by Paul Stanek, Wonderful Machine

Some of you may recall Sean’s Oscar-worthy performance in a stop motion piece we did together: The Portfolio Edit: Sean Stone Style. Well, I’ve been working with a modification of Sean’s photo editing process utilizing a new online platform, currently in beta form, called MoodShare.

MoodShare was not developed with photo editing specifically in mind. In fact, their team was quite pleasantly surprised and intrigued when I first reached out to them about my success using their site in my photo consulting. Regardless, if the shoe fits….

You may be familiar with the term “mood board.” From Wikipedia:

A mood board is a type of collage that may consist of images, text, and samples of objects in a composition of the choice of the mood board creator. Designers and others use mood boards to develop their design concepts and to communicate to other members of the design team.

MoodShare set out to create an online, interactive space where anyone given access to the same “digital mood board” could log on (all at once if desired) and easily toss in whatever images, videos, text, etc., that they felt was useful to a project. Multiple boards can be created for the same project, which is a helpful bonus in many ways. The live element—where you can literally see an image moving or a word forming—is really where MoodShare is making the most out of some of the ever-evolving technological capabilities available to us. It’s a natural augmentation to brainstorming conference calls of creatives scattered across cities, or even countries.

Where does photo editing come into the picture? First, I have to give props to Austin-based WM photographer King Lawrence for emailing me my first invite to a MoodShare board when we were working on his photographic identity. I found myself in a moveable and scalable grid with several of King’s images grouped together, with notes added. Along the left and top were navigation and tools, and along the bottom was an augmentable pool of resources he’d uploaded. I immediately knew I’d found the perfect digital complement to Sean’s table of “tiiiiiny prints.” After some tests, I decided to try it out on my next editing project, Mark Weinberg‘s print portfolio.

As usual, I used Adobe Bridge to perform the initial trimming down from several hundred images to a smaller group of selects. At that point, instead of printing these selects, I started a MoodShare project and uploaded them to a fresh board. I could drag my uploads from a library along the bottom into the manipulatable grid space, and once they were there, I could easily size and arrange them however I pleased. I found the broad range of the space’s scalability to be a real plus: I could get up close & personal with a couple of images to see if they were the perfect pair, or zoom way out on a large body of imagery to get the big picture. I began experimenting with pairings and sequences, and eventually had laid out a clean presentation of an edit draft that I was ready to share with Mark. I had the choices of exporting the board as a PDF, sharing it as an un-editable link, or give him full access to the guts of the board. I went with option C, wanting to give the real-time interaction a whirl. He accepted the invitation, reviewed my work, and added a couple images and notes for consideration. What would follow was one of the most fruitful series of phone conversations I’d ever had, as we’d both logged into the board and navigated/manipulated it simultaneously while talking. Here’s a snippet of the final result:

And here’s a video of the finished portfolio:

I also used MoodShare while working on a print sequence for for Matthew Rakola. Here’s a brief time-lapse of the process:

As I’ve mentioned, MoodShare is currently in beta, and will be free as long as it remains so. So grab up an account and start checking it out while it’s on the house! Let me know if you have any questions regarding this process, or if you’re interested in working with myself or one of our other photo editors on a consulting project through a platform like this. I’m in continued talks with MoodShare about potential tweaks with editing in mind, and about a possible discount for Wonderful Machine members, so stay tuned!

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“What’s driving the art market globally is that certain people have a lot of liquidity and are looking for places to put it,” said Suzanne Gyorgy, head of Citi Art Advisory, a service of Citigroup’s private bank. “For many people art is an interesting alternative investment. It’s seen as a hedge against inflation and a safe haven in the high end of the market.”

via As Money Props Up Art World, Prospects Are Mixed – NYTimes.com.

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I wanted to showcase some great work done by regional and city magazines over the next few posts.

Tuesday: 4.30.13

Art Director: Stephanie Mennella

Production Designer: Amy Wallace

Photo Editor + Staff Photographer: Haley Young

Photo Intern: Andrea Coan

Photographer: Thomas Barwick

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[By Barry Schwartz]

Boy do I hate making mistakes.

I wasted time; time you don’t get back.

I obviously wasn’t paying attention.

I probably don’t know what I’m doing and somebody is about to find out.

I clearly started out wrong, now I’m paying the price.

I should have finished my degree, then I wouldn’t have any of these problems.

I’m a worthless piece of s**t and the proper thing to do would be to jump off the roof.

I,  I,  I, I, I!

I step back and take another look.

Not really that bad.

Not that bad at all.

Maybe it can be salvaged.

Actually, looks OK.

In fact it’s better than I planned.

I’m gonna go with this.

Sometimes when this scenario appears in my life, I remember what happened to me many years ago during a prior career as a carpenter at the moment I figured out that I actually knew what I was doing.

I was building a set of kitchen cabinets from scratch, something I’d never done before, and every few days I’d make what I thought was a mistake only to discover that the final result was better than I planned.  How did this happen?

I realized that my subconscious was “looking out for me”; that I had so inculcated myself with good training – that my skills and taste had become so ingrained I was fixing mistakes before they even occurred.

It was making those mistakes that forced me to realize I was better than I knew, and to recognize what my true level of skill was.  Making mistakes forced me to step back; even to relax a little.  I got out of my own way and became a much better carpenter as a result.

I learned from my past without even trying to learn from my past.

Mr. Faulkner once wrote, “The past is never dead.  It’s not even past.”  Can’t argue with a guy who won a Nobel.

Barry Schwartz is a photographer, writer, and designer in Los Angeles whose past is always catching up with him. 

A closely watched copyright case involving photographer Patrick Cariou and appropriation artist Richard Prince has taken an unexpected turn in favor of Prince on appeals. To recap: In December of 2008 photographer Patrick Cariou filed suit against Ricard Prince, Gagosian Gallery, Lawrence Gagosian and Rizzoli International Publications in federal district court (here). The suit came about after Prince appropriated 28 images from Patrick’s Yes Rasta book for his Canal Zone exhibit at the Gagosian gallery. In March of 2011 US District Judge Deborah A. Batts ruled on the cross-motions for summary judgment and found that the use by Prince was not Fair Use and Patrick’s issue of liability for copyright infringement was granted in its entirety. In other words, Patrick won.

According to many of the sites covering the case this caused quite a stir in the art world, because of the way the judge interpreted fair use. I liked the interpretation, because it offered guidance to artists wishing to appropriate work and claim fair use for transforming it. Essentially you had to comment on the original work to qualify. Simply using it as source material, as Prince admitted to doing, does not transform the work. Or as the judge put it at the time: “If an infringement of copyrightable expression could be justified as fair use solely on the basis of the infringer’s claim to a higher or different artistic use . . . there would be no practicable boundary to the fair use defense.”

The appeals court heard the case last May and wrote that a majority of Mr. Prince’s work manifested “an entirely different aesthetic” from Mr. Cariou’s pictures. “Where Cariou’s serene and deliberately composed portraits and landscape photographs depict the natural beauty of the Rastafarians and their surrounding environs,” the decision stated, “Prince’s crude and jarring works, on the other hand, are hectic and provocative.”  The court found that most of the works by Mr. Prince under consideration were permissible under fair use because they “have a different character” from Mr. Cariou’s work, give it a “new expression” and employ “new aesthetics with creative and communicative results distinct” from the work that Mr. Prince borrowed. (source NYTimes.com)

The court is essentially saying that someone must look at the new work and determine that it has a different character than the original to know if the work is transformed by the artist. And, if that weren’t bad enough they sent 5 of the works back to the lower court (one can be seen below) because they were so minimally altered they may not be considered fair use by a reasonable observer. Using the new appeals court standard the lower court will determine if they are in fact a “new expression”. What a mess.

(You can download the decision here)

Not sure what options Patrick has left but it seems that the courts have no interest in clarifying fair use so that people can make reasonable decisions without resorting to lawsuits to sort it all out. Given the variety of opinions on what constitutes art, reling on reasonable observers to determine if alterations to copyrighted photography constitute a “new expression” with “distinct creative and communicative results” seems absurd.

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I wanted to showcase some great work done by regional and city magazines over the next few posts.

Monday: 5.1.13

Design Consultant: Heroun +Co
Photo Editor: Nicole Popma
Editorial Designer: Mallory Scyphers

Photographer: John Huet

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Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.



TRANSCRIPT:Here are a few thoughts on managerial accounting versus tax accounting. I'm John Harrington. Managerial accounting is a system that tells you why you spend your money on what you spend it on as opposed to tax accounting which is a system that tells you what you spend your money on. Tax accounting is something that your accountant is going to use, but managerial accounting is something that you want to use in your business to understand why and where the costs are associated with different products and services that you offer. You want to work with your accountant on transitioning your accounting system from managerial to tax accounting when you're trying to deal with your tax return and that's why having a great accountant is important. But, I would strongly encourage you to check out this URL here down below. It's a great PPofA resource, Professional Photographers of America, on the differences between managerial and tax accounting. Why you should use managerial accounting and the benefits of doing so versus the importance of tax accounting. So check it out.

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.

[By Luke Copping]

Few people are better acquainted with the trite but true idiom that “a picture is worth a thousand words” than photographers are. Our native language is visual – we tell stories in slices of moments, we convey meaning and details with light and shadow. Because we embrace such a visual syntax the written word is often overlooked, and along with it the idea that we work in an essentially social business.  One that is defined by the relationships we forge with clients and how we communicate with them. We are communicators and storytellers, and should strive to hone our skills with language as much as we venture to excel at creating images.

Now more than ever our earliest contact with potential clients comes online: through e-mail directly from those interested in working with us, through blogs that speak of our experiences and process, and through our presence and interactions on social media. One of the best methods you have of standing out (aside from creating incredible and relevant visual work – as Steve Martin said  ”Be so good they can’t ignore you”) is to translate the interesting, erudite, honest, and passionate creative you are into the words your clients come to know you through.

Put yourself in the role of the recipient for a moment – have you ever received a rushed and poorly worded inquiry email from a potential assistant or vendor that makes you think twice about even replying? Have you ever seen someone spew senseless negativity devoid of punctuation at a client on social media or a blog that alienates your as a reader? How do you react to writing like this? As much as we want to be judged purely on the merit of our images the idea that “the pictures speak for themselves” is simply a fallacy. As freelancers we are the embodiment of our businesses and we are judged on every facet of how we communicate: written, visual, interpersonal, branding – every point of interaction with a potential client is a chance to benefit or harm that relationship. Sharpen your skill with words and craft the voice you communicate in so that those you write to will never think you uninformed, unprepared, rude, condescending, or worst of all… boring.

Here are a few links and resources to get you thinking about how your words follow you and how you can make an impression with your writing without boring your readers to apathy – and one link to help you get off your butt and actually go do it.

The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Etiquette: Clocking in at over 17,000 words, this is a long but worthwhile read. For those of you in a rush, the eleven rules for all social media platforms that they present right from the beginning can give you some great guidelines on what not to do.

The Middle Finger Project: Ash Ambirge tackles ideas on marketing, writing, and language in a decidedly un-boring way – this blog  is dripping with personality and interesting ideas. Start with some of my favorites: Take Off Your Girdle and Show a Little Leg and 25 Words That Will Make You Seem Bland, Stale, Dime-A-Dozen, Washed up…etc

Design Jargon Bullshit: I am a firm believer that people learn best when they laugh, and sometimes its best to laugh at examples of what not to do. Design Jargon Bullshit is an ever growing collection of the sort of buzzword laden written vomit that is responsible for the horrible headaches I get when reading badly written  corporate communications, design briefs, artists statements, and personal bios. If you write like this – stop… now… please?

30 Writing Tips from Famous Authors: Little nuggets of wisdom from some of the best. While I tend to agree with the notion that these inspiring quote roundups are all to common I also think that if even just one of these changes the way you think about your writing then it is time well spent. (Bonus: Substitute the word photography into some of these for some additional fun)

An Invocation for Beginnings: Watch this… then go write, shoot, create – anything. Stop reading and start doing!

Luke Copping is an editorial and commercial portrait photographer from Buffalo NY who makes pictures, writes, cooks, and has set his sights set on conquering the world of competitive ostrich jousting next.

by Jonathan Blaustein

A friend of mine ran the Boston Marathon last week. I only found out yesterday. She was six blocks from the finish line when the bombs exploded. Her daughter and parents were just a block from the carnage. What is that? A hundred yards from the jaws of Fate?

She told me almost as an afterthought, as we sat, chatting, on a blue velvet couch in Santa Fe. She lacked clear marks of psychological trauma, which was disconcerting. Is it possible to live through something like that and emerge healthy? I don’t know.

But the odd thing was it didn’t take long for us to both express our secret shame at feeling sympathy for 19-year-old Dzhokar Tsarnaev. We each admitted we’d thought how lonely and horrible he must have felt, alone, bleeding from the neck, waiting to die in someone else’s pleasure boat. Are we crazy?

My friend, a mother, suggested that as parents, we’re hardwired to feel for the trauma of someone’s suffering child. Perhaps that’s true. (My intestines ache just thinking about the murdered and maimed last week, especially the kids.) But I feel like it might also mark a different phase in America’s development, young as we are as a nation. I doubt there was a soul in this country who wouldn’t have pissed on the ashes of Mohammed Atta’s incinerated corpse, if given the chance. (What an -sshole that guy was.) But, twelve years later, perhaps we’re weary of the black and white politics of the War on Terror?

This would probably be a good moment to say that, like everyone, I deplore the actions of the terrorist brothers. What a pointless sh-tstorm they created. But, unlike 9/11, this event seemed slapdash; not entirely thought through. (Here, I have to link to the brilliant Onion piece that riffs on that phenomenon.)

The whole thing just felt more American; more of its time. One brother wanted to be an Olympic boxer, failed, and then seethed under the chronic underemployment that has befallen his generation. (And I can’t imagine it was easy to be a Muslim immigrant in famously-white Boston, either.)

The other: younger, more impressionable, was a well-liked wrestler, and was meant to be more assimilated. But his older brother, whom he must have idolized, led him down a hateful and horribly-destructive path. Then, in what might have been the ultimate act of last-minute revenge, or a conscious attempt to save him from police clutches, Dzhokar ran his brother over with a stolen German SUV. (Cain and Abel much?)

Where is this all headed? These guys are a figment of our collective consciousness. Car chases and shootouts with the police straight out of a Bruce Willis movie? Surfing the Internet, in spare hours, geeking out on arcane information? Bullshitting with a neighbor about religion at the local pizza joint? Lashing out at “America” for no real reason at all, just to let loose accumulated rage?

This is a country founded upon violence. Our radical DNA surfaces from time to time, and our addiction to firearms will unlikely abate. Ever. Aren’t we all wondering where these guys got their guns, and if even a terrorist attack will slow down the NRA anti-background-check juggernaut?

What else emerged from the gore last week? Strength of community and spirit. Resilience. Generosity. Determination. And a city that was shut down tight just to catch the bad guys. (Like it or not, we’re a nation of, and by Hollywood.)

It’s a huge country, America, and our cities, towns and rural outposts are so far-flung that we’ve had only myth and common language to keep the experiment together. Personally, I love the place. It’s hard to put into words, but photographs often do justice to this disparate reality.

Photographs, like the ones I saw in “America 101,” a monograph by the aptly named Arthur Grace, published late last year by Fall Line Press. The photographer has been a long-time photo-journalist, working for the biggest media outlets, but I’d not heard of him before. (Honestly, these are some of my favorite types of book-experiences: when I get to discover someone that has been out there making great work all along.)

The collection of images is entirely black and white, and spans the better part of four decades. It opens, pre-essay, with a photograph of police securing a school bus route in 1976, in…you guessed it…Boston, MA. There were many places in the US that reacted poorly to enforced integration, but this book, coincidentally, focuses on the scene in Boston, back in the day.

The narrative is non-linear, the pathos balanced with humor, and the range of people and cultural experiences is as vast as the Great Plains in Winter. The use of repeating symbols is a highlight, in particular the depiction of guns, and references to violence.

The real magic here comes in runs. The book develops momentum, like a good football game, and then inevitably loses steam, only to come back strong again. The first group that caught my attention is as follows: a diptych of Vermont hunters from 1976, followed by another diptych of violent protests in South Boston in 1974, a scene of carnival goers shooting fake guns at water balloons, a man pointing a rifle at a live raccoon at his feet, a couple of Hispanic taxidermists holding a stuffed cougar head in Albuquerque, circa 1986, John Wayne riding with soldiers in a tank in Cambridge, MA in 1974, and, finally, a group of pretend dead historical soldiers, lying in a field for a Revolutionary War re-enactment in Charlestown, MA, 1975. (Got that? If not, just read it again. Brilliant sequencing.)

There are several odes to Boston’s racial strife in the 70′s, but the book is not exclusively glum or intense, by any means. There are farmers and beauty queens, Evil Kenevil jumping vans on a high school football field, Al Gore looking like a robot in 1988, Jimmy Carter splayed out on an car roof in Ohio like a buxom model in Low Rider Magazine, and a young boxer, looking pensive, in Oahu, 1983. (I wonder if his dreams were ever fulfilled?)

The second suite of pictures that I can’t not share is sports related, that other American and Bostonian obsession. It starts with the Westminster Dog show in 1991, moves to what may be the best sports photo I’ve ever seen, in which a Cincinnati Reds outfielder is frozen in a mid-air catch, looking more than a little like a Black Jesus, followed by a no-neck, tatted-out arm wrestler in Kansas, circa 2004, and then a monstrous Texan corn-dog-eating contestant stuffing his face in Dallas, 2003. (Ah, the Bush years. So much less complicated. The government was totally incompetent, and the terrorists were perfectly unsympathetic.)

I could describe more of the photos here, many more, but then you’d stop reading. Most people would rather look at a picture than read a description of it. (Understandable.) So I’d recommend you consider buying this book, if you’d like to be reminded of the wonder and complex magnificence of the American experiment. Mr. Grace has done a terrific job, and I commend him.

Lastly, I’d like to end by stating the obvious. I have no ambivalence as to the evil of what the Tsarnaev brothers did last week. I have hugged my children more tightly since I returned from NYC the day of the bombing, and recommend you do the same. Cliché or not, we never know what awaits when we step out the front door each day. My thoughts and prayers go out to the innocent victims, their families, and all the citizens of Boston.

Bottom Line: Powerful views of America, over time

To Purchase America 101 Visit Photo-Eye

 

Full Disclosure: Books are provided by Photo-Eye in exchange for links back for purchase.

Books are found in the bookstore and submissions are not accepted.

 

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I wanted to showcase some great work done by regional and city magazines over the next few posts.

Friday: 4.26.13

Design Director: Ellen Zaslow
Art Director: Ron Escobar
Director of Photography: Illana Diamond

Photographer: Claudia Goetzelmann

Buying a new website?
APhotoFolio.com builds portfolio websites for photographers.
Have a look (here).

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[By Richard Kelly]

In my little world of photography there are two types of assignments. The first Is the one call assignment. You know the type, you get a phone call, estimate for the parameters of the assignment, you grab your gear, you make the picture, send off the selects, send an invoice and then wait for a check.

The second type is the career builder. Something more than just a one assignment/one image solution to fill a hole on page or white space on a web site. This is where I want to spend my time these days: on assignments with clients that lead to an ongoing relationship.  One that lets me build on more assignments and offer creative solutions that go beyond where the pixels are placed in a frame.

The question I get from other photographers is how does one go from the photo equivalent of a one night stand to a long term relationship? My usual response is that like interpersonal relationships, you have to put yourself out there with both the vibe and interest in having a relationship. In other words you have to find those clients that are most interested in the creative solutions you have to offer.

On my morning walk today, I was going through the mental Rolodex of my recent long term photo relationships to figure out what was the common factors. This is what I determined:

1) I had a particular interest in their business or message – usually, from a hobby, a recent experience that related to the organization or I had a particular curiosity in what they were doing – which led to conversations that went beyond the specifics of the assignment they hired me for.

2) The timing was right, I had a recent gap in my work or personal life that allowed for a long term clients projects and I was looking for something.

3) Like a personal relationship, the chemistry between the main players and myself just gelled. Its probably no coincidence that these clients became friends even after the project ended.

4) My photography style was a match for the business or message and I was looking to stretch my work experience with a new approach, technique or body of work.

While looking at these clients, I realized there’s another common denominator I hadn’t previously recognized.  Almost all started as one call assignments. During that first call, the assignment  didn’t seem like a big deal. I  could have easily passed the assignment  over as leading to nowhere. This maybe the most important point: I didn’t go into the job expecting anything more than to do a good job and get paid. I wasn’t too eager, just professional.

So how does one add the most bang to their career?

Follow your gut instincts.

Be curious.

Read a lot.

Take road trips.

Be friendly first.

Look beyond the assignment.

Be open, but not too eager.

Living the life of an independent creative is both a big challenge and an awesome experience. How you choose to live that life is entirely up to you.

Richard Dale Kelly, is living the independent creator life.

We emailed Art Buyers and Art Producers around the world asking them to submit names of established photographers who were keeping it fresh and up-and-comers who they are keeping their eye on. If you are an Art Buyer/Producer or an Art Director at an agency and want to submit a photographer anonymously for this column email: Suzanne.sease@verizon.net

Anonymous Art Producer: I nominate Holly Andres

How many years have you been in business?

While I have only been shooting commercially for a few years, I have a strong foundation in the fine art photography realm with representation from prominent galleries in NYC, Atlanta, San Francisco and Portland Oregon where I live and work. I’ve also taught photography at the college level for several years.

Are you self-taught or photography school taught?

My educational background is in painting and drawing, and it wasn’t until after graduate school when I was studying cinema and I became curious about the potential of freezing a narrative as a single frame, that I discovered how photography could best aestheticize my concepts. While I primarily consider myself a photographer, my foundation in painting and cinema continues to inform my photographic practice and aesthetic.

Who was your greatest influence that inspired you to get into this business?

I decided to get into the business, after frequently being told that my fine art photography may have commercial application. The realm of constructed narrative photography has greatly influenced me, where artists such as Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson and Cindy Sherman are the pioneers. I also feel a strong connection to Edward Hoppers paintings and the work of many mid-century female surrealists, such as Dorothea Tanning, Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, and Maya Deren, particularly because of their interests in psychoanalysis and their metaphoric depictions of fears, desires and impulses.

How do you find your inspiration to be so fresh, push the envelope, stay true to yourself so that creative folks are noticing you and hiring you?

Being a photographer has transformed the way that I experience life. When I’m in a prolific period of shooting and am feeling exceptionally perceptive, I tend to see the world with more wonder, beauty and appreciation. This resulting impact, in and of itself, is actually the most fulfilling and powerful aspect of photography for me. When I made the transition into the commercial sphere, I decided that I had to find a way to make it as fulfilling and meaningful as making art.  I entered the commercial world with a relatively strong and varied portfolio of personal work, work that was not made under the influence of commercial application, and this is the work that has garnered the most attention of photo editors, art directors and art buyers.

Do you find that some creatives love your work but the client holds you back?

Fortunately I haven’t come up against this much.  I think because my work is so specific in its aesthetic, commercial clients know early in the process if I am an appropriate for their brand.

What are you doing to get your vision out to the buying audience?

I’m repped by the photo agency Hello Artists, and in the company of a roster of great talent, my work is constantly being exposed to potential commercial collaborators. I also continue to invest in my own fine art endeavors. For example, I will be having a mid-career retrospective at the Hallie Ford Museum in Salem Oregon this summer, followed by the premiere of a new body of photographic work at my Portland-based gallery, Hartman Fine Art, in the fall. I find that when these arenas intercept it results in the most exciting commercial opportunities. Additionally, I accept many speaking invitations and try to have an active and current online presence, by maintaining my website, blog and other social media threads.

What is your advice for those who are showing what they think the buyers want to see?

Andy Warhol famously said, “ Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” It seems artist’s creativity is often stunted by an internal voice that tries to predict what the external world wants to see. If you can engage in the joy and practice of consistently making art, inevitably you will develop an individual voice, a unique way of seeing – both in content and style. I think that this is what art buyers are most interested in.

Are you shooting for yourself and creating new work to keep your artistic talent true to you?

Yes. As I mentioned earlier, I am consistently developing new work and fortunately through the representation of my galleries am always preparing work for future exhibitions. I find that there is a strong symbiotic relationship, one that is constantly evolving, between my commercial and personal work.

How often are you shooting new work?

All the time.

Holly Andres is a fine art and commercial photographer. She has had solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, Istanbul, Turkey and Portland Oregon where she lives and works. Her work has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, Time, Runner’s World, W, Art in America, Artforum, Exit Magazine, Art News, Modern Painters, Oprah Magazine, Elle Magazine, The LA Times, Glamour, Blink and Art Ltd. – which profiled her as one of 15 emerging West Coast artists under the age of 35.

Andres’s work was also selected for Go West! Cutting-Edge Creatives in the United States, a book surveying the best creative minds in architecture, design, art, fashion, photography and advertising – published by German-based, DAAB Books, 2011.

She has commercial representation through Hello Artists, and gallery representation through Robert Mann Gallery (New York City), Charles A. Hartman Fine Art (Portland), Jackson Fine Art (Atlanta), Robert Koch Gallery (San Francisco).

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s, after founding the art buying department at The Martin Agency then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies. She has a new Twitter fed with helpful marketing information.  Follow her@SuzanneSease.

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That’s what would hurt me now if I still wanted to do this work. Today the young art directors want to have the control – they don’t want a photographer who has a relationship with the talent. That’s the last thing they want. For me, the relationships with the talent that I developed were far more important than the relationships with the clients because clients come and go – but the talent are going to be around for a while.

I realized that I was bidding jobs that I wasn’t getting, and I said to myself – this is getting old! I really didn’t enjoy it anymore and there’s people out there that are a lot hungrier than I was by that time.

via A rambling conversation with Greg Gorman | Le Journal de la Photographie.

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Thursday: 4.25.13

Design Director: Fred Woodward
Creative Director: Jim Moore
Director of Photography: Dora Somosi
Senior Photo Editor: Krista Prestek
Photo Editor: Justin O’Neil
Art Director: Chelsea Cardinal

Photographer: Eric Ray Davidson

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[By Shawn Henry]

We all know that editorial work doesn’t generally pay fees comparable to the corporate market, but it’s possible to boost the total income from editorial assignments with just a little extra effort.

My standard workflow is to process every assignment through Lightroom: after making general adjustments to all the files, I produce a web gallery that I post to my website for review by my client, and I email a couple of LoRes samples of my favorites to the editor along with the link. When the selects are made, those are uploaded to my site as a .zip file as well.

Once the original magazine client has published the story, I make a point to email the subject and/or my PR contact at the subject’s company the link to the gallery. It’s not 100%, but quite often this simple act that takes less than a minute will lead to either the company licensing one or more of the images for their own use or contacting me about a potential new assignment for them. This is the easiest, most direct marketing you can do as a photographer. Even if the company doesn’t need any photography at the time you send the link, chances are good that they’ll keep that link — and your contact info — for reference far longer than they would an email promo or postcard.

With server space so cheap, I leave all of these web galleries and selects live on my site so that they are available should another magazine contact me looking to license the images. Even if I’m on the road when the client contacts me, I can easily reference link for the gallery and forward the link for the HiRes selects once we agree on a license.

While I’m currently using GoDaddy to host my client site, I’m planning to switch to PhotoShelter soon to benefit from the additional SEO capabilities. That way any time someone searches the web for one of my prior subjects, my images will show in the results. Another easy way to get more mileage out of every assignment.

Shawn G. Henry has earned his living as an editorial and corporate photographer for 25 years: throughout, he’s spent far more time wearing a tool belt than a photo vest. Recently returned from a two and a half year stint in San Diego, he currently resides in The House That Licensing Built in Gloucester, MA, where he spends his days analyzing the mistakes he made so he does a better job with the next house. www.shawnhenry.com

by Jonathan Blaustein

Syria is a wreckage, its people bombarded by a psychotic former ophthalmologist. Egypt’s economy is in free-fall. The Arab Spring’s optimism has faded faster than a photograph bathed in the sunshine of a portrait studio’s front window.

Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Afghanistan, and other countries in the Middle East live with the constant threat of violence and terror. When stories flood media outlets, dead bodies boost ratings. (I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.) Given that language barriers exist, even in an age of Google Translate, it’s not so easy to just throw out a couple of friend requests to get the real story from Tehran. Or Tel Aviv.

Fortunately, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London has come to our collective rescue. “Light from the Middle East: New Photography” displayed photographs from North Africa through Central Asia, until it closed on April 7. It was the most dynamic photo exhibition I saw on my recent visit to Europe.

The show was broken down into three component parts: Recording, Reframing, and Resisting. The first referred to documentary work, the second to images that attempted to subvert existing photo traditions, and the latter section dealt with more original or innovative art practice. Surprisingly, given my predilections, I mostly preferred the initial grouping. But there were strong projects throughout; a fantastic exhibition, really.

Walking through the entryway, I was confronted with a group of photos by Abbas, from the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79. He managed to capture anger and passion pulsing through the frame, as in the grouping of women in abayas, toting machine guns. Another image featured a heap of dead old men on morgue beds, slid out of the cooler. (While some revolutionaries looked on, gloating.) The message from the curators was clear: We mean business.

Just down the way, Tal Shochat, an Israeli, exhibited a triptych of contemporary images that seemed to emanate from a different planet, as well as century, than those of Abbas. Three trees: persimmon, pomegranate, and grapefruit. Each had been meticulously cleaned and buffed, then shot in the landscape with strobes, against a black backdrop. They looked artificial, like corporatized nature. Smart and odd-looking, they referenced the intersection of agriculture and genetic engineering in the 21st C.

Cruising the room, I saw pictures from Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kurdistan.

“Bodiless 1,” by Mehraneh Atashi, another Iranian, was an absolute favorite. A burly wrestler, in a mens only gym, throws around a chain of weights. (Old school equipment, for sure.) He had a serious head of hair, resembled Erik Estrada, and rocked a sexy-time mustache as well. The text tells us women are always excluded from such establishments, but the artist was, in fact, female. She received special permission, and included her own image as a little subversive shout to rule-breaking, reflected within a mirror.

A Mitra Tabrizian photo, again from Iran, was also amazing. (I’m just now realizing I like Iranian photography.) A long, horizontal panel depicted an obviously-staged scene filled with a host of “regular” people. Old and young, men and women, all stood, moved, talked, gesticulated, in a field outside of a generic apartment building. Up above, a pair of grumpy-looking clerics stared down, disapprovingly, from a billboard. (I wonder what they would approve of? Disemboweling Barack Obama?) Though I assumed it to be a digital composite, given how much was going on, the wall text assured that it was actually one exposure. Righteous people-wrangling.

In general, the Reframing section, which featured artists who appropriate or imitate images from the past, was the least successful. Most of the artists’ symbol choices were heavy-handed, so things were just off. (Close, but not quite right.)

Shadi Ghadirian’s project, yet again from Iran, typified this. Her series, “Qujar,” from 1998, featured women in portraits, shot in the historical style from the Qajar period, 1786-1925. The verisimilitude was spot on, but then the women held modern symbols, like a Pepsi can, a boom box, or a mountain bike. I wanted to love them, but kept getting stuck in the clunky juxtaposition. The one exception was the image of shrouded women holding a mirror that reflected blankly back to the photographer, and by extension, the viewer.

Youssef Nabil, an Egyptian, exhibited work from his project “The Yemeni Sailors of South Shields,” a series of hand-colored black and white portraits. The style aped mid-20th Century Egyptian studio portraits, and focused on the large ex-pat population in North England. I loved the hand-colored effect, and the guys were funny, but also poignant, like Gene Hackman’s sidekick in “The Royal Tenenbaums.” (Yes, I’m aware Pagoda was Indian.)

One last project here deserves a mention, but not in a good way. Taysir Batniji, a Palestinian, had pictures included from his “Watch Towers: West Bank/Palestine” project. The structures were blatantly shot in the insanely-famous Becher style. Basically, they were knock-offs, meant to create controversy. When the first sentence in the wall text admits that the work is derivative, I wonder if it actually belongs in the show?

Moving on, my brain slowly wearing down, I entered the last room: Resisting. The collected photos were meant to examine the manipulation of truth in photography. The quality ranged, here, but there were some memorable projects.

Atiq Rahimi’s work, from Afghanistan, featured plastic box camera pictures, called “The Imaginary Return,” from 2001. The artist played with scale and temporal dislocation, so my eye wondered if the pictures were from the 19th Century. A tree branch looked like it was about to topple a building, little men at the base of a wall look like toy soldiers, and a lonely clothesline suspended above the chaos seems like it might be holding up the world.

Amirali Ghasemi’s series “Tehran Remixed: Party Series” was also terrific. We’ve all heard stories of what goes on behind the closed, locked doors of Tehran’s youth. (I’m guessing they love Ecstasy, but what do I know?) Here, we see the good times rolling, but big white sections have been cut out of the subjects, censoring their identities. It was a perfect use of digital technique, and reminded me why I was less enthralled with the exhibition’s mid-section, which placed less emphasis on stylistic innovation.

There was a bit more hand-coloring in the last room, but nothing that really impressed. Nermine Hammam, an Egyptian, had a project where she photographed soldiers who were ubiquitous during the aforementioned Arab Spring. Rather than keep them in their natural surroundings, however, she digitally removed them, and dropped them against the technicolor backdrops of the Swiss Alps. (I’m guessing the soldiers would have preferred to frolic in the mountains, rather than tote guns around Tahrir Square.)

As I said at the outset, this was a really stellar exhibition. We often struggle, here in the West, to remind ourselves why art matters. A few rooms such as these, packed with photographs that attempt to codify uncertainty, document upheaval, and share stories with the World outside, are an excellent reminder.

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The Robert Capa Gold Medal is awarded to a photographer producing “photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise.” This year, Italian photojournalist Fabio Bucciarelli was recognized for Battle to Death, his project recording the harrowing battles in Aleppo in late 2012. “The battle for the conquest of Aleppo is a real massacre,” he told TIME.

Read more: http://lightbox.time.com/2013/04/24/2013-overseas-press-club-winners-announced

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Wednesday: 4.24.13

Design Director: Thomas Alberty
Photography Director: Jody Quon

Photographer: Pari Dukovic

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[By Luke Copping]

Your potential for income does not end because an assignment does. Intelligently and aggressively pursuing secondary licensing is an easy “big win” for any photographer, especially those who pursue editorial work as their primary focus. There are numerous methods that you can pursue in order to increase the profit you accrue from any given assignment. Below are two ideas that might give you a bit of inspiration on how you can extract additional income from from an image.

Follow Up With Your Subjects

This seems like a common sense approach, but in my conversations with photographers all over the country it is a little shocking how few pursue direct secondary licensing from an assignment, and if they do, the passive way in which they go about it is, often waiting for the subject to broach the topic, is not as effective as presenting it directly to them.

The simple act of making a gallery of images available to the subject of an editorial story after the publishers initial period of exclusivity has expired is a great way to start the conversation with them about secondary licensing for advertising, PR, collateral, internal bulletins, display, or even just for personal use.  But you can increase your odds of interesting them by smartly crafting your communications with the potential buyer. Be enthusiastic and warm about the reception the images received from the original client, and how excited you are about them – be genuine in your feelings about the pictures and it can easily spread to your buyer. Send them a smaller sub gallery of your own favorite images that you have pre-curated for them in addition to the larger gallery of selects… etc. Make the process of licensing images from you simple and rewarding for them, you want it to be a no brainer.

Become the Librarian 

Do you specialize in a unique niche of photography? If so you may have an amazing opportunity to build and manage your own relevantly curated stock library with images from your editorial, commercial, and personal projects.  When dealing with a small and specific base of potential customers that you have a lot familiarity with it becomes easier to cut out the middle man and market your library of industry specific stock images directly to apprpriate and pre-qualified buyers – creating a strong secondary market. By getting your images out there and in front of the buyers that you know, aggressively researching and qualifying new prospects, speaking to them in the language of their industry, understanding the cycles and schedules of their business, and anticipating their needs for usage and content before they themselves even know they need exists can make you an invaluable partner to them, one that can provide a level of service, quality, guidance. and knowledge that surpasses that of any third-party stock agency.

Giving your clients the ability to seamlessly and conveniently license images from you without having to pay commission to an agency is an ideal situation for many photographers, but as above you must be very very aware of the contracts you sign and the level of exclusivity you agree to with your initial clients.

Both of these approaches can benefit from some forethought – secondary licensing is easiest to sell (and at its highest value to a client) when an image is still timely and relevant,  so be aware of the exclusivity periods that you are negotiating with your editorial clients. As more and more magazines are providing online editions I have noticed a trend of increasingly long embargoes and exclusivity periods. If a discussion of exclusivity is not a part of your negotiation workflow you may want to consider adding it.

Luke Copping is an editorial and commercial portrait photographer from Buffalo New York who thinks that handwritten thank you notes and real gratitude are still a good part of a balanced marketing plan.

CareerCast.com has an annual ranking of 200 best and worst jobs for 2013 (here) and Reporter takes the bottom spot over last years Lumberjack. Ouch. Maybe we will see Discovery and History channels making a new reality series around reporter like the other worst job staples of Lumberjack, Commercial Fisherman and Mining. Of course rounding out the bottom 20 below Dishwasher but above Corrections Officer is Photojournalist at number 188, so I guess photographers are the best in the newsroom. In the catch-all category of Photographer, which usually includes heavy weighting on positions like cruise ship and theme park photographer, the ranking is 172 just below construction worker but with a positive job growth outlook. Strangely, their description of photographer reads: “Uses shutter-operated cameras and photographic emulsions to visually portray a variety of subjects.”

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