PDN Photography Annual 2009

PDN has the images from this years photography annual up online (here).

The Marty Forscher Fellowship went to Matthieu Paley and the student award went to Michael Mullady. Nikon Storyteller Award went to Ambroise Tézenas. The Arnold Newman prize went to Jeff Riedel and the Student Award went to Carl Kiilsgaard of Western Kentucky University. Cheers.

There’s some great photography in the winners gallery. I always liked looking through the advertising section so I could match a photographer with a campaign. On the editorial side I saw very few images/photographers that I wasn’t already familiar with, but I think that’s fine. It’s still good to celebrate the great work that was done last year. Corporate is another category I like seeing and discovering photographers, because I don’t follow that side of the business.

In the personal section there’s an incredible surfing image by Ed Freeman that I was bummed to discover is a composite. Ed labels the photography as Fine Art on his website (here) and explains that they’re retouched but I wouldn’t have been able to publish them editorially (back when I used to look in the personal section for images to publish).

surfing

Also in the stock category there’s an image that produced a little bit of controversy.

nicole

Over on You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice they’re calling it a rip off (here).

droppedvdumped

The similarities between what’s being dropped, subjects and framing make it too close to ignore but a commenter on YTWWN shows (as we all know) that nothing is new, everything has been done before (here).

Then finally there’s student work. It’s always nice to see students who can already take great pictures.

Sir, We’re Not The Taco Stand

“Sir, we’re not the taco stand” I clearly remember an argument with my editor once where he stood there for half an hour trying to tell me that the shoot budget needed to come down and I tried to explain that no, if he wanted to pay less then we needed to change the shoot not just tell someone to make it less. Explaining it in “real life” terms, that we’re ordering the tenderloin and if you want to pay less just order a hamburger seemed to help.

On a similar note there a new documentary out about writer Harlan Ellison called Dreams with Sharp Teeth. Remember this line from the writers strike:

“I should do a freebie for Warner Brothers? What is Warner Brothers – out with an eye patch and a tin cup on the street? Fuck no! . . . I sell my soul, but at the highest rates. I don’t piss without being paid.”

“The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.”

#1 cause of client dissatisfaction when working with talent

“If you’re going to do this [give someone as clean a sheet of paper as possible], you have an obligation to use what you get, because your choice was hiring this person, not in judging the work you got when you didn’t have the insight to give them clear direction in the first place.”

via Seth’s Blog.

Q&A Series: Loyality vs. New Talent?

“Regardless of the economy, we always reach out to the best photographer for the job. Over the years I’ve found that there isn’t a shooter out there who won’t do everything in their power to work within the budgets I have.”

–Kellie Bingman, Art Buying Supervisor, McKinney

via Stone Thrower.

William Eggleston in the Real World

“Photography tends to show, to describe much more than it can explain”

Also, check out this story (here) on Snag Films, the company that’s distributing the film for free online. They’re trying to help documentary filmmakers reach a broader audience.

Email Marketing Services For Photographers

Someone asked me what the best email marketing services are for photographers so I decided to make a quick list. I use Campaign Monitor because they have a sign up form I can put on my business site plus they have really nice templates to choose from. Incidentally WordPress has an amazing plugin that I use here where people can sign up to receive posts in email called Post Notification that some of you DIY’ers could easily turn into your own free email marketing machine.

Most email services like gmail have limits to the number of people you can email at once and the number of bcc’s you can have and sometimes they monitor the number of rejected emails to see if you’re spamming people. So, even if you have a tidy list of 300 people you update on a regular basis it can be difficult to do it from regular email channels. Here’s a list I made from the emails I get from photographers and the pricing I found on the site. Leave any more that you like in the comments.

mailchimp.com
Monthly fee for the list size below with unlimited emails sent. They also have per email pricing see the comments for that.
$10 0-500
$30 501-2,500
$50 2,501-5,000
$75 5,001-10,000
$150 10,001-25,000
$240 25,001-50,000

constantcontact.com
Monthly fee for the list size below with unlimited emails sent.
$15 0-500
$30 501-2,500
$50 2,501-5,000
$75 5,001-10,000
$150 10,001-25,000

campaignmonitor.com
$5 per campaign and 1¢ per recipient

myemma.com
$249 setup
A one-time investment that includes a custom-designed template (we call it your brand stationery) created just for you. Our team of professional designers will help ensure your emails stand out in the inbox every time.

Emails a month
1,000 $30
2,500 $45
5,000 $70
7,500 $100
10,000 $125
17,500 $170
25,000 $210

agencyaccess.com
North America as low as $115 a month including email services

aweber.com
Monthly fee for the list size below with unlimited emails sent.
0 – 500 $19
501 – 2,500 $29
2,501 – 5,000 $49
5,001 – 10,000 $69
10,001 – 25,000 $149

VerticalResponse.com
Cost per email:
1 – 1,000 .015
1,001 – 2,500 .013
2,501 – 25,000 .012
25,001 – 50,000 .01
50,001 – 100,000 .0085
100,001 – 500,000 .0075

AdBase Emailer
Price not published. Negotiable over the phone…

MadMimi.com
Monthly fee for the list size below with unlimited emails sent.
50,000 $189
35,000 $119
25,000 $75
15,000 $49
10,000 $36
5,000 $24
2,500 $14
1,000 $10
500 $8
100 Free

2009 Editorial Photographers Education Grants

In an effort to recognize and support emerging photographers, Editorial Photographers [EP], a non-profit mutual benefit organization, is pleased to announce our second annual student photography competition (here).

Colbert on Newspapers

“Newspapers are an important part of our lives, not to read, of course, but, when you’re moving you can’t wrap your dishes in a blog.”

— Stephen Colbert

via CJR.

American Photography 25 Winners

The American Photography 25 winners have been announced and this year there’s a slideshow to see everyone’s work (here). It’s really worth the time to sit down and look at all of it, there’s some fantastic images in there. I think judges did a great job of including all the “magazine” style photography that was shot in 2008. I have a pretty big collection of these books and it really is a snapshot of that year in photography.

ap1

ap2

Norfolk was ‘furious’ about the National Trust’s actions

“I was furious that my reputation, and that of the three other photographers, was apparently being used to sucker in amateur photographers to spend the summer filling the hard drives of a new National Trust picture library – all of which the Trust would be able to reuse and resell to generate profits.”

— Simon Norfolk

via EPUK

Writers And Editors Battle It Out Online

Did you know that writer Dan Baum once turned down $90,000 to write a 30,000 word story for Rolling Stone to instead take a contract with The New Yorker where he wrote 30,000 words a year for that same $90,000. The contract was up each year and after 3 short years Editor David Remnick called to say it would not be renewed. Dan thinks this has less to do with his skills as a writer and more to do with good old fashioned office politics. Dan didn’t work in the New Yorker office, where he discovered they whisper all the time in his several times a year office visits from his home in Boulder, CO, but he failed to integrate himself into the culture that is the New Yorker and blames his demise on that sad reality of magazine life.

You can read the fascinating “inside baseball” account of writing for the New Yorker (here). It was first published as a series of tweets over a week ago and seems to break some kind of code of silence that surrounds the publication. They don’t publish a masthead after all.

Even more interesting and certainly educational for photographers will be his list of successful story pitches (here). Photographers have great stories all the time but I’ve rarely seen a passable pitch from one, so most of the time if I really wanted to get something made I would write the pitch myself. As a side note it’s even worse when photographers take their excellent ideas and give it to a writer who’s not qualified to write for the publication.

Wired, another Condé magazine was written up Sunday in the NYTimes (here), because they have the dubious of being both award winning and advertising losing. I was pointed to this discussion over on Boing Boing Gadgets (here) by Scott Bauer where a former wired.com editor uses that story to take a few digs at the print magazine and then a whole bunch of writers chime in on the comments. EIC Chris Anderson even drops a couple comments one in particular where he attributes the problems between online and print at wired to Condé HQ decisions. More “inside baseball” but interesting nonetheless.

NYC Police Operations Order Regarding Photography

1. Members of the service are reminded that photography and the videotaping of public places, buildings and structures are common activities within New York City. Given the City’s prominence as a tourist destination, practically all such photography will have no connection to terrorism or unlawful conduct. […]

2. Members of the service may not demand to view photographs taken by a person absent consent or exigent circumstances. […]

Full Order is (here). via, Gallery Hopper.