Sunday Readings

+ I read this over at Aline's blog Lenscratch. Aline is a photographer and an instructor here in Los Angeles and enjoy her blog where she profiles emerging or undiscovered photographers - many whom are West Coast photographers. Thought I'll help her out by passing this along.

1. I am looking for imagery taken by fathers of their sons or fathers (already have Shawn Records, Timothy Archibald, B. Blake Andrews, Shawn Gust, Philip Toledano, Doug Du Bois, Todd Deutsch, Byron Wolf). If you are familiar with a photographer that is working in this way, I would love to know about them.

2. If you applied to Review Santa and did NOT get in, I'd still love to feature your work--please send me the body of work you submitted, a bio and statement..and if I can fit you in, I will! This idea came from Aaron Cohen and it should prove interesting!

Her original post here

+ Over at Matthew Jordan Smith's blog, he shares some of his Promotional & Marketing methods. He talks of "The new images were not shot thinking about what clients may want to see, but what I love to do" and I believe that to be true. In my early days, my style was more all over the place trying to figure out what THEY wanted. Now days I make sure to show in my portfolio what I WANTED. A few months ago I had shown my book to a director. It composed of two sections. One had special meaning to me and is more personal. He immediately picked out that section.

Matthew also talks about timing of sending out promos..."I never want to send out promotions at the end of the week. In New York City some people start the weekends on Friday so I never want to send my promotions out on Thursday or Friday.". That's the great thing about the internet - now you can learn from other photographers about what works and what doesn't (though that is subjective to what market it is) and I remember in the early-mid 90s that my main information about photographers was through PDN magazine. I also read up on American photo, Pop Photo but PDN meant more with their articles with working photographers. In any case, I hear the timing thing before in different forums and people that Tues/Wed is a better time - which makes sense. Monday is right after the weekend so everyone is playing catch-up. Thur & Fri is close to the weekend and where it gets busier - everyone wants things done before the weekend. Same thing about doing email promos over the weekend - it'll just get lost in the mess of emails on Monday - unless, you already know the person.

+ Other links :

sexyexecs.blogspot.com
Yes, a blog of corporate executive photos and their tag line is "the finest corporate photography" lol !

thephotobook.wordpress.com
Ah, a blog dedicated to reviewing photo books ! This I like :)

UPDATE (6/29) Speaking of photo books, this morning, I ran across on The Online Photographer, his list of what he considered influential photo books of the past 50 years.

Assistant Managing Editor Michele McNally (she manages photography for New York Times) answers questions about photography and the NYT. here Honestly I wish it was longer. Enjoyed finding out the nitty gritty in the NYT photo dept.