Shoot Square
Roger Ballen, the American photographer of South African weirdness says that he shoots square, because you don't have to choose between landscape or portrait and that's one less choice to make.
Roger Ballen, the American photographer of South African weirdness says that he shoots square, because you don't have to choose between landscape or portrait and that's one less choice to make.
A well known photographer once told me that an extremely well known and influential gallerist had told him that the road to success was to find one's niche and then to simply produce work that way (think babies in "cute" dresses or Weimaraners or overly Photoshoped celebrities or whatever else you can think of).
And snapshots from old family albums have a habit of looking good because they are more than snapshots: people took more time making them than they do now, people wore better clothes than they do now, people didn't necessarily know what was expected of them in front of the camera and if they did, they performed their task with more dignity, conviction and self-belief than they do now.
Seven years after the first MP3 blog (Fluxblog) arrived on the scene, EMI Australia has unveiled what it's calling "the first major label blog" in the world. And as far as we can tell, that's an accurate description. Apparently, no major label had thought to promote its music through its own blog until now.
Maybe they shouldn’t, but most people do judge a book by its cover. In fact, cover design is one of the most obvious and effective strategies publishers use to promote their titles.
Bruce Livingston, recently retired from Getty images started Istockphoto by putting some of his images on it and trading them with others. Surprised by its popularity, he decided to charge, not really to make money, but to pay for his hosting bills. He thus invented microstock. Another ” failed” photographer, Jon Oringer, started Shutterstock with 30,000 of his own images, mostly because he couldn’t get accepted in a traditional stock agency.
Contemporary photography still seems heavily weighted to what American Photo editor at large Jean Jacques Naudet calls “plasticians”—the artists who use photographic processes and technology to create utterly fabricated imagery.
I see great work from pro photographers who could actually use the money to achieve great work. What is wrong with you ? is this the kind of photography you really want to promote ? Henri Cartier Bresson must be having a tsunami in his grave as I can assure you, that was NOT the reason he created Magnum. Not for that kind of nombrilistic, uber self-absorded, hyper refflective intello photography.
The end of print (as we know it)
Several people at Colophon2009 asked to see my talk again so here it is.
There was a time when a book could be sold purely because its author had been to distant climes and had returned to tell of the exotic sights he had seen. That author was Marco Polo, and the time was the thirteenth century.