Well, I’m packing up for a week in NYC to bang on some doors and hopefully meet some new editors. This trip is a long time coming and I’m pretty excited. I’ve gotten some great response from my hand made promo dealy – Whoo-HOO! – and a couple of appointments before I even get on the plane. It’s all very encouraging. But the process of going and showing your folio isn’t like going to apply for one of those job […]
Well my little promo is finished and out the door. I’ve spent two solid days just typing simple little promo cards with 2-3 sentences on them to try and set up appointments for my upcoming trip to New York. I have such respect for the secretaries of the “old day” before word processors and “correct-o-type”. Those people were trained beyond what most of us would have thought possible. I’m so happy that some brilliant people have made spell check because […]
I was walking down the street yesterday pushing a cart filled with my strobe case, light stands and tripod, loads of power cables, oh and camera case too, when two ladies meet me at the crosswalk in the middle of a conversation. The lady with the dark hair says to her friend, ”The problem with technology is the people who don’t understand it.” Well this gets me thinking so I butt in and say, “That’s because they confuse technology […]
I'm not much of an ego kinda guy so I really don't like "tooting my horn". Thus marketing myself is always tough when I'm not meeting someone in person. It just feels, well, impersonal and that puts me off. So I have been thinking of some way to make my meager attempts to get new business more personal and more like, well, me. Sending out postcards and e-mailers really has a mass produced feel to me. I mean if you […]
I met Lindsay Lack about 3 years ago, I think, when I put together a gathering of local news and documentary photographers for a night of drinking and pictures. She and her hubby had just recently moved to Denver from Iowa where she had finished a few internships after graduating from the Missouri journalism school. Great gal, good shooter. I kept in touch with her and she quickly became my assistant and friend.
As I have said before photography is about control and as such the photographer makes a host of decisions in order to make a successful photograph. When dealing with a human subject there are even more factors that come into play. When the image is a portrait and not a candid the photographer is taking control of the situation for the expressed purpose of making that portrait. One of which is getting the cooperation of the subject. For me […]
I'm in the process of putting together some new folios for the spring marketing push and as chance has it there has been some interesting talk lately about promotion on the interwebs. I was reading how one photog mentioned that he annually spends enough promoting himself to buy "a nice German luxury car". Zounds! I think to myself, "Self! If you had $50,000 to spend every year just to let people know that you exist and do good work I'd […]
Huh? Am I crazy? Nope my eyes are open and my heart is eager for the upcoming year. Yes everything is in flux and moving too fast. Yes the economy is still faltering and markets are precarious. And I’m certainly aware that clients are tightening their already taught purse strings. I don’t care. Why? Because we photographers, especially the ones who work on location, are used to adversity. Things never go “as planned” in our work so why should […]
As I mentioned in the prior post about how our storage tech has gotten smaller/faster I realized that I had to do something that I've been dreading for the last two years: putting all my image DVD's into my mirrored hard drive archive system. Not that long ago large hard drives, i.e. bigger than 100gig were seriously expensive. When we first started seriously shooting digital around year 2000/1 drives were in the order of a $5 per gig and a […]
I had an interesting meeting a bit ago with a potential new rep and afterwords I was told that she was pleased to see that how I write here on the blog and how I present the world through my work is actually how I am in person. I was at the same time both pleased and taken aback. Pleased because I consider myself a humble person and my integrity means a lot. I don't have much of a ego, […]
I got a call the other day from the PR rep of a company that just won an award related to their sales growth. They do something very well and as a result have grown a very impressive amount over the last few years. The guy wanted to be able to use the photo that I made of their CEO recently to go along with their PR blitz about said award. I asked what their intended usage is because that's […]
In the editorial world there is a pretty tight ethics boundary that just about every publication that has a reputation for being a news source adheres to. Basically, you don’t mess with reality. That often makes your job as a photographer easy because if it doesn’t happen you can’t be blamed for not photographing it. However it is also a tough thing when nothing is happening, the light is awful, the environment is worse and time is short. That’s when […]
So here I am in D.C. making the rounds with some editors. In some cases they are new faces, in others it’s putting a face to someone I’ve had prior contact/work with. I could just send them the usual: e-mail, post card, promo thing-y, printed portfolio, blah, blah, blah. But quite often it’s not that I/you can make good photographs that gets you the assignment but the little things that have nothing to do with cameras and lights and such. […]
Well I'm getting set to head to Washington D.C. in a few weeks to do a shoot and while I'm there take the opportunity to meet some editors and NGO's that I want to make contact with. One of the great things about our web based world is that if you are looking for me, or just about anyone else, you can find me with a few key strokes into your favorite search engine and "Ta-DA!" there's my web folio. […]
Well folks I’ve been waiting to get my skill set together, since I’m a practical kinda guy, and am about to take the next step in my storytelling abilities. No, not that whole "learning to spell" thing it’s still visual for me. It’s video. I’ve been doing audio/visual presentations for over a year now and that followed a number of years where I was waiting for technology and the culture to be ready for such things and have realized that […]
Man I hear that all the time. It's funny but so many people, even when I'm on assignment, tend to think that if I make photographs professionally I must therefor shoot weddings. Well the answer is: "Uh yeah but only if I like you and think that it's going to be fun". That totally takes people by surprise. I love to document events like weddings. They are wonderful times that are very emotional and are designed to be pretty. They […]
It’s silly how much we rely on technology these days. There was a time where a pager seemed like something that only surgeons and generals needed and having one made me feel like my clients had me on a leash. Yet now with my primary phone being my mobile I am not only reachable anywhere and anytime but I can send immediate e-mails to the client with contracts, search the web and have a tiny portfolio all on my phone. […]
I love it when my clients network for me. It doesn’t happen all the time but few things make you all warm and fuzzy inside like having people who hire you recommend you to their friends. It goes back that that reputation thing I mentioned a while ago. So the other day I get an e-mail about a potential commercial client from a good regular editor. I send a note to the lady in question and later on got a […]
Well I got two calls just now both of which left quite an impression on me. The first was from a client who I haven’t done a lot of work for but has been one of those good ones where you honestly want to work for them. They didn’t need my services but needed a referral for someone to do video. They think enough of me to know that anyone that I recommend will be more than good enough and […]