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Career Advice: Stop Waiting for Your Big Break!

PHOTOGRAPHERS. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to win a Pulitzer Prize at age 25? To see your photography on the cover of Sports Illustrated? To get paid to shoot a celebrity on the beaches of the British Virgin Islands? Photographer Brian Smith has done all three of these things during his 30-year career as a photography pro.

He talked about those experiences and more during an entertaining and informative PhotoShelter webinar entitled “Stop Waiting for Your Big Break.”

PhotoShelterLogoDuring the hour-long interview with PhotoShelter CEO Alan Murabayashi, Smith provides practical career advice while sharing some of the humorous stories behind some of the images that helped him transition from shooting sports for local newspapers to shooting celebrity portraits for national magazines. Here are just a few of the tips Brian Smith presented during the discussion.

Find ways to shoot what you love, then shoot every assignment as if it were your dream job. It’s unlikely that you’ll ever get one big break that will permanently propel your career into the stratosphere, Smith said. But with the right attitude and work ethic, you can build a satisfying career from a series of small breaks. The key is to make the most of each small break by shooting everything like you’re working for Sports Illustrated or Rolling Stone. Smith pointed out that the photo editors at top magazines are unlikely to call you until you have demonstrated that you can produce the type of work they expect.

Build on those techniques that have worked for you in the past. By continually returning to projects and techniques that have worked for you in the past, you will eventually develop a style that will set you apart from others. For example, Smith says, “As a photojournalist, I continue to look for the unexpected, even when shooting portraits.”

Enter contests that are appropriate for your demographic. Winning the right contests can be a great way to get your work in front of people who are in a position to hire you. It also means that other people will be doing PR on your behalf.  That type of PR is generally more credible and effective than the PR you do on your own.

Use personal projects to show people the type of work you want.  When Smith was trying to transition from sports photojournalism into celebrity portraiture, he decided to shoot a series of portraits of aging burlesque stars. The project demonstrated that he could work with flamboyant performers with oversized personalities. Not only did this project help Smith land an assignment to photograph Donald Trump, but several years later, it resulted in a Sports Illustrated assignment to photograph a nudist golf tournament. As Smith puts it, “Do good work, and you never know when it will pay off.” A personal project may not generate assignments right away, but good work can leave a lasting impression.

Build a strong website and keep people coming back to it. Once you have built a strong body of work with a distinctive style, Smith says a good website can be the most important tool you have. Today, every photo editor has different preferences in terms of how they want to be contacted (e.g. through the mail, e-mail, social networks, etc.).  So you have to try a lot of different methods of getting your work seen. But if you always point people back to your website, they can get a sense of what you’ve been up to and the type of work you are capable of. Smith said it’s important to tweak the content regularly and show people that you’re continuing to work on new projects.

Smith noted that it’s never been easier to get your work out there and seen, but because there’s so much work out there, your work really has to have something special.

That’s why he urges photographers to swing for the fences, and not always go for the safe shot.  For example, Smith provided this advice: After you’ve fulfilled all of the items that your clients wants you to shoot in the way they want it shot, try to take a moment or two to shoot the job the way you would do it if you were shooting it for yourself. Your client might be happily surprised by the results.

PhotoShelter is a leading provider of websites and business tools for photographers.

 

Useful Stats: Trends in the Wall Decor Market

ARTISTS. PHOTOGRAPHERS. If you ever wonder if the market is big enough to support the growing number of galleries that sell art and photography online, here are some encouraging numbers and trends.

According to a 2010 Unity Marketing Report on the market for Art, Wall Décor, Picture Frames, and Custom Framing, Americans spent more than $42 billion decorating their walls in 2009. But a closer study of 1,300+ recent buyers of wall décor showed that how consumers choose to spend their dollars to decorate their walls is changing.

“Americans are paying more attention to decorating their walls, but traditional art reproductions, for example, are being purchased less frequently today than they were in previous years,” says Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing. She notes that “Consumers are investing more in original art which is more widely available as working artists become market focused.”

Wall decor in bedroomThe study found that: “Art buyers are creative people who strongly connect with the art they display on their walls.” They want to buy items that reflect their personal taste, and consider the art they hang on their walls to be an extension of themselves.”

  • 55 percent of survey respondents agreed that “The art I buy and display is an important outlet for my creative expression.”
  •  72 percent agreed that “When choosing art for my home, the way the piece makes me feel is most important .”

 The study was conducted to help art, wall decor, custom framing and picture frame manufacturers, marketers and retailers better understand the consumer market for their goods.

Danziger notes that “The art and wall décor consumer wants to feel that she is heard and understood by those wishing to sell her these most personal forms of expression.”

She believes “Success in the art, wall décor, and framing market will come to those marketers who know how to make an emotional connection.”

Unity Marketing specializes in providing consumer insights to marketers and retailers that sell luxury goods and experiences to the “masses as well as the classes.”

 

What’s The Difference Between Cross-Media Marketing and Transmedia Storytelling?

Do you know the difference between cross-media marketing and transmedia storytelling? What about interactive advertising?

I hadn’t given any of these buzzwords much thought until I started compiling a list of technology-related trends that creative professionals probably need to think about as they try to anticipate where their next opportunities might come from.  The more I learn about these trends, the brighter the future looks for creative professionals with a natural gift for conceptual thinking.

Cross-media marketing is defined by InfoTrends as “the use of two or more media types (print, e-mail, Web, mobile, and/or social) in an orchestrated campaign targeting a specific demographic and/or psychographic segment…A cross-media campaign delivers relevant content and a call to action through multiple media simultaneously as an integrated campaign.”

JWT Transmedia Rising CoverTransmedia storytelling, as explained by JWTIntelligence, “involves narrative threads tailored for different channels (from mobile to big screens, from social to traditional media) and audiences (gamers, readers, Tweeters, etc.)…For brand marketers, this means that rather than striving for consistency across multiple touchpoints, the goal is for different channels to communicate different things (within the overarching strategy), with an emphasis on putting the brand community at the center.”

JWT’s Dean Baker explains it this way: “What we need to do is figure out the story behind the brand, the place it wants to occupy in the consumer’s mind, deconstruct it, make it relevant and reassemble it for the relevant audiences on the appropriate channels. Then, through social media, let the experience and associations grow organically.”

Interactive advertising, as described in the excellent documentation on The Barbarian Group website, is “any advertising that a potential customer can interact with.” While most interactive advertising takes place on the Internet, it could also be advertising on a mobile phone, a kiosk on a salesroom floor, or a billboard on Times Square. Interactive advertising is not human, it is not e-commerce, and it is more than banners and websites. Most importantly, says The Barbarian Group, “It is the one form of advertising that the customer initiates.”

I learned about The Barbarian Group when I read a news item about a billboard they had created that uses facial-recognition technology to interpret the characteristics and movements of viewers and adjust the advertising content accordingly.

Is your mind boggled yet? Mine certainly is.

But the reason I feel optimistic for creatives is because success in all three of these areas will require higher levels of both analytical and conceptual thinking.

For marketing execs (analytical thinkers), these trends add new layers of complexity to planning and measuring integrated marketing strategies.

Marketing-service providers will have to innovate in order to help their clients execute all of the elements of cross-media, transmedia, and interactive campaigns in the most cost-effective, efficient, and timely manner.

Then, it will be left up to conceptual thinkers (the creatives) to come up with the novel ideas and fresh approaches to storytelling that will effectively engage targeted consumers at every point in the process.

This could present some refreshing opportunities for creatives, because so much of the work formerly trusted to creative professionals has been boiled down into “formulas,” then automated in the form of templates and artificial intelligence embedded in graphic-design and image-editing software.

Perhaps because of the sheer volume of fresh content that must be continually fed to the Internet, creative professionals often find themselves regarded more as assembly-line production laborers than as potential contributors of innovative strategies.  In my opinion, creative talent is sometimes under-utilized.

Hopefully, creative professionals will find new ways to contribute as marketing (and entertainment) becomes more dependent on finding new ways to construct and deliver coherent and emotionally powerful stories across multiple platforms.

Resources

The Barbarian Group defines themselves as “a digital services and creation company that delivers the best possible experience for the consumer through the integrated and disciplined use of the best possible practices, good ideas, people and technology.” The portfolio portion of their website features examples of interactive advertising, including a trade-show backdrop projection wall in which blades of grass sway in a virtual breeze created as visitors walk past.  Their Barbaripedia includes a wealth of information about how interactive production differs from traditional advertising and broadcast production. They recommend way to avoid potential pitfalls.

InfoTrends is a worldwide market-research and strategic consulting firm serving the digital-imaging and document solutions industries. Their recent study, entitled “The Cross-Media Direct Marketing Opportunity,” explains how marketing executives are using print, online, mobile, and social media in their businesses.

JWTIntelligence, part of the JWT marketing-communications agency, is described as “a center for provocative thinking.” They describe their mission as follows: “We make sense of the chaos in a world of hyper-abundant information and constant innovation—finding quality amid the quantity.”  Their trendletter entitled “Transmedia Rising,” explains why “The days of broadcasting to consumers are over, a new era of entertaining, engaging, and empowering consumers is upon us.” The report highlights examples of transmedia projects such as Mattel’s Ken and Barbie campaign and The Old Spice campaign featuring The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.

 

Convert Great Content into Printed and Digital Magazines

Photo: HP news

WRITERS. If you want to monetize some of that great content you have developed for blogs, webinars, or white papers, consider converting it into a magazine and publishing it through HP’s MagCloud web-based self-publishing service.  Interested readers can either order a print version of your magazine or a digital edition. The digital editions can be read on a PC, Mac, WebOS, iOS, Android or other device that supports PDF files. Once a month, MagCloud pays publishers any collected royalties over $10. Payments are made via PayPal. You can check your sales online anytime. 

The MagCloud service isn’t limited to bloggers. Nor does your publication have to be a periodical. For example:

  • Photographers and artists can create catalogs for exhibition or art shows.
  • Freelance writers can produce bound, hard-copy portfolios of their clips.
  • Designers can produce print-on-demand brochures and catalogs for clients or their own products.
  • Traditional magazine publishers can produce special editions or republish content from back issues.

Here are the six steps involved in publishing and selling through MagCloud:

Create Your Magazine or Catalog
You can set up the pages of your magazine using any software that will produce a letter-sized, multi-page PDF. How-To Guides on the MagCloud website explain how to produce your publication using Adobe InDesign, Quark Xpress, Apple Pages, or Microsoft Word or Publisher.

Upload
After you upload your PDF (or Flickr photo set) to MagCloud, fill out a description, and order a proof. At this point, you will be the only one who can see it.

Proof
MagCloud will print, bind, and mail a proof to you.

Publish
If changes are needed, you can upload a new PDF and order another proof. Once you are satisfied with the proof, mark the issue as “published” and set the price for both the print and digital version. For every copy that is printed, MagCloud charges $0.20/page. You can specify any markup above the production costs. For digital issues, you earn 70% of the selling price.

Buy and Sell
When the issue is published, people can buy it through the MagCloud website or download it with the MagCloud iPad app or via digital PDF on  their PC or Mac. Buyers will need to use a credit card or PayPal account to order a copy.

Print and Mail
When someone buys an issue, MagCloud prints, binds, and ships to the buyer. A Ship to Group capability enables you to have the magazine sent to a specified group of people.

Cover of AirPlaneista

One publisher who uses MagCloud is Dan Pimentel, Airplanista Magazine editor and founder. He has been in and around the fields of journalism, graphic design, photography, magazines, and newspapers since 1974. He has been a licensed private pilot since 1996.

He publishes Airplanista magazine (http://airplanista.com) once a month, with the tagline “Sometimes serious. Sometimes humorous. Always unpredictable.”  The content includes a mix of feature stories, commentary and photography of interest to anyone in the aviation business, including general aviation pilots, aircraft owners, and professional pilots. In a press release announcing that the availablility of iPad-readable versions of Airplanista, Pimentel notes that feedback from buyers of the iPad version has been very favorable. Readers consider it a rich, very visual experience.  

HP’s Andrew Bolwell notes that MagCloud has enabled thousands of magazine publishers to sell hundreds of thousands of magazine issues. He says the newest services provide readers the freedom to consumer the targeted content they want in the format they want, whether it be print or digital.

LINKS

MagCloud

Airplanista

PrintedArt.com Offers Design Advisories for Home Decor

PHOTOGRAPHERS. As more consumers and professional decorators become more comfortable buying photos and art online, expect to see more diversity in the types of collections and support services being offered to them. 

We’ll highlight some of these online galleries on this site so you can see just how many opportunities now exist for marketing your own art and photography online.

PrintedArt.com is a web-based collection of fine-art photography hand-selected for the home décor and hospitality markets by an experienced staff of curators. Every image in the collection is sold as a limited edition and produced in the buyer’s choice of formats.

In addition to selecting the size, the buyer can specify how they want the print prepared for hanging. Prints don’t have to be framed if the buyer chooses to have the photo mounted on aluminum dibond and finished with acrylic or printed on canvas and wrapped on stretcher bars. Or, the customer can choose to have the images printed on art paper for custom framing.

Recently, PrintedArt.com initiated a series of design advisories to help customers envision how multiple images from different photographers might look when grouped together to support a chosen theme.

“The beauty of photography is that you can have amazing prints by different artists, in different color schemes, that have so much in common,” said Klaus Sonnenleiter, president of PrintedArt. “The most important aspect of a theme is that it must speak to you.”

For example, nature comes to life in this group of photos recommended for pairing by PrintedArt’s team of curators. The photos, Rebecca Akporiaye’s “Australian Pelicans,” Lee Rentz’s cleverly composed mountain landscape, and Al Vanderlyn’s dense, mysterious trees inspire an appreciation of the beauty that exists in the natural world and present a seamless theme for display in any home or office. 

If you would like to learn more about the company, visit www.PrintedArt.com or meet the staff in person at the Architectural Digest Home Design Show, March 17-20 at the Pier 94 exhibition center in New York.

LINK

PrintedArt.com

Photographer Jack Spencer Says Follow Your Own Muse

PHOTOGRAPHERS. ARTISTS. On my Great Output blog, I published a post about a remarkable photographer, Jack Spencer, who will have a solo exhibition at the Rebekah Jacob Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina throughout the month of March. Entitled “This Land,” the exhibition will feature precisely crafted archival pigment prints of landscapes that Spencer shot while traveling some of the back roads throughout the U.S. and Canada.  

Spencer, who resides in Nashville, TN, is a self-taught photographer whose work is included in many collections, including The Houston Museum of Fine Art, the Berkeley Museum of Art, and Elton John’s photography collection.

He regards printing as an integral part of his art, and says he “rarely allows the camera to dictate the final expression. For many works, the camera simply provides information and a starting point.”

Jack Spencer Photograph of Woodland Path, Cumberland 22
Cumberland 22, 20 x 24-in. Archival Pigment Print. ©Jack Spencer, www.jackspencer.com

I wasn’t the first writer to ask him what advice he would give to other photographers and artists who may be just starting out. He told me that his own career has taken a circuitous route that has been the result of many trials and errors “that have been fascinating in and of themselves. My mistakes gave me their own rewards…my successes gave me theirs.”

So, he advises photographers and artists to “Follow your own muse. Find your own distinct voice. And don’t ask anyone’s permission to be an artist.”

“Art involves honest expression. It should be something you do—not to make money or gain fame or notoriety or attention,” says Spencer. “Too many people construct obstacles to the ‘flow’ by second guessing what others will think or whether or not it will be successful or whether or not it is weird enough to set itself apart.” He believes that type of thinking has nothing to do with art.

He advises photographers to “Look for images that ‘shimmer’—not just on the print, but through the viewfinder as well. If an artwork shimmers, it has soul.”

Jack Spencer photograph of Two Wild Horses
Two Wild Horses, Cumberland Island, 22, 20 x 24-in. Archival Pigment Print. ©Jack Spencer, www.jackspencer.com

On his website, he explains why he believes artists should be infinitely curious and not be afraid to risk trying something new: “Playing it safe is for brain surgeons, not artists. Fear inhibits curiosity and creativity.”

When you visit his site, you’ll see a rich and wonderfully varied body of work.

“I do not believe that as an artist, I should repeat myself,” Spencer says.”I don’t think a writer should write the same novel over and over, or a musician should write the same song over and over. ..Our world is so vast and there is so much to explore.”

To see more of Jack Spencer’s beautiful work, visit: www.jackspencer.com

To learn more about the Rebekah Jacob Gallery and its in-depth focus on modern art and photography of the American South, visit www.rebekahjacobgallery.com

RELATED POSTS

Jack Spencer Prints To Be Shown at Rebekah Jacob Gallery in Charleston, SC

Smashwords Makes It Easy to Publish Your E-Book

WRITERS. Last week, I attended a terrific 90-minute webinar entitled “Do Your E-Book Right (and Start Making Money).” Presented as part of the Writer’s Digest Webinar Series, this particular session was led by the former publisher and editorial director of Writer’s Digest, Jane Friedman.

She described how e-books are providing new opportunities for aspiring authors to publish their work electronically at little or no cost. Friedman also talked about some of the services that can help you convert your manuscript into book formats that can be read on media tablets, smartphones, and computers.

One free service Friedman highlighted was Smashwords, which allows you to become a published author in minutes. You can use Smashwords to publish full-length novels, short fiction, essays, poetry, personal memoirs, non-fiction, and screenplays.

Smashwords will convert your manuscript into multiple e-book formats, making your book readable on most e-reading devices, including: the Amazon Kindle; the Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad; the Sony Reader; the Barnes & Noble nook; Android devices; and personal computers.

You can set your own price for the book and retain full control over sampling and marketing. You receive 85 percent of the net sales proceeds from your titles (70.5 percent for affiliate sales).

Based in Los Gatos, California, Smashwords was founded in 2007 by aspiring novelist Mark Coker. After he and his wife co-authored a book in 2002, they were unable to land a book deal even after two years of representation from one of the most respected literary agencies in New York City. Coker concluded that that in today’s digital age, authors should be able to publish whatever they want and readers should be able to decide for themselves what’s worth reading.

“Authors lucky enough to land a book deal rarely sell enough books to earn royalties beyond their initial $5,000 to $10,000 advance,” noted Coker. He learned that trade publishers were losing money on nearly 80 percent of the books they publish because of the high costs of production, warehousing, distribution, and marketing. Bookstores were often returning up to 50 percent of their inventory for a full refund.

With the launch of the iPad and other improved media tablets and e-reading devices, e-books are becoming increasingly important to the book-publishing industry.

Smashwords has already published more than 30,000 ebooks for more than 13,000 authors and independent publishers.

“By digitizing a book, authors and publishers can immortalize their works, making them permanently discoverable to new audiences,” explains Coker. “For authors and publishers of out-of-print books, e-books offer a great way to bring these works back to life.”

Smashwords Book Marketing Guide CoverPublishing e-books can be a great option for all sorts of entrepreneurial writers, including business professionals interested in publishing or test-marketing their content or ideas.

Of course once you publish your ebook, you will still need to promote it. To get started, download the free “Smashwords Book Marketing Guide.” This marketing primer presents an overview of how Smashwords helps promote your book, and then provides 26 simple do-it-yourself marketing tips.

Smashwords Style Guide Book CoverIf you want Smashwords to distribute your book to major e-book retailers such as the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobe, and Diesel, you will need to download and use the free Smashwords Style Guide. The guide provides step-by-step instructions for formatting the manuscript for your e-book.