Dealing with Crises

This is a great post and can relate to anyone across the board. I think it's especially useful in dealing with clients and being on a production/job. It's sound advice.
Read the article here.

Gist:

• Calm down, smile and remain polite to maintain any chance of success

• Become a human being rather than a faceless number

• Be persistent to grind away the brick wall

• Be prepared to lose to expand your freedom of thought and action

• Be clear about your objective so you can be flexible about how to achieve it

• Find who can, since often the first person you speak to cannot help

• Take an active part in making things happen more efficiently

• Make the other person feel good about helping you so that they are more likely to help you

• Don’t relax this stance until it’s over, it’s easy to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Thanks to my husband for finding this one.

Heather Morton art buyer

Heather Morton is back to blogging and regular postings. After a 5 month hiatus she comes back with contributors Myles McCutcheon and Liz Ikiriko, both photo editors and photographers.

It's fantastic to have Heather back and sharing her opinion. check out her blog (if you haven't already) at heathermorton.ca/blog/

Artists with Blogs

I find that artists blogs keep coming up in conversation, particularly artists asking if it's even a useful tool.

It should be completely up to you whether to maintain blogs and social networking. If you feel it's beneficial to your business or if it's a way to share personal opinions, images, etc. then go for it.

Personally I love artists' blogs. It's a nice insight into other work as well as the personality of that artist. It's sort of like peeling back another layer. The portfolios are useful to find appropriate talent for projects but the blogs for me are useful to find out a little more about the talent.

My only suggestion is that if you maintain a blog try to update it. It doesn't have to be everyday or even every week if you don't have anything or are busy but try to keep it as up to date as possible. Especially with imagery or a behind the scenes look at a recent project. I've also found a few photographers and illustrators who use their blog to show some new work or a new style they are experimenting with. The blog is a great way to showcase more work and outtakes of some shots that are in your portfolio.

Just remember to keep it honest but also a little professional (I don't want to read about a rant on a client). Express your opinions but remember who your potential audience is and the fact that they could potentially hire you. It's also a good format to not only promote personal work but share information that helps the creative community (award announcements, networking events, lectures, student shows, etc.)

Here are a few artist blogs I enjoy reading that are really good examples:

Finn O'Hara: finnohara.com/blog/
Andrew Hetherington: whatsthejackanory.com/
Timothy Archibald: timothyarchibald.blogspot.com/
Susana Raab: susanaraab.wordpress.com/
Thomas Broening: thomasbroening.blogspot.com/

also check out this Q&A on Photo-Blogging on the Glasshouse blog, Stone-Thrower.

Must Read

Granted this person is a designer and this information posted on his blog is logo related but it relates to the entire creative community.

This post is a must read for all artists and their intellectual property - jonengle.com/2009/04/accused/.

This also makes a great argument for tagging everything with meta data and tracking your work.

**UPDATE: Thanks to Jason Campbell who sent this link to some info about the other side of the story, read it here.

Adam Hester Portfolio Review

all photos ©Adam Hester, used with permission

I've had the opportunity to speak with several photographers over the phone regarding my offer in the beginning of March for portfolio reviews. My idea was this: provide completely honest feedback to the photographer's portfolio as well as answer questions they had and tailor the answers specifically to their work and aspirations.

Earlier this week I chatted with Adam Hester, who has okayed snippets of our conversation to be published here with a few pieces of his work. Adam's been assisting for a few years and is now shooting for himself and working on getting his own clients. His questions were:
Get some feedback on his website. How to approach art buyers? How could he come off as more prepared or assure potential art buyers/creatives of his attention to production value?

**Note: All of the feedback provided below is just my opinion and is specific to Adam and his work.

Feedback:
The set up of his portfolio starts with the sub head "Playful Surroundings", a personal project Adam's been working on and testing. When I search through websites looking for potential photographers for a project, I normally go to either the first subhead or the most obvious relevance to my project. Meaning - you have 5 subheads and I'm looking for portraits, I'm going to go to your portraits portfolio first look through it quickly to see if it jives with the needs of the project and then move onto the next photographer.

My suggestions were to use some different props or none at all. the images are great even without the subject holding anything. For instance a few of the images I didn't necessarily understand as far as the conceptual approach but the subject, the expression and the framing of the image was beautiful. Some of the strongest work that I reacted to in the portfolio were the snapshots in the "Instant Love" section. I know these are some personal projects hence the names associated with them but I suggested splitting some of these up to really show focus on the in the portfolio so the can attract work.

Approach art buyers with confidence in your work. I always suggest face to face meetings, it speaks so much more to the personality and associating the work with the photographer. Especially go after the clients that he wants to add to his roster. have an aspirational list of clients that he can see his work being associated with and start knocking on their doors.

As far as being prepared and working on projects that require more production, don't bite off more than you can chew, surround yourself with a very capable support team of producer, stylists, crew, and be honest.

You can view Adam Hester's work at adamhester.com

Ad Club... seriously?

I love this idea... I love the visual that came in my email... I did not love the price of the tickets. Tickets are listed as $200... each.

AdClub of Boston has a brilliant idea to bring agencies and former/current employees together for a big networking event. But, AdClub, come on. The ad industry has been hit hard and for those people still employed at said ad agencies they probably won't even go, it's the people who have been laid off that want to network.

I hope it has open bar....

©2009 Boston Ad Club, Sprague/Nelson, Getty Images

Blender Closing The Doors

Unfortunately another magazine is biting the dust. Blender Magazine officially closed up last week with it's last publication. The magazine's parent company will continue to run Maxim.
Blender will be operating solely on the internet and keeping the brand name alive.
see the AdAge article here.

So I'm wondering with all the magazines and newspapers folding, are we witnessing the beginning of the death of print?

I personally say no but I'm curious to hear other thoughts.