Remember, you are in this to make a living, that is the definition of “professional”, so you need to make decisions based on staying in business for the long term. It might be exciting to be paid to make a living doing what you love to do, but that doesn’t free you from the desire, or the obligation, to actually MAKE A LIVING. This message is at the heart of the OutreachEP program.
PhotoExpo 2010 – Portfolio Reviews
As a follow up to my post entitled Pay For Meetings?, where I looked at the NYC FotoWorks portfolio reviews taking place at the same time as the trade show, I asked a few photographers who attended to give us their feedback:
Thanks for the post a few weeks ago on the NYCFotoWorks portfolio review. I would not have heard about it otherwise. I’m really glad I went and even though I didn’t get to see everyone I wanted, the feedback from those I did see was tremendous. An assignment offer was given on the spot and lots of great contacts were made. For an event of its size, it was very well run. Totally worth every dime I spent!
I didn’t pull the trigger to do the reviews until 2 weeks before, when I realized that a possible assignment was not going to happen the same week. I was still able to get a deal on airfare from the west coast and I have a cousin and a place to stay in the city. I felt the timing was right to get feedback as well as get my work out there after recent awards and a year in which my book has changed almost completely as I focused on where I want to be next. I compared both the juried NYCFotoworks and the PDN/Palm Springs reviews at PhotoPlus Expo and decided to do a set of of 14 editors/5 ABs on Thurs/Friday at Sandbox studios with NYCFotoworks and then the Saturday with 5 more at the event at Photo Plus Expo. $990 + $250.
I made my selections and have to say I was pretty happy with who I was able to see at both events. I prefer how NYCFotoworks handled the registration and selection process although I wish I knew the final schedule sooner. There were some cancellations and rescheduling and I was able to secure an agency AB when a magazine PE could not make it which was better for me. But one reschedule caught me as I did not make note of the change and was out on a break, missing my time slot. During the events I also met with a rep and an agency AB who wanted to see my book in the hallway outside of the schedule. And an artist adviser was on site at Sandbox for free 20 minute consults (smart for her as a great way to market herself). I did not go in expecting to find work – having launched a direction this year I wanted expert advice and critical feedback on my work, my edit, my style, my strengths and weaknesses. I was really surprised that some of the most helpful sessions came unexpectedly, from those reviewers who were near the bottom of my preference list. And that some of those on the top of my list did not provide a critical level I expected. But all in all it was well worth it – it did result in a magazine request for an image to run and one AB said I made her day after she saw an image and realized I was the one she could pitch for a client meeting the next week for a 2011 project.
Fifteen or less minutes (as changeovers were every fifteen minutes) at Sandbox was too short. On Friday evening I had 5 sessions that were back-to-back. What I appreciated were the reviewers who would ask why I was there and what I wanted and then would flip through the book very quickly, close it, open it again and go more slowly, sometimes making a third pass even slower. The sessions at Photo Plus Expo (on Saturday) were 20 minutes and seemed to be less hurried – both in that the extra 25% helps as well so a little overage was OK and everyone was cleared from the room before the next review session. That is in contrast to NYC Fotoworks where I was more than once in the awkward position of standing at my next reviewer’s table while the photographer from the last session was still wrapping up.
This is the first time I have done these “speed dating” sessions. I will usually block a week to visit a city and get appointments (LA, SF, NY). The last time I was in NY I had ten agency AB and editorial PE meetings in five days – and that took a good part of two weeks of preparation: calls, emails and more emails, and a lot of dead time “on call” and leaving voicemails during the visit week.
As a result of all of this I have had face time with an incredible number of editors, reps and agencies that have seen my work now and I can follow up with a level of familiarity that would not have been there otherwise. Some images are now axed from the book, the sequence edited and my direction affirmed while a future personal project has been inspired from one of the reviewer’s prompts.
I had some apprehension about the review events value to me before I went. It’s not inexpensive and since I don’t live in NY it was a big commitment for me to make the trip. But, I felt like if I made the decision to go, I should do everything I could to make the most of it. I ended up purchasing a pretty significant package of reviews and I balanced my reviewer requests fairly evenly between editors, art buyers, and agents.
The list of attending reviewers was pretty impressive. I signed up early and I ended up being scheduled with most of the people I really wanted to see. When the two day event began, there were also opportunities for me and all other photographers to meet with both photography consultant Colleen Vreeland and a representative from Corbis without incurring any additional costs. I signed up for both additional sessions.
I did my homework before the event. I read everything I could find about the people I was meeting with. I made lists of the art buyers’ most relevant clients. I checked everyone’s resumes on LinkedIn to find out where they’d been before they arrived at the jobs they hold now. I looked at recent copies of the editors’ respective publications. And I looked at the work of all of the photographers who are represented by the agents. I think I was as prepared as I could have been and I think it made me more confident going into the reviews.
Each scheduled meeting was 15 minutes long and the organizers of the event did a pretty good job of making sure the transitions occurred on time. Things got a little backed up throughout the first day (mostly because a couple of the reviewers arrived late) but it didn’t result in anyone being denied meetings. There were one or two reviewers who neglected to show up at all but in those instances, I believe the organizers did everything they could to reschedule photographers with other reviewers. All in all I’d say the event was well run.
I hadn’t attended a review event like this before and I was concerned that reviewers might be so overwhelmed with the number of people they were seeing that they might become disengaged after a few reviews. But, my schedule on both days was pretty spread out and the people I met with seemed genuinely invested in the process throughout the day. I received a lot of positive feedback about my work as well as some valuable suggestions regarding the editing of my portfolio. The agent meetings were helpful to me, not because I expected anyone to sign me to their roster, but because I was able to discuss some specific questions I had about tightening up bids and writing treatments for commercial jobs. I think the 15 minute review times were appropriate since they’re about on par with what I think most photographers can expect in meetings they set up on their own outside of events like these.
I met with a lot of people in the two day period. I doubt I could have arranged to see half the number of people on my own and if I had it would have taken days or weeks of repeated phone calls and emails to make happen. I also would have had to spend more time in New York (I love NY but, of course, it costs a fortune to be there) and I’d have had to do a lot of running around to see everyone. My time is worth more to me than the money I would have saved by trying to set up so many meetings on my own and, again, I’m certain I wouldn’t have been able to arrange meetings at all with some of the people I saw at the event. I made some great contacts and I enjoyed the process.
Update: Jasmine DeFoore gives us portfolio review do’s and dont’s from the PDN/Palm Springs Review (here).
Photography Agent Job Opening
Vaughan Hannigan is looking to add a senior photography agent in the New York office.
- proven track record and history with US commercial, entertainment and editorial clients
- established client roster along with a drive to sell/promote, international client roster a plus
- experienced in negotiating, estimating and producing a project from start to finish
- self starter, as well as a team player with a passion for photography
- 2 years experience as a photography agent
Please send resumes to thea@vh-artists.com
Go Vote
This year, fewer than 40% of voting age Americans will actually vote.
A serious glitch in self-marketing, I think.
If you don’t vote because you’re trying to teach politicians a lesson, you’re tragically misguided in your strategy. The very politicians you’re trying to send a message to don’t want you to vote. Since 1960, voting turnouts in mid-term elections are down significantly, and there’s one reason: because of TV advertising.
Political TV advertising is designed to do only one thing: suppress the turnout of the opponent’s supporters. If the TV ads can turn you off enough not to vote (“they’re all bums”) then their strategy has succeeded.
The astonishing thing is that voters haven’t figured this out. As the scumminess and nastiness of campaigning and governing has escalated and the flakiness of candidates appears to have escalated as well, we’ve largely abdicated the high ground and permitted selfish partisans on both sides to hijack the system.
Voting is free. It’s fairly fast. It doesn’t make you responsible for the outcome, but it sure has an impact on what we have to live with going forward. The only thing that would make it better is free snacks.
Even if you’re disgusted, vote. Vote for your least unfavorite choice. But go vote.
PhotoExpo 2010
I have a several interesting posts coming from the show floor, seminars I was involved in and the portfolio reviews. In the meantime there’s some good stuff up on Stella Kramer’s blog stellazine as she and several others were reporting live from the event.
I found this note posted by Allegra Wilde on her facebook page quite good as I’m sure it’s advice she was handing out at the portfolio reviews:
“Yeah, But I Have To Make Money….”
(And other ways to ignore the reason you became a professional photographer)
When you are in the business of selling something subjective like photography, there is no standard formula which will tell you who is going to connect with what you do, any more than it is possible to predict who is likely to fall in love with you.
Following what’s hot right now; doing what you have been seeing out there already – imitating the same content, styles, or processes as everybody else is going to be futile in the end.
If you make and show images with the intention of speaking the language of potential clients (and that is what most people do)…you will just end up looking like most people. You will wind up moving away from yourself.
“Yeah but I have to make money”.
And you may, for a while. However, your career will ultimately suffer.
And so will your heart.
The answer: Make work that is made entirely of… You.
Your life, and your passions.
The things that no one else can appropriate.
If you do that, (and get past your fears about whether it will work), you will have less, or even no competition. And that is always safer and more profitable than being part of the crowd.
The strongest part of you, is the honest you, and that remains true regardless of the economy, technology, or the weather report.
The connection between a photographer and a person who is in a position to hire them and collaborate with them, begins with chemistry. And chemistry begins with honesty.
But that is not the whole story.
You will never have a career being the best-kept secret in photography.
The formula for success? It starts here:
Show yourself in your images, and stand by them no matter what. Show your work to people who can hire you. All of them. EVERYWHERE. Mass market and send your photographs far and wide.
Those who see your pictures and are moved by them will understand you. Will want to be around you. Work with you.
Isn’t that your ultimate goal? Isn’t that why you chose this career in the first place?
Allegra Wilde
Portfolio Reviews, Marketing Consultation + Visual Strategies for Photographers, Agents, and the rest of the Professional Photography Community
NOOR Photo Agency Job Opening
Advertising Controlling Editorial
A scene that’s all too familiar in the world of magazines went down on the TechCrunch blog a couple days ago (here):
In an email to our sales team, the agency said:
“We found this on your site today, obviously not a good thing for AMEX or for ZYNC branding.
“Are you able to take this down from your site? If so, please do as ASAP.”
“If you are not able to monitor this more closely, we unfortunately will not be able to run with TechCrunch in the future.”
Unfortunately, this kind of thing has been happening for a long time now and this sad state of journalism can be summed up by this transcript from a talk that future-of-journalism guru Clay Shirky gave at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy
I think the first thing to recognize about the commercial structures of the newspaper industry is that it is not enough for newspapers to run at a profit to reverse the current threat and change. If next year they all started throwing off 30 percent free cash flow again, that would not yet reverse the change, because there were other characteristics of the commercial environment as well.
The first of them was that advertisers were forced to overpay for the services they received, because there weren’t many alternatives for reaching people with display ads — or especially things like coupons. And because they overpaid, the newspapers essentially had the kind of speculative investment capital to do long-range, high-risk work. So it isn’t enough to be commercial; you have to be commercial at a level above what some theoretical market would bare.
My friend Bob Spinrad — who recently passed away, but who ran Xerox PARC, the Palo Alto Research Center, for a while — said, “The only institutions that do R&D are either institutions that are monopolies or wrongly believe that they are.” Xerox is an example of an institution that wrongly believed it was a monopoly and was willing to fund the invention of Ethernet and laptops and the graphic user interface and all the rest of it that we take for granted now. IBM, AT&T — the list of commercial entities that believed that they were monopolies, and during the time that they were monopolies could take this philosophy of overinvesting in speculative work is large. But when the commercial inputs to that kind of R&D work, the R&D work ends as well.
The second characteristic of the happy state of the 20th-century newspapering was that the advertisers were not only overcharged, they were underserved. Not only did they have to deliver more money to the newspapers than they would have wanted, they didn’t even get to say: “And don’t report on my industry, please.” There was a time when Ford went to The New York Times during the rollover stories and said, “You know, if you keep going on this, we may just pull all Ford ads in The New York Times.” To which the Times said, “Okay.” And the ability to do that — to say essentially to the advertiser, “Where else are you going to go?” — was a big part of what kept newspapers from suffering from commercial capture. It worked better for bigger papers than smaller papers, but that bulwark of guest commercial capture was a feature of the 20th century commercial market. Neither of those, neither the overpaying or the underserving, is true in the current market any longer, because media is now created by demand rather than supply — which is to say the next web page is printed when someone wants it to be printed, not printed and stored in a warehouse in advance if someone who may want it. Turned out that when you have an advertising market that balances supply and demand efficiently, the price plummets. And so for a long time, people could say analog dollars to digital dimes as if — well, when do we get the digital dimes? The answer may be never. The answer may be that we are seeing advertising priced at its real value for the first time in history, and that value is a tiny fraction of what we had gotten used to.
Full story and transcript is (here).
The Future of the Magazine Industry Doesn’t Include Magazines
Among the beneficiaries of the iPad’s success is Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks. He is perhaps an unlikely winner considering that, in 2010 at least, coffee can’t be consumed over an electronic interface. However, Starbucks is the largest wifi network in North America, with some 30 million users logging on each week in Starbucks outlets. At first, says Schultz, these customers “were mostly synching their emails. Then people began coming to our stores and looking for content.”
Schultz saw an opportunity. Earlier this week, the company launched what they are calling the Starbucks Digital Network. Customers who bring their iPads to one of Schultz’s coffee houses will be able to access “free premium content” from a number of sources such as The New York Times and health giant Rodale, publisher of Runner’s World and Prevention. What does this mean? Without acquiring any more real estate, or nailing together a single shelf, Starbucks is in the act of becoming the country’s largest newsstand.
via World Future Society.
Congratulations Winners
Critical Mass 2010 announced their top 50 (here). Always a good place to find great photography.
And, the Lucies were held last night in NYC. The winners were:
International Photographer of the Year Award went to Jim Krantz.
Discovery of the Year Award went to Kristina Kostadinova.
International Photographer of the Year – Deeper Perspective Award went to Rodney Rascona.
The IPA also conferred awards in six support categories:
Picture Editor of the Year – Jody Quon, W Magazine.
Photo Magazine of the Year – Aperture.
Fashion Layout of the Year – Harper’s Bazaar Fashion and All That Jazz by Peter Lindbergh.
Book Publisher of the Year – 21st Editions for Listen by Herman Leonard.
Print Advertising Campaign of the Year – Agency- Ogilvy & Mather Paris for Unicef Entitled Class Photo Photographed by Vincent Dixon.
Photography Curator of the Year – Engaged Observers: Documentary Photography since the 60’s Curated by Brett Abbott at The J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
The 2010 honorees were:
David Goldblatt (Lifetime Achievement)
Graciela Iturbide (Achievement in Fine Art)
Lee Tanner (Achievement in Documentary)
Howard Bingham (Achievement in Photojournalism)>James Drake (Achievement in Sports)
Tina Barney (Achievement in Portraiture)
Michael Nyman (Double Exposure Award)
Ariel Shanberg, The Woodstock Center for Photography (Spotlight Award)
Alyssa Adams for the Eddie Adams Photographic Workshop, (Visionary Award)
You do have to play by the art market rules
This story in the Financial Times Magazine on Annie L. is fascinating, but not because I want to revel in her financial misfortune or the “disparity between Annie’s importance as a photographer and the price fetched by her work in the art market.”
I recall a very smart quote from one of my commenters admonishing readers to “make no mistake, fine art photography is as commercial as commercial photography.” So, for me the thread in the story on how the photography art market works and how difficult it is for editorial and commercial photographers to play is very fascinating. As Michael Wilson, a producer of Bond films and owner one of the largest private collections of photography in the world puts it: “Art is basically what a bunch of collectors and curators say it is, there is no getting around that.”
The Leibovitz story, however, is more than a tale of a photographer who got absorbed into the high-spending world of the people she portrays. It is a reflection of something unexpected – that, despite all her celebrity and talent, Leibovitz lacks earning power as an artist.
The whole story is (here).
via, conscientious.
Four rules revised
1. Before proceeding with photography, make sure that’s your thing.
2. Test your brain out by exposing it to a ton of photographs as well as real scenes.
3. Choose good friends, not for networking but for honest critique of your work.
4. Borrow from any time period and any predecessor, then build on them to create your own vision.
via B, aka Blake Andrews.
5 Reasons The Future Will Be Ruled By B.S.
And so, to save society, we’re going to have to rely on our old friend, the invisible force that has saved humanity again and again. It’s a little thing I like to call bullshit.
Bullshit is the next growth industry. People who deal in it are going to be more valuable than surgeons — yes, the same people who convinced us that bottled water comes from an enchanted mountain spring and made uneducated mothers believe that contaminated baby formula was a life-giving health potion. Only they can save us.
As civilization advances, these heroic protectors of FARTS (Forced ARTificial Scarcity) will build a culture where we will pay for things we can get for nothing, based purely on a vague superstition that it makes us better people. You know, the way an Apple logo will hypnotize people into paying twice as much for a product when cheaper alternatives litter the landscape.
Read it on Cracked.com via Bosacks.
Quite an interesting article coming from Cracked of all places. There’s plenty of BS’ing that goes into selling products with superior photography, but I don’t believe it’s all hooey.
And just how are those digital issues performing?
After Wired’s enormous first month in June, when it sold 100,000 copies — an even better result than the usual 76,000 it sells off the newsstand — sales have been about a quarter of that. In July and August, the Wired iPad app sold 31,000 and 28,000 copies, respectively, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations Rapid Report. A Wired spokeswoman confirmed the magazine has sold an average of roughly 30,000 copies since the June release.
via WWD.com.
I lose patience with pundits who prophesy and lobby for the demise of all traditional media in favor of newer forms
The things we create in print and in digital are so completely different from each other that they appeal to fundamentally distinct needs.The war between old and new is a false construct. Nothing goes away. The human need to create is too great, and the human desire to be entertained is too intense to allow any form, whether books or oil painting or even blogging, to disappear.
via Words of Wisdom from Esquire’s David Granger « Mr. Magazine.
Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act
Dear Copyright Advocate,
This letter is about a bill that has been introduced in the Senate that will combat online infringement of copyrighted works. It’s called the “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act” or “COICA”. ASMP encourages you to sign a petition in favor of the bill.
Though some photographers have already done this, our efforts have not been enough.
The opponents of this bill have been active in mobilizing the masses to speak out against it. The result of their efforts is that it seems like the public is against this bill. Yet, we all hear everyday about how websites are illegally posting your creative works for others to take and how this affects your livelihood.
This bill would benefit all artists and creators! TAKE ACTION TODAY! Stand up for your rights!
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
- Speak up on blogs and listservs. Artists who speak out in favor of the bill on a website are often verbally attacked. Musicians, photographers and other artists need your support on this effort. Post blogs and comments on your own websites or on websites where you see these attacks.
- Contact your Senator and House Representative. Tell your congressional representatives to vote YES to the bill. Tell them your story and how piracy and infringement affect you.
To find and email your Senator, go here.
To find and email your House Representative, go here. - Tweet this: Stop online piracy of art, music, movies, books, all creative works. Vote yes to Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act #COICA
- Facebook this: The U.S. Congress is debating a bill that could help millions of artists around the world. If passed, the bill would allow the government to target and shut down “internet sites dedicated to infringing activities” which are “primarily designed” to access unauthorized copyrighted material. Tell your representatives to vote YES to the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA).
WHAT IS THIS BILL ABOUT?
- Check out this short video by independent filmmaker Ellen Seidler as she talks about how websites that are illegally hosting her movie are profiting. Yet, she is losing money. This bill will help shut down websites like these.
- The bill will not target minor violations of copyright. It will target “internet sites dedicated to infringing activities” that are “primarily designed” to offer or provide access to copyrighted material “without the authorization of the copyright owner.”
- The Attorney General will be able to request a court order to suspend the domain names of U.S.-based infringing websites. For non-U.S.-based websites, the Attorney General will be able to request a court order to require the ISPs to block the website. Credit card companies and networks providing ads to these sites will also suspend all activity with the infringing sites.
- A list of all the domain names that are found to be infringing copyright protected content will be posted on a “publicly available Internet site, together with other relevant information, in order to inform the public.”
REMEMBER PILFERED MAGAZINE?
Last February we made you aware of Pilfered Magazine, an online magazine that freely took images from photographers without their permission and didn’t credit or compensate the photographers. Because of your emails, Tweets, and postings on blogs and Facebook, the magazine was shut down in a weekend and has never reopened.
It is important that we take collective action on this bill too. Pilfered is not the only website that hosts and offers infringing material. This bill will help remove other websites like Pilfered from the internet.
ONE VOI©E: SPEAK UP FOR CREATORS’ RIGHTS
via, Jock Bradley
Yangtze, The Long River by Nadav Kander
…passers-by would taunt the photographer’s translators about him taking photos of boring scenes…
via Conscientious.
Mike Kamber: Military Censorship
This exclusive audio slideshow interview featuring Michael Kamber is from BagNews. If you haven’t visited Michael’s site, where he provides analysis of prominent news pictures, take a look, it’s a daily read for me.
5 Questions For Fraction Magazine’s David Bram
Jonathan Blaustein, our man in the field, caught up with Photographer David Bram: editor, publisher and co-founder of fraction magazine ; recipient of the 2010 Griffin Museum Rising Star award; and a curator of exhibitions for several commercial galleries and non-profit photo spaces.
Jonathan: Do you think that more people look at photographs on a screen than on paper, and if so, does it change the way people think about photography?
David: I look at almost everything on a computer screen, so if that is an indication, then I would think that photographs are mostly viewed on a computer of some sort at this point. I’m not sure how many laptops are sold each year, but over 8 million iPads have been sold since April 2010 and nearly everyone has a cellphone that can make pictures as well. I think what has changed most about peoples’ perception of photography is that everyone has a camera, which then makes them think they’re a photographer. The computer age and the internet revolution, has taken the tangibleness out photography, we used to handle film, load cameras, handle negatives, handle paper, etc. I think this is the biggest change.
Jonathan: Fraction offers photographers a great deal of exposure in exchange for publishing their images for free. As online media begins to develop sustainable income streams, do you see a future where you are able to pay for publishing rights?
David: I am not paying the artists that are showcased because there isn’t any real money generated from it. Like most websites, money can be made with advertising and if you have the proper content there’s an audience for the advertisers, but for now, I do not see paying for content. And, I am not sure I will ever have to. As a photographer, I would love to be paid for having my work on someone’s website, but it’s not realistic at this point in time. Fraction is not an online gallery that aims to sell work and make money. Fraction merely introduces the artist’s work to the Fraction audience, free of charge.
Jonathan: Between portfolio reviews, internet research, and Fraction submissions, I would imagine you see thousands of photo projects a year. Are there any subjects that you feel have been done to death and you wish would just go away?
David: I’m not sure anything needs to go away because every artist, hopefully, has their own way of seeing the world. Also, I’m not sure it’s fair for me to say what needs to go away. I am finding that photography subjects are cyclical in nature, and who knows what everyone will love next week. There’s a difference between poorly executed work and tired subject matter.
Jonathan: Fraction is based in Albuquerque, and I’m based in Taos. You and I know that northern New Mexico has a lively and broad photographic community. Why do you think photographers are drawn here?
David: I think artists come to NM because of the weather and the light. Everything in New Mexico is dramatic, from the way the weather moves across the landscape to the politics. For me, the best time of year to photograph in NM is October and November. The air is cool and the light is amazing, especially in the hour before sunset. For photographers, there is a great sense of history as a number of great photographers have come through here at some point in time; Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Paul Caponigro, Paul Strand, Lee Friedlander and Laura Gilpin, as well as a long list of contemporary, well established photographers who call New Mexico home.
Jonathan: It seems like we’re entering an age where the traditional boundaries that existed between artists, curators, dealers, editors and publishers are coming down. I can think of dozens of people who are doing more than one thing. Do you think this has any serious implications for the photography industry?
David: It just means that some of us are more busy than others. I’ve been busy working with Fraction, doing portfolios reviews, the occasional talk, and yes, I am trying to make new work as well. I think this can only help the industry since some of us know how hard it is to make a living making photographs. I think technology has made things easier as well. Email gets us in the door a little faster and our own personal websites let the dealers and publishers see what we’re up to a whole lot easier then sending around books or portfolio boxes.