Advice for Young...and Old?

Yesterday's Magnum Blog post gives advice to those starting out in photography from several members. Many provide the same basic suggestions but I think what Mikhael Subotzky had to say works for those aspiring to be a Magnum-type shooter:

Q: What advice would you give young photographers?

A: Stick to one project for a long time. And keep working on it through many stages of learning, even if it might feel finished. It's the only way to break through what I think are some vital lessons that need to be learned about story-telling and how to combine images.

What do you think is a long time? At what point do you quit a project if it isn't panning out or something better comes along? Should you have more than one project going at a time in order to create portfolio diversity?

All Work and No Blogging

I’ve been on a great project with photographer Jamie Williams producing new stills for the California Travel and Tourism Commission and their agency Mering-Carson. We covered dozens of locations in three weeks including Saint Helena, San Francisco, Big Sur, Hollywood, Joshua Tree, Newport Coast, La Jolla and Coronado.

Along the way we had fun, a little rain, very long days, the pleasure of working with wonderful clients, talent and crew members... plus the chance to cover incredible places. Being busy is a good thing, except when it comes to keeping up a blog. Thanks for missing my posts just a little bit.

How to Untangle Book Proposals

Whatever your book is about, remember the idea has to be sold three times:

1. To the publisher or investor who will finance and produce your book,


2. To bookstores and fulfillment houses that will keep it in inventory,


3. To someone who will buy the book.

Proposals must illustrate exactly how you will communicate to the potential customer. If you have a concept that readers will buy, then the booksellers are more likely to pick it up from the publisher.

This endless loop can become a head scratcher, but there is a way to get it right. Create your proposal as a PowerPoint presentation for your customers. As you move through the slides, are the readers pulling out their wallets before you finish? If so, then the acquiring editor and the bookseller in the same audience will take notice and follow suit.

You will still need to have many other proposal elements developed in order to make the first sale. But if the main impact of your proposal proves you can make the last sale, you significantly increase your chances of landing a great publishing deal.

What's the Deep Web All About?

A while back, I mentioned The Deep Web, and how most all photo researchers know how to use it when it comes to finding images. Several people asked me what that is all about so I thought I'd explain a little more.

The Deep Web has also been called the Invisible Web, Deepnet or the Hidden Web. It is not the commonly seen Web that is driven (indexed/crawled) by search engines. According to some reports, the Deep Web is estimated to be several orders of magnitude larger than its counterpart, known as the surface Web.

What all this means is that the Deep Web provides a way to find databases on the Internet. Researchers can access any topic, such as photography as a broad category and then on to wildlife photography as more specific and so on as they drill down to find databases dedicated to imagery of their current research subject.

Since it is invisible, you will have to do some sleuthing to find it ;-). Give it a try sometime. And thanks for asking!

More Free Tips!

If you haven't been listening to the radio shows on Inside Digital Photo, now is great time to head over there! It's all free, and you'll get the latest news, in-depth interviews, product reviews, live event coverage and tips featuring special guests. Host Scott Sheppard interviewed me for his Oct 4th program where I give some tips and insights about how to develop and market book projects. The show is about 40 minutes long, and I'm in the second half around 19 minutes if you want to slide ahead.

Pay Isn't the Best, But...

Today I discovered Vewd, "a documentary photography magazine continuing the tradition of storytelling through a visual medium."

I sense that founder Matt Blalock is honestly passionate about photoj. Overall, Vewd is well done and provides another decent platform for image story circulation. My only hesitation is the exposure of your ideas without very much return, unless you bang the hell out of your page clicks. From their FAQs (emphasis mine):

Question: Do I get paid?

Answer: Of course! If we choose your work and feature it, we pass on to you a large portion of our advertising income. We wouldn’t be able to have a site without the advertisers and we couldn’t have it without you! Pay isn’t the best, but we like to think it beats giving your work away. We pay you depending on how many people look at your gallery. Our current rate is $2.50/1000 views - we pay via PayPal or a check monthly. There is a minimum balance of $35 for a PayPal payment and $50 for a check.

Is it clear enough that per click payment is calculated via unique views? I hope if you click on Morgan Hagar's photo here, he will get some cash!

How to Hit a Nerve

Write (photograph) what you know about is good advice but you may know more about something than you first realize. When it comes to subject matter, I like to ask photographers what they feel gives them “authority” to publish on their proposed topic. I’m interested to know about your significant credentials, time spent on the body of work and influential people attached to the project. Equally important to me is your curiosity, passion and intimate connection to the subject. I want to make sure we can convince publishers that you are the very best person to take up this topic.

Case in point: A photographer who is also a parent is certainly qualified to do a photo project about children. Regardless of your parental role, you have a basic physiological component which automatically connects you to your offspring. This causes you to become an authority on children on some level. The key is to take that authority and kick it into a project idea that is so strong it can carry your project beyond just your amazing shooting style with young people.

To create a successful photo book, all of the proposal elements (message, text, design, photographs, visual style, production values, marketing hook, endorsements, etc.) must be perceived as having the potential to touch a common nerve with the intended audience. Defining your audience completes the strength of your proposal.

What if you aren't a parent but have built your career around taking pictures of children? One of my earlier posts with an anecdote about my grandfather I titled, “Chase your DNA.” That is a narrative theme any photographer with an interest in family photography could run the distance with. Equally, a publisher can see the potential to expand the concept into many directions for a comprehensive book: history of the family portrait, ancestry mixes, family trees with a few broken limbs, skeletons in the closet, then and now comparisons of family properties, similarities in the facial features between old generations and newer ones, and so on.

Coming soon: The proposal as a communication tool.

Interview with a Consultant (Me!)

There is a new interview with me on After Capture this week about what it means to be a photographer's consultant.

Part I: What She Does
Part II: How She Helps

Thanks to host Ethan G. Salwen for asking me to particpate!

A Great Recipe

Please take a look at Masterfile's promotional magazine, Green World. Each spread in this 32-page booklet has depth and surprise. Note their seamless marketing focus on their own products while encouraging mainstream green support. This work is powerful and inspiring on many levels. They have blended the talents of editors, writers, photographers, designers, programmers and marketers into an enjoyable experience for any audience.

Topical Use Only

The bulk of my experience is producing and editing documentary books but I have also worked on plenty of single subject titles (i.e., cookbooks, gardens, tiles, wedding design, cars). In either case, the proposal’s topic must initially be perceived as having the potential to connect with an identifiable audience beyond people with an interest in your fantastic photography.

Here is an example. Your proposal is to photograph behind-the-scenes of the next Boston Marathon; from runners chomping down big carb dinners to a cancer patient undergoing chemo treatment the night before. This is a lukewarm idea, so what will make your proposal stronger?

The right combination of the three elements I mentioned yesterday. First, the linking of the concept via the proposed title and subtitle to topics of immense interest: aging and health. Then, to give your proposal additional legs, the first visual must subliminally suggest that hopes and dreams do come true.

Suddenly with these simple improvements of the idea, the proposed book is not just for people who actually run marathons or live in Boston. It has opened up to anyone with a desire to overcome a handicap, to find inspiration to change, to win, to find inner strength and conquer the impossible.

On deck: Do people ever ask for your advice about your proposed topic?

more animals

Serious Times; Serious Posts

My next few posts will be dedicated to addressing what I believe is important information about photo book publishing, my professional passion. I am now channeling my frustration over what I felt was thin advice in PDN’s September Book Issue into mini help sessions. Writing proposals is a darling topic of interest and a fine place to start.

Is it a Book?

I have read hundreds of book proposals. When I was an editor at Harper Collins, we received dozens of proposals every week. The vast majority were eliminated for the sole reason they were not books. In other words, the concepts were quickly identified as feature articles, public space exhibitions, photographs of a local event only of interest to that community, conceptual images suitable for calendars or greeting cards, grand schemes beyond financial reality, tabloid fodder or egoist attempts from the photographer you barely broke even on last season who now feels a showcase of their outtakes is in high demand.

To become a photo book, your proposal must have a clear premise and a driving force bigger than the initial concept. This must be expressed right away and here is how to do it effectively.

The book’s proposed title must easily translate into a category. The determination of category is critical to booksellers; they are the ones who decide where to place your book in the store. If you aren’t sure where your book belongs, neither will those who face these decisions daily.

The logline (subtitle or short description) is where to reveal the book’s driving force. Remember the title and logline presented are proposed. As presented they may never see the light of day. Still, the more expert help you seek in getting this part right, the better your chances. Title elements should stand out so sometimes creating a professional logo or branding element is helpful. Also, be aware that subtitles are often omitted from lists and bookseller order forms, but for proposal purposes, use a subtitle to strengthen your idea. Proposals rarely look anything like the finished product but we have to imagine that they could.

Consider the latest book from A Day in the Life veteran author/publisher David Cohen:

What Matters: The world’s preeminent photojournalists and thinkers depict essential issues of our time.

The main title is strong. The subtitle links the title's intrigue and **pow** announces who will be the book's receptive audience. If your proposal only consisted of a two part title (and you aren't David), would an influential person ask to hear and see more?

And then…the first photograph in the proposal must be brilliantly tied to the title and logline. Even though the entire book could, and oftentimes does, morph into something else, in my opinion it is these three elements (title, subtitle, first photograph) along with their independent and collectively unique energy that determines if your proposal will be considered or not.

Coming up: How turn your topic into a great photo book proposal.

Blow Up or Grow Up

What a crabby day it was yesterday with my frustration over PDN's articles, a stock market meltdown and photographs of political candidates turned into horror shows on a magazine’s expense account. Navigate on your own, if you must, to Jill's manipulator site to check out her latest handiwork that is spawning heated comments from every corner of the photo industry. We can bet memos are furiously circulating that explain how portrait lighting for name clients should only be from the top and left in the manner of history’s great master painters.

Everyone is brain stretching for the best headlines; any substance beyond that is immaterial. As long as you hit a news cycle, claim a million hits in one day or show up as a hot topic on the coolest photo blogs, it would seem you've made it in this business. Really, this is getting pathetic. Tomorrow, I'll return to actually trying to help people as much as I can.

We Don't Get Fooled Again

PDN's "The Book Issue" arrived last week with headlines promising to bring insights into the mysterious world of photo book publishing. From Perfect Book Proposals to 7 Rules for making a book you can be proud to show and to revealing 15 of the Most Influential names in the biz, readers were eager to plunge into articles that would crack the code for landing coffeetable book mega deals.

For unpublished photographers there couldn’t have been even the remotest “Ah Ha” moment while reading Edgar Allen Beem’s seven steps piece:

1. Have excellent scans
2. Hire a designer
3. Get a sample of the paper from the printer
4. Go on press
5. Be ready to give control of the cover to the publisher
6. Don’t submit photos you don’t want published
7. Don’t get into a shouting match or “throw attitude.” (I note for this final tip, Beem allots only two sentences and it seems to be the most critical of all.)

Jessica Gordon admits in the short opening of her article on the perfect pitch that “…there’s no exact recipe” for a proposal. From there, she writes carefully about three impressive projects but none of which are surprising in terms of being published. We hear more of the same: landing a deal is less about the proposal and more about the notability of the photographer, personal connections, imagery excellence and marketplace value of the subject matter.

Next we get to the Influentials. While the cover promises this will be people—hey, maybe people we can actually talk with or find through our LinkedIn Network—unfortunately, when we reach the article, the inside headline now includes organizations along with people, and they “shaping” photography book publishing. Well, that certainly opens the topic to a few extra signatures. So our people list now mentions a cool bookstore owner in Colone, a few foreign indie publishing houses, the publisher at Aperture who used to be an editor and probably doesn’t take calls from us anymore, an award-winning London designer and so on. It is interesting that not one literary agent makes the list, that Amazon does (huh?), and “Photographers Who Self-Publish” manages to squeeze in (let’s note there are many companies in this category with ads in the issue). Actually, I think PDN writers think Martin Parr is the most influential person because he is mentioned like fifteen times in this article!

The issue’s most helpful bit of information is found in Holly Hughes’ editor letter: “Photo book publishing is full of paradoxes.” PDN’s online story, “Marketing Moves that Sell Books” by Kelly Ebbels is leaps better because here is the heart of the entire matter.

The Image Buyer's Mindset

In May, an opinion on Val Gelineau's Blog is one we've heard bantering around for awhile: "Why pay $500.00 for an image when I can buy one for a few dollars?" Do editors believe that if image history isn’t that important, why pay for it? Are we at a point where we are going to just let this mindset become acceptable? Is this why PhotoShelter announced yesterday they will soon stop licensing stock photography on behalf of the shooters they serve?

A photographer friend just received her quarterly sales statement from a big agency. The amount was so much drastically lower than the previous quarter, she thought accounting had made a mistake! The agency's response was something like this: "We had good sales in this quarter, but the average price per image has dropped by even more than 25% because Getty and the like are dropping prices plus the new microstock sales are so low. We had some big deals but these are many images at a low fees. This is not necessarily why you have a low payment, but with the stock industry in such tough times, it would be partially the reason for a decline."

It often feels gloomy and doomy yet there are solutions. The demand for new photography is just as great if not greater than before. If you are willing to compromise a little in tough times and know how to provide clients with usage rights they find attractive, you will keep working. Meanwhile, I purchased this image from Fotolia for Blog use. The least I can do for the photographer is to provide a link to his/her/their website.

More Things You Might Not Know

1. The most successful photographers don’t turn over their entire take to the client.
2. They also don't publish their best frames until years later.
3. SEO is not a new corporate title acronym; it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
4. There is something called the Deep Web and most photo researches use it to find images.
5. I accept credit cards, checks or EFTs.
6. NPOs can and do absolutely pay for photography.
7. On average, 20 percent of your images will bring you 80 percent of your income.
8. The gas tank icon with a hose on the left or right does NOT always tell you which side your car’s tank is on. Darn it!

This is Distinguished

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate to receive a private showing of Verso’s Limited Edition of the Magnum Founders Platinum Portfolio at Serbin Communications in Santa Barbara. Thanks to Elizabeth Owen for showing me this rare project that is impressive in every category of fine art presentation. When she put on a fresh pair of lint-free gloves before opening the solid walnut box containing the book and platinum prints, I knew I was in for something special.

The investment at the pre-publication price was $12,500, and I believe they have six editions remaining to be sold of the original 75 that were assembled. In an atmosphere of content oversaturation and crowd sourcing, important photography presented with taste and care is holding value.

What Pressure?

The last few days I've been writing about an insignificant issue: To have or have not comments on a Blog. Then I ran into technical difficulties!

There will come a time, most likely during the biggest shoot of your life, when technical problems arrive like mosquitoes on your son's banana-smeared face. Your sim card won’t register, your notebook isn’t booting, your extension cord is too short, and that new assistant kicked the hair light you spent too much time positioning. Need I go on? Your subjects are twitchy, the magic light is over, the stylist is on her PDA writing a new invoice, and your fingers are swollen. Whatever: Something is broken.

So just how Zen will you be in a technical crisis? First, broadcast that you need to tweak something. Don’t explain, don’t complain and above all else, don’t apologize. Just make your announcement with big enthusiasm! Then quickly set up an amusement. You will have better ideas, but I am talking about simple and fast. Throw a hat in the middle of the room/street/studio. Dole out some playing cards and challenge folks to see who can flip a card right into the hat. This silly time waster will hold folks' attention for about 8.5 minutes. If you need more time to fix your problem, divvy up the parking meter change and let the betting begin. Still not ready to shoot? No table limit.

Get up now to add a roll of quarters and a deck of cards to your Pelican Top Loader.

Stand Tall

The annual Tall Ship weekend was in full swing yesterday at my nearby port of call, Dana Point. I roamed around the harbor and enjoyed the reenactment events, buccaneer costumes, booming cannons and colorful talking birds.

This also gives me a chance to mention that my good friend and owner of Nature Picture Library, Helen Gilks, recently acquired and has revamped Bluegreen Pictures where you can find all things marine! Helen and her staff are actively growing the collection. If you shoot in this category, don’t hesitate to inquire about representation. I also encourage buyers to bookmark this site for excellent coverage of ocean life and more.

Gadget Day

I hesitate to post something about items I assume everyone already knows about. Take Google Alerts for example. Surely you all have a Google Alert for your name? Apparently not! Yesterday someone admitted to me that they compulsively conduct searches on their name. I used to do that, too. But I told him about two years ago I started using Google Alerts. He had no idea what I was talking about.

Now I am going to tell you about this cool gadget that I previously assumed most photographers either have or want to have. I certainly want one, but it's not available for my camera model (Canon 40D) yet. I wrote to photographer Joanne Williams asking if I could mention it on my Blog (yes, it's a Blog because I take comments). She said to go right ahead and chat it up!

Screen Shades for the LCD panels on digital Cameras.

At last! You can see the LCD panel on your digital camera even on sunny and glary days! Also protects the UV effects of the sun on the screen. $25 each (add $1.00 for shipping and handling).

Magnifier: (optional) Has the ability to add a 3X magnifier, which quickly snaps on the back of the Screen Shade for easier editing of each image. $25 each (add $1.00 for postage).

Models: Canon 5-D, 30D, MarkII 1DN, Nikon D2x, D200, D2h

Here is the ordering info page. Thanks to Kris Mortensen for her quick reply to my request to feature the LCD Screen Shade on my Blog.