I started working with a new client, a new jewelry designer named Victoria Skirpa. We made these images for her self-promotional materials. She’s really putting a lot of energy into the endeavor and it’s nice to work with someone so fired-up.
But for a time during this shoot, this looked unavoidably like three little brown googly-eyed creatures.
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So the new website is launched. I looked around at all the prepackaged photographer-type sites, and while I was impressed with many of them, I just couldn’t get them to do what I want. The main thing with most of them was a maximum image size that is too small.
The new site features the enhanced version of Simpleviewer, which means I can configure pretty much everything on it. It will scale with the window size, and do a full-screen mode with images up to 1500 pixels. It preloads images, and works with the on-screen buttons, the mousewheel, or the keyboard.
I added a bio and contact section, revamped the organization of the images, implemented a rotating bio pic feature, and made the gradient background scale with the window size. I know, big whoop.
The blog has slowly evolved from an ugly Blogger site, to a really clean WordPress design that’s fully integrated into the rest of the site. For any factor other than initial setup, WordPress is a far superior product to Blogger.
For those who are interested, here are some of the better- and less-known solutions I looked into:
Thanks to all those who helped out with technical advice (looking at you, Scott), and everybody who tested (thanks Facebook buddies and Steve).
I shot a bunch of stuff for a baker recently. This is one of the outtakes.
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Late last year, when it came time to let people know about the APA SF Something Personal Exhibition, I wanted to do something different.
I acquired white matches in white matchboxes from the internet.
and information on a sleeve, and glued the sleeve over each matchbox.
I ordered custom stamps with an additional flames image of mine, and…
put all of them together in a white bubble wrap mailer.
Each of the 35 matchboxes included a link to my website, where the recipient can download an invitation, view the series, read all my blog entries on the project, and more.
Everybody at the show who had received one, mentioned they loved the matchbox, and in followup calls to those who couldn’t make it, they often had the matchbox on their desk or in a pocket.
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Over the last six months I’ve made three promos at the office, and I think I’m addicted now.
It started with a suggestion by Chris Milliman. He said he’d been sending out small collections of prints to select buyers for some time, and always got really good feedback.
Frankly, sending out 2034872304563056 emails or postcards is really not that appealing to me anyway, so I thought I’d give his method a try. I have found that it takes a lot longer to create a promo in this way, but it’s not only more satisfying, but puts a certain wind under my wings when it’s time to do the follow-up calls.
Last time it was the Make Shoes Move promo. This time, Helpful Ideas for Busy Dads.
Design phase. If I ever wanted to call myself a designer, I have a long way to go.
Production phase. See the difference?
I do like the glassine envelopes.
The question I come up against is about Handmade vs Machine Made vs Handmade that Looks Machine Made. I’m not sure where I am on that scale, or where I even want to be. Handmade is charming and personal. Machine Made is fast and inexpensive. And Handmade that Looks Machine Made might be the worst of both worlds, since if people think it’s mass produced, all the charm disappears.
We’ll see. Meanwhile, I end up putting in a lot of work and ended up with something I’m proud of.
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Following up on Creativity Stops and Starts, in addition to those two ideas, a ton of others came to me.
For example:
It’s nice when you get so many ideas you have to create a chart to make sense of them.
I settled on a feeding theme, thus the Media Player Caddy.
In talking with Jackie about the photos, she said it would be a good Father’s Day promo. FACEPALM. Of course, she’s brilliant, so I got to work making up the promo. Stay tuned.
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So, following up on Part I and Part II, what to do about licensing and infringement in the New Photography Era?
This image was in use as someone’s MySpace background.
What I want: my images to be published and to get paid. What I have got so far: they remove the images. So that’s not really working.
It’s barking up the wrong tree, in all likelihood. Most of these infringers are not making any money, have little appreciation of professional photography and what it takes to make it, and sparse or incorrect understanding of intellectual property rights. And I can’t say I blame them. My livelihood is dependent on it, I’m interested in it, I’ve studied it, and still sometimes the concepts slip away from my understanding, and I have to chase them down. And many of my peers seem to be uninterested.
Content creators have interests, but their interests are varied. I want to make a profit on my images, but some people are only interested in attention. For others, giving away some content to sell other works, while others may give away content to sell consulting services.
So it’s left to professional organizations, advocates, and corporations to stand up for content creators. The professional organizations fight for the content creators, but they’re perhaps a little slow. The advocates are vocal but pull in different directions. And the corporations have a lot of power, but only their own interests at heart, which are usually in conflict with the content creators.
For example, some organizations:
Some advocates:
And of course, corporations:
I don’t agree 100% with any of them. But I do know that my images, services, and vision have value, and that it’s up to me to manage the perception of that value. So when it comes to infringement, small or large, I will continue to do what I can to moderate it, because, as they say, the way you do anything is the way you do everything.
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A couple of years ago, I participated in my first portfolio review. The whole thing was put together by Lisa Wiseman back when the NAOPA was doing a lot of events. There were two buyers from local agencies, an editor from a magazine, and a rep. I had just finished my first book, and even though it was a pretty small event, I was excited and intimidated.
I was still at the tail-end of the dying-for-someone-to-tell-me-I’m-a-real-photographer phase (hint: you will probably not believe anyone who is willing to tell you this), and I’d only really shown my work to friends, family, and photography peers, so my insides were all churning.
There was some sort of take-a-number arrangement to ensure that each participant met with each buyer, but I think I was late or there was some snafu or the planets aligned or whatever. I any case, I met only with Jen Small, who was at Ogilvy, I think. In writing this now, I can tell I was quite nervous, as all these relevant details are now fuzzy or missing.
To make matters worse, this guy, who wasn’t really involved in NAOPA, barged on my session with Jen, because he insisted that she look at his book after mine, and wouldn’t leave while she looked at mine.
She looked through my book, alarmingly quickly, and we talked for a bit. She had good things to say overall, and she has a cool perspective. The thing that has stayed with me was her response to a concern I had.
I told her that I thought maybe my work was too dark, too grim, too anti-example, for advertising.
She told me that she has a list of a hundred photographers that can do happy, sunny, uplifting, sweet work. And she has a list of like five photographers that can do dark, grim, anti-examples, and make it work.
And ever since then, I’ve looked around, and that ratio’s about right: twenty to one. Twenty ads of an attractive person talking on a cellphone to one ad of a shattered phone because someone sat on it. Twenty earnest groups of young adults having fun on the beach to one guy about to get run over by a train because he’s not paying attention.
I’ll take the ratio. I’m just glad there’s room.
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So the funny thing about photography is that I spend a lot more time not using a camera than using one.
It’s a big transition from creating, sending, and following up on promotions to devising, setting up, and shooting personal work. I mean, doing the promotion stuff requires creativity, but it’s “manage-ment creativity” not “artistic creativity”. Sometimes I want to jump from one mindset to the other, and it’s pretty jarring.
Last week, after taking care of a few loose ends with the shoes promo, I looked through my book of ideas, and found nothing funny, but I felt like doing something funny. Well, you know, funny like I do anyway. So I hunkered down and did some brainstorming and…nothing. Huh. I reached down, poked around, dug in, pushed a little harder, strained a bit more, grabbed my creativity by the neck and shook it.
Nothing.
It’s easy, in a moment like that, to worry that it’s broken, since the fear that your last big idea was your last big idea is pretty common.
But I was approaching my creative activities the way I’d had to approach my self-promotion activities, and they don’t work the same way. Self-promotion is about order, discipline, polish, and being bombproof, whereas creativity is about emergence, perception, formation, and vulnerability.
So I relaxed. Kind of looked sideways at my creativity instead, let it come, listened. And shortly the first little idea appeared, and soon grew into a flood of material.
As a friend said, “Gotta let the wind whip the crinkles out of your freak flag”.
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One of the attributes that’s necessary for both photographers and assistants is ingenuity.
Around this time last year, I helped out Adam Moore from Sugar Digital on a shoot he was doing for Whale Wars. The banner on Whale Wars Facebook page is the result. You may have noticed a little photoshop’s been done on that image.
Those crewmembers you see are actual crewmembers, and they were actually in the studio for the shoot, and they are actually really cool*. But what they weren’t, actually, was piloting a Zodiac boat around the studio. It needed to be faked.
I know from experience that the closer you can get a subject to doing what they’re supposed to be faking, the better it’s going to look. And I know that standing on a wood floor on the third story of a photostudio and holding your hands out like they’re gripping a wheel is not very close at all.
So, after we set up the lighting, and the subjects were dressed and ready, I suggested that we build them a boat, and everybody looked at me like I’m crazy.
I took a furniture pad, rolled it pretty tight, and stabilized it with gaffers tape, and put that on the mark. I placed a spare magliner shelf on top of that, et voilà, a rolling deck. I had ridden my bicycle, so I pulled off my front wheel, and rigged it on a C Stand arm in front of the new deck, et voici, a steering wheel.
The first subject hopped up on the deck, gripped the wheel, and started hollering. My little boat worked really well, and helped bring a little bit of authenticity to the poses.
You can see it at the Whale Wars Album on Facebook.
*I think there’s something about death-defying activities that makes people end up cool; or maybe cool people do death-defying things. Chicken. Egg.
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