, works with a timeframe that mocks the ephemeral.

Mitch Dobrowner’s large-scale landscape prints, by comparison, are dramatic and literal. They’re very beautiful, to be sure, but lack imagination. One exception, a triptych of clouds moving across Shiprock, in the Navajo Nation, is tremendous. Particularly if one has traveled through the Four Corners, as the natural beauty juxtaposes against a hard-core culture of poverty and isolation.

Chris McCaw’s photographs have been exhibited widely of late in NYC, LA, and SF. His work is original and visually engaging, and was recently collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. McCaw uses a large format camera, and allows the sun to burn its way through photographic paper that takes the place of film, utilizing long exposures. So the paper will show the literal mark of the sun, which shares the rectangle with land & oceanscapes. The balance of creation and destruction is timely and visceral. Killer stuff.

Andrew Smith, at his eponymous gallery, has the other major old-school place in town. The gallery had an installation on the wall by William Christenberry that I was excited to see. There were 20 small prints, in frames, leaning against the wall in two horizontal rows, (one above the other,) sitting on a wooden rail. Like much of his work, the images were made of the same subject, re-photographed over time. In this case, it was an old sharecropper’s house in Alabama, shot between 1978 and 2005. In early images, an old blue car is parked in front of the house, and in some an African-American family is standing on the front porch. As the sequence resolves itself, the car and family disappear, and the house slowly degrades to ruin. It’s a powerful depiction of the cold efficiency of time, and a strong metaphor for the problems facing rural society in the United States.

Smith’s gallery also has a ridiculous display of historical work, hung salon-style, in several rooms on two floors. I’ve never been anywhere like it, outside of a major museum. Ansel Adams, Carleton Watkins, Muybridge, William Henry Jackson, Steichen, Friedlander, Eliot Erwitt, and many other legends of photography are well represented. It’s so full, in fact, that I spotted a vintage print by Walker Evans of the Alabama tenant farmer’s wife, the image that Sherri Levine appropriated years later. It was a foot and a half off the floor, down in a corner by a door-frame. That tells you a bit about how much of photography’s history is crammed into this space. Not to be missed.

Verve Gallery, on Marcy St, has a huge following in Santa Fe. I’ve seen several shows there, and they tend to have three person exhibitions, from what I can tell. The work leans towards photo-journalism and documentary photography, with some exceptions. They are currently showing two documentarians, Jeffrey Becom and Nevada Wier, alongside digital conjurer Maggie Taylor. The former offerings were not super-interesting to me, but Taylor’s work is fantastic, and worth a visit. She creates surreal images that layer taken and found photographs, arriving at an original vision with a unique color palette. Taylor has been working this way for a while, and ten years ago, before Photoshop’s ubiquity, there would have been a “how did she do that” quality that is no longer to be mined. But the photographs are compelling, creating a stream of characters out of a Greek Mythology, with rams heads and rhinos and fish men.

Monroe Gallery is another of Santa Fe’s photo spots that has a national reputation, as they show historical photojournalism from the early to mid-20th Century. It’s a different period and style than you see at Andrew Smith, but equally relevant to American photography lovers. This Summer, they’ve got an exhibition in the front room by Bill Eppridge. One wall focused on photos of Robert Kennedy during his campaign for the Democratic Nomination in 1968. Very Iconographic. One image showed Kennedy riding in an open convertible with NFL greats the “Fearsome Foursome.” It stopped me, due to the reference to his brother’s assassination, of course, but also because it seemed like such an anachronism. Can anyone imagine a scene like that transpiring in 2010?

The back room of the gallery had several walls of classic photographs of famous people, hung salon-style. It’s a strange, fascinating mash-up of Marilyn Monroe, Winston Churchill, JFK, MLK, Ghandi, Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Stravinsky, Frank Sinatra, Albert Einstein and more, photographed by the likes of Robert Capa, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, and Arnold Newman. History; commodified.

Eight Modern is a relative newcomer, compared to the SF institutions mentioned above. It’s a contemporary art gallery in an old adobe building, just off of Canyon Road.

While they often show painting and sculpture in a beautiful setting, the June/July show was by the Chicago conceptual artist Jason Salavon. He uses the computer

to make original work from historical masterpieces, and shows digital projections, video installation, abstract prints, and digital C-prints, which I’d classify as photographs.

The front room contained two pieces that were haunting, smart and original. Salavon created montages of portraits by Velasquez and van Dyck that show just the ghostly suggestion of classical portrait sitters to create a meta-portrait. The layers of brown and ochre, and the subtle look of under-painting, are rendered digital and morphed into hyper-real. The spot where the face resides is not recognizable, per se, but is lighter in color in just the way to suggest what it was. It was probably the best work I saw on my gallery crawl. (But that bespeaks my bias towards the contemporary and conceptual, obviously.)

Finally, I saw one show down I-25 in Albuquerque at the Richard Levy Gallery. I’m including it because why not, as Levy shows contemporary international work in a great downtown space. (And I happened to be in ABQ briefly one day.) His current exhibition is by Manjari Sharma, the Mumbai and New York based photographer whose “Shower Series” has gotten lots of exposure on the web. (Burn Magazine, Lensscratch, Fraction Magazine’s blog & more.) While I’ve seen the jpegs many times, it was good to experience the large prints on the wall. She’s photographed a mix of attractive, multi-racial people who agree to take a shower in her apartment. None of the photos depict the subjects looking at the camera. They’re caught in what appear to be private, contemplative moments. So while the work is visually engaging, I was interested in the way it called attention to the artificial nature and forced intimacy of photographer/sitter relationship.

Well, that was a lot of information, I know. If you’ve made it this far into the article, you’re obviously interested in photography, or Santa Fe, or both. That, or it’s quiet today and you have some time to kill. Regardless, I’d encourage a trip out to New Mexico if you’ve not been before. All the above galleries show high quality work on a regular basis, and you can add Site Santa Fe, the NM Museum of Art, James Kelly Contemporary, Zane Bennett Contemporary Art, and the NM History Museum to the list. And in case you were wondering, I’m not a covert member of the Chamber of Commerce. I assure you.

Photographer Jonathan Blaustein who recently told us about Review Santa Fe attended LOOKbetween photo festival next:

I set out for the LOOKbetween photo festival from Taos, New Mexico last Wednesday. As some of you know, I participated in Review Santa Fe the week before. It took 13 hours to get to New York, where I was planning to catch a bus that LOOK had chartered. I spent Thursday running around the City in meetings, and going to some openings in Chelsea as well. (Jesse Burke’s show at Clampart is killer, BTW.)

Friday, the bus embarked from Penn Station just after 9am, and didn’t arrive at the Deep Rock farm outside Charlottesville, Virginia until 6:30 pm. I tell you this at the outset for a very important reason: I was practically a zombie by the time the festival began. The rest of this piece ought to be read with that perspective in mind. If you want a more structured account of the who’s and what’s, I’ve seen some good reports filed by PDN on their blog.

That said, I had a fantastic experience at the farm, and spent a concentrated period of time that likely won’t be duplicated. The setting for LOOKbetween was like something out of a Southern Romance novel; rolling green hills, crystalline ponds, braying donkeys, ribbitting frogs, strumming banjos, and a humidity level that would induce a full sweat in seconds. I didn’t have any sweet tea over the weekend, but short of that, the South represented for sure.

As we arrived, we were directed to set up our tents on a lush field overlooking the rest of the farm. I didn’t count, but there must have been 60 or 70 tents filled with photographers from different backgrounds and countries. We were provided with all the tasty food, cold water, and nourishing booze that anyone could want, all weekend long. And outdoor showers and washing stations were conveniently located as well.

After we struck camp, a cocktail hour and dinner buffet were served, which provided people the opportunity to meet, greet, and get a solid meal before the evening’s activities. A short orientation gave us the lay of the land, and then after dinner the evening’s program was a slate of 3 minute multi-media slideshows (or short films) that each attending photographer made just for the event. Prior to the projector rolling, a spokesman from the medical supply company BD gave a presentation on how his company uses photojournalism to deliver its message on Global Health in the Third World. Unlike Review Santa Fe, where the photographer’s tuition pays for the event, LOOKbetween had corporate sponsorship from BD, as well as Leica, National Geographic and a few others. The messaging was appropriate and understated, but made for a slightly different atmosphere.

Sitting on a green hill, watching the stars emerge as one smart project after another rolled along; it was brilliant. Story after story provided a glimpse into a different issue or part of the world. I went with a more experimental style and vision, and had to accept that my project did not really stand out. C’est la vie. Overall, the most successful pieces were the one’s that used either HD video or voice-over narration to engage the viewer. Christopher Capozziello‘s project on his twin brother’s cerebral palsy was visceral due to the narration; Erika Larsen‘s HD short film of reindeer culture in Scandinavia was riveting. Dima Gavrysh’s photos taken while embedded in Afghanistan were probably the best I saw in a more traditional slideshow format.

After 40 pieces or so, we broke for the night and headed back to camp for a huge bonfire and some serious drinking and talking. My friend Susan Worsham, (whom I know primarily through FB,) and I talked about our art process and motivation for almost 3 hours. It was inspiring, motivating, and unique. Deep conversations, as opposed to token schmoozing, were the highlight of LOOKbetween for me. I trekked across the country for dialogue, and the festival delivered. Sleep was tough to find, given that many of the younger photographers were yelling and screaming outside the tents until dawn. I would have been annoyed, but I was quite the lout in my college years, and karma is a bitch sometimes.

Saturday, after breakfast, LOOKbetween organized some specific round table discussions and a full-panel-talk after lunch. This was definitely the weak spot of the weekend for me. Certainly, my tired brain made me less inclined to share, but many of my art colleagues concurred that the structure was geared almost exclusively towards the editorial and journalistic photographers. After trying initially to participate, I became more disengaged by the minute. Several of my colleagues actually skipped out on the afternoon activities, and I stuck around in body only. The efforts to create conversation around serious issues were sincere, but no attempt was made to bridge the gap between how fine artists use photography relative to commissioned work. In fairness, I did find the dialogue about collective and collaborative action by Luceo to be beneficial, and the photographers who embraced rather than resented video found themselves talking a lot. And people were listening.

Saturday night was another slate of projections, and again the ones that used video wisely were well appreciated. The evening’s work was heavy on Third World photojournalism, which began to seem highly repetitive. And repetitive. It was a sticking point for me between the worlds of art and journalism, in that art photographers are trained to try to make original images and many journalists seem to stick to a template. I’m not suggesting the art model is superior, as it often produces meaningless self-indulgence, while journalists seem driven by a sense of mission and obligation. But the gap existed nonetheless.

My favorite of the night, and overall for that matter, was by the aforementioned Virginia photographer Susan Worsham. While I tried something new and improvisational, and perhaps failed, Susan made her first video just for the occasion and crushed it. She’s known for her sharp, lyrical portraits and still lives from her project “Some Fox Trails in Virginia.” She was the only photographer to split the screen, using two parallel square boxes with white, negative space surrounding. Susan paired photos on one side with video on the other, and narration over the top. It was magical.

The end of the evening was another bonfire, this time with fire-dancers and music. Kind of hippie, yes, but as I live in Taos, I can dig it. I spent another few hours talking about art and exploitation with the witty, naughty, and highly intelligent British photographers Ben Roberts and Hin Chua. They were frustrated by the work they saw that seemed to USE subjects in order to advance a message. I won’t name names here, but I enjoyed the chance to talk seriously about where boundaries ought to be respected, as opposed to broken. (I’d discussed a similar theme on the bus ride down about Nina Berman’s photographs from the Whitney Biennial.)

Sunday was breakfast and coffee, and then back on the bus. 8 ½ hours up I-95 was a tough slog. (I cheated and jumped off in Jersey.) But given that bonds had already developed, I was able to talk about art and business practice with super-savvy New York photographer Justine Reyes, and Syracuse MFA student Rose Marie Cromwell. So even rubbernecking traffic provided a chance to learn and laugh. (Road giddy is a particular kind of thing.)

Was it worth the hassle of getting from Taos to Virginia via NYC? Absolutely. Would I go back again if invited? Unquestionably. Do I think that the organizers will pay a bit more attention next time to synthesizing the different communities? I do. Was it strange to see cliques develop like high school? Surely. Did it matter in the end that I didn’t get to meet that many people? No, because I haven’t had the chance to mix it up with talented peers since I got out of graduate school in 2004. So thank you, LOOKbetween. I appreciate your hospitality, generosity, and good intentions.

Awesome opportunity to bid on some fantastic photography and have your money go to Doctors Without Borders at the ♥Art for Haiti auction that opens today.

If you’re wanting to check out the NYPH (May 12-16) via the internets like myself, James Pomerantz AKA A Photo Student looks to be our man on the ground this year:
http://www.aphotostudent.com
http://twitter.com/aphotostudent

Let us know in the comments if anyone else is covering it online.

UPDATE:

I’ve always wondered why the festival seems so out of touch with the photo community that I exist in. […]I always come looking for surprises and leave feeling strangely unmoved. How great would it be if everywhere you looked as you walked around photography hit you right between the eyes?

via Stellazine:

Starts Tomorrow.

This workshop Allegra Wilde is giving (deconstructing your portfolio) looked interesting to me so I asked her to tell me more about it:

Basically, I’ve figured out over the years how to explain to photographers a way to edit, package and distribute their own work. The vast majority of people out there are not going to be represented by an agent, or spend money on a consultant. So I have a method that (paradoxically) allows a photographer to navigate the problem of being ” too close to their own work” by actually being less objective with it.

This is not simply a question “do what you love” or just show your personal work. Because even though photographers who are interested in doing commercial work have sort of gotten that message, they still fall victim to marketplace pandering in their portfolio and websites, and because of this, look like most other photographers, go up against more competition, and therefore, get the job less of the time.

That is not to say that they shouldn’t show buyers what they can do that may look like what is already out there. And i believe there is a place for that in their presentations, but they are missing an opportunity if they mix up their jobs with their personal work. If they muddle it all together, then they don’t have a portfolio that looks original and strong creatively, and, showing the tearsheets or jobs mixed in… at the same time, they miss the opportunity to make a credible sale.

Fantastic.

If anyone goes let us know what you thought of the concept.

I’m giving a presentation Saturday, April 10, 2010 from 10 AM to 3:00 PM (hour for lunch) in Santa Fe, NM on my favorite topic: Social Media Marketing & the Future of Media. Sponsored by ASMP- NM and The Photography Department of the College of Santa Fe (more info here).

I’m really excited about this presentation because I’ve been working on a “white paper” about this subject for awhile now. Not because I want to go around the country lecturing to photographers–this blog is enough for me–but because I want to present my ideas to corporations and media companies. The public demand for professionally produced content is going to explode and companies need to know how they can use photographers, writers and filmmakers to help them feed that appetite.

I’m going to spend the first hour on traditional marketing because I don’t think it’s a good idea to get into social media marketing without that foundation in place. I realize that may be boring for some of you so just skip the first hour. The rest will be social media and the future of media with lots of case studies and examples. Then I will end with a short demonstration on how to use all the tools and how to incorporate it into your daily workflow.

If you can’t make that event I will be giving a condensed version at the Telluride Photography Festival Friday September 24th and/or Saturday September 25th (times TBD, more here). And, of course the material will eventually be presented here as well.

Info (here).

Looks like fun.
via, Worrell.

Foto Week DC starts tomorrow and it looks like there’s plenty to do for people in attendance (here).

This screening (here) of a movie on Yousuf Karsh caught my eye because I’m a huge fan.

Film Screening – Yousuf Karsh and Portrait Photography
DATE: 11/10/2009 – 11/10/2009
WHEN: 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM
WHERE: Embassy of Canada

501 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001

To be “Karshed” was a synonym for having attained the summit of worldy achievement. During his 60 year career, the 15,312 sittings he had, resulted in arguably a portrait gallery of the most famous figures of the 20th century. This film is the celebration of his centennial year of birth.

Produced by Ian McLaren / Production Grand Nord
Written by Harold Crooks and Joseph Hillel
Directed by Joseph Hillel

2009 / 51:30 min.
COST: Free

Deadline for submissions is Monday, July 13th (here).

NYPH’09 kicks off today and I’m stoked to see that Andrew Hetherington will be blogging about all the happenings from What’sTheJackanory?.com. The potent cocktail of exhibits, parties, lectures and famous photographer spotting that seems to make up the photo festival (I’ve never been but read coverage from last year) is what I always love to read on his blog and it can’t be found anywhere else. I’m going to put an rss feed from his coverage on the sidebar so if you’re like me and not attending we don’t miss anything interesting.

I spent last week in NYC going to events, then 3 days on the floor at the PDN Photo Expo and I’m a little fried from talking shop all week so I thought I’d throw up this recap jumble for the moment.

My favorite part of flying has to be the visit to Hudson News to survey covers, scan headlines, look for trends and see in general what piques my interest. The first thing to jump out at me was the new Rolling Stone book size and paper which eerily looks very similar to Men’s Journal. I bought a copy to check out the Sebastiao Salgado essay and read a 12 page story on the death of David Foster Wallace. I also grabbed a copy of The Atlantic after reading about the redesign because I wanted to see how it feels in the hand. I was impressed. I noticed that portfolio hasn’t run one of those lovely abstract covers in awhile and hope they haven’t completely abandoned those in favor of the more traditional personality based ones. The new Radar redesign looks great… too bad they pulled the plug on it. Bon Appetit covers are grabbing my attention now because they feel grounded/authentic and I see that Craig Cutler has shot the last couple. The cover flap for literary and news magazine seems to be a new trend and is likely tied to their need to sell, sell, sell on the newsstand but remain tasteful on your nightstand. I wasn’t going to buy the new GQ because my bag was already weighing a ton but I couldn’t resist a 32 page photo essay by Jeff Riedel (I’ll have to see if he’s up for an interview about it). I also discovered a piece inside on covering the presidential campaigns for news magazines that talks about the un-objectivity of the whole affair and nasty way that the flacks influence the press.

I attended and blogged about the Lucies (here) and while there are several things I think they could do to improve it, I was moved by several of the speeches and overall it’s a much needed event in the world of photography. My very simple fix would be to give more awards to young upcoming and hot now photographers and maybe include some academy like mass voting in the process. While I think honoring some of these legendary photographers is very important and gives the event serious street cred, there is a real need to elevate hungry young photographers into the spotlight and give validation to projects that require publishers and editors to take chances on lesser known photographers. That being said, the honorees were the ones who gave speeches that reminded me of the power and importance of photography.

I had two days between that and the the start of the trade show and ended up out both nights with photographers, photo eds and agents. Everyone now begins a conversation with me by saying “this is off the record.”

Thursday I headed for the trade show and the place seemed to be packed with people. I was there to meet people, observe what it might take to have a decent booth for my website company and hand out some cool stickers I made. The serious fawning over gear is somewhat lost on me (I’m not a photographer) so, I kind of walked around observing and meeting up with different people. The most interesting phoneomenon has to be the “live photo sessions” where photographers with model(s) and lights are shooting live images in front of a crowd of people. There’s also a lot of slideshows where photographers talk about technique and how the images were made. Some of the crowds were impressive and Vincent Laforet seemed to be drawing the biggest. I can only assume the blog is partially feeding this and that is an awesome development.

After the show it was time to party and I headed out with Andrew Hetherington (his official report here) to 3 in a row. The highlight of the evening was Monte Isom’s self promo party. Yes, instead of a promo card or emailer that you track Monte has a guest list, DJ and booze. Clients are handed flash drives with his photography on it when they check in. I guarantee he sees a return on this mother of all promos and I hope he keeps it up because it’s a good event for photographers and clients to mingle and party unlike the PDN self promo event where they shut off the booze and kick you out just when I was starting to settle in.

I had some interesting conversations with industry vets much of which was concerned with the cliff we just fell off. When it comes to advertising in magazines there seems to be a lot of chasing demos going on which amounts to creating content that will attract a certain demographic age, income level, education and ratio of male vs female readers. This has really been going on since 2000 but now in earnest because of the urgency in the situation. I think demos will dominate the conversation with potential advertisers going forward along with words from the web like uniques and hits.

My argument against chasing demos is that the cost to appease these fickle readers who care very little about your core values is enormous. Both in terms of the number of people needed to produce the junk content and the watering down of the core content. If you’ve every wondered how a magazine with millions of readers can shut down it’s because of the sheer weight of trying to maintain a huge circulation of people who barely like what you produce. This is a very scary time to be in magazines as I was told by several people that no advertising is being sold in 2009. None. Everyone is making a decision after the election and waiting for some sign in the economy. Only the strong will survive. In the end chasing demos has no end game it’s just a temporary fix as numbers rule the conversation right now but eventually it will fail as we return to the value of original content and readers who are invested in the product.

Overall it was a great week in the city and I met an incredible group of people who are committed to making this industry a better place: John Harrington, David Hobby, Joerg Colberg, Mark Tucker, Kristina Snyder, David Burnett, Cameron Davidson, Eric McNatt, Chris Bartlett, Evan Kafka, Jonathan Saunders and Allegra Wilde.

Look at all those photographers in black tie. Not a bad looking crowd once we get them all dressed up and hand out some beer awards.

Continue reading

I will be blogging live from the Lucie Awards this evening starting at 7pm EST. There are 10 honorees who will receive awards and give speeches then 9 awards will be given out Oscar style to winners from a list of nominees in different categories (full list here).

I’ve been curious about the Lucie’s since they started so I’m excited to provide some commentary for people unable to attend and announce the winners in each category. I’m fully aware that “live blogging” a photo awards ceremony may draw comparisons to watching a fresh coat of paint drying on the wall but I’m ready to give it a shot and attempt to entertain however many people tune in.

I’ve been invited by Everard Williams of Art Center College of Design to join Heidi Volpe, former Art Director at the LA Times Magazine for a lecture in LA next Tuesday evening called Shooting Editorial.

We’re going to talk about shooting for magazines and spend the first part discussing what goes on inside a magazine, how stories are assigned, the dynamics between the different departments and in particular how Art Directors and Photo Editors work together… including the ways in which I try and trick AD’s into picking my photographer or my opener choice.

For the second part of the lecture we’re going to talk about a photographers style and how we use it to make assignments and really try and show as many examples of portfolio images that convinced us to hire a photographer and then the published results from the assignment.

The event is free and open to the public and should be informative but also entertaining since Heidi and I aren’t afraid to give each other a little shit. We will also try and tackle a few topics that have been in the news lately.

Shooting Editorial- Tuesday, September 30, 7:30pm-9:00pm in the Ahmanson Theater on Art Centers North campus. The address is 1700 Lida St. Pasadena, CA 91103.

I moderated a panel on stock photography last Sunday and met some very talented young photo editors and learned a few things too. We had Leslie dela Vega the Photo Editor at TIME Magazine, Whitney Lawson, Photo Editor at Travel+Leisure, Michael Wichita, Photo Editor from AARP Bulletin and Ryan Schick the Photo Editor at Conde Nast Portfolio.com.

Here’s what I discovered:

Travel + Leisure, loves film. All their regular contributors shoot film so if you’d like to shoot stories for T+L you’d better go buy a film camera (or fake it somehow). Whitney was careful to point out several times that the deep rich blacks achieved in film are very important to the pictures they run. Additionally what separates a good travel photo from a brochure photo is the amount of information that’s in the frame. A brochure photo will take great pains to show the view and the bed in a hotel room, the flower on the nightstand and all the little details that are all perfect plus it’s lit like the land of a thousand suns, so you can’t tell what time of day it is. That’s four different pictures in a travel story.

Tha AARP Bulletin is different then the magazine, they’re more focussed on the issues and not as lifestyle or a slick as the magazine. Michael said that he never gets enough stories pitched from photographers and they pay good money, so that should be incentive for photographers to send him a pitch or two. He also said finding pictures of seniors with different ethnicities is nearly impossible.

Portfolio.com seems to be headed in the right direction. They have a photo editor, they’re buying stock and assigning stories. Ryan told us about how a photographer who’s work he enjoyed pitched a story on high end bone fishing and was given a 5 day assignment. Also, he showed a few of the recent stock purchases they had made and all felt fresh compared to your usual business metaphors.

Time magazine is an industry icon and heavy user of stock in the front a back of book sections of the magazine. It was interesting to hear Leslie talk about how photos get approved at the magazine. She will meet with her section designer and go over the line-up to see what stories they want to find photography for then she’ll go get a handful of images for each one from which the designer will mock up 4-5 approaches. They then take that to discuss and pick the final selection with the Editor. Also, I asked her about stories that were difficult to find stock for that they always encounter. Major issues facing youths like drugs, pregnancy and drinking we’re always hard to find pictures of because all the underage people depicted and the releases they would need from parents. In fact she recently used craigslist.org to find kids with party photos for an underage drinking story and found the perfect frame where someone was passed out face down and surrounded by beer bottles.

Everyone said they had purchased photos from Flickr or amateur photographers from time to time but they kept their standard usage rates because it was not an issue of finding something cheap just finding an image the stock sites didn’t have. Most are using micro stock for those tiny throwaway shots (worst design trend ever) in the front of the book except Whitney who had no idea what micro stock was. Also, everyone seemed very excited about Photoshelter’s stock offering and I know the feeling because if you’ve searched the big stock houses enough you become very familiar with the limitations of their collections so a new player who’s actively adding imagery and photographers to the system is a very welcome addition.