The Soth is blogging again at The Little Brown Mushroom Blog and has declared Riley & His Story by Monica Haller to be the book of the year. Here’s a video he made:
It’s great to have blogs dedicated to photography books, because I love to buy a few each year but my office is no longer near Photo Eye or the MOMA bookstore like they once were so it’s difficult to make a decision what to buy.
“The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys,”
Sir William Preece, chief engineer at the British Post Office, 1878.
“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
H.M. Warner, Warner Bros., 1927.
I like this response by Neil Binkley of Wonderful Machine to a question about self promotion:
As someone who has reviewed so many outstanding portfolios and self-promotional pieces, what distinguishes the very best?
Certainly, the “wow” factor of an unorthodox or expensive portfolio/promotion is always something that catches my attention. However, if that “wow” isn’t met by “wow #2,” ie. excellent photography presented in a cohesive form, then I feel sorry that the photographer spent so much money putting lipstick on a pig.
The interview is on a blog promoting a book called, No Plastic Sleeves: The Complete Portfolio Guide for Photographers and Designers (here) that I found via, Wonderful Machine Blog.
The book looks great and the blog seems like it will become a wealth of information and inspiration for portfolios and promos.
Here’s another quote from an interview with Art Director Robin Milgrim, a recent PDN Self-Promo Judge:
What do you think is the most challenging and rewarding part of being a judge for an awards competition, such as the PDN Self-Promo Awards?
There are so many talented people out there. When reviewing work for the photo-annuals I am most struck by how many people do not understand their audience, or how to distinguish themselves. At this level everyone is good, but only few are great. It’s easy to choose the winner’s. I am saddened by how many very capable talented people do not understand whom they are talking to. When submitting work for these competitions, keep in mind that the judges, as well as those that will hire you, see an enormous amount of work everyday. They devour creative. They have seen it all, and are hungry for something that breaks with convention.
I’m actually phasing [E-blasts] out of my marketing plans for the coming year. The open rates and click through rates are down considerably…click through used to be almost 20%, now I’m lucky to get 2 or 3%. And all the art buyers I talk to are actively opting out and/or deleting without viewing.
2010 is all about getting personal with our marketing. E-blasts don’t fit into that.
From an email discussion with a studio producer. Used with permission.
Folio Magazine has their annual Magazine and Media Predictions for 2010 (here) and there are a few choice quotes I’ve highlighted below. I’ve got a few of my own predictions:
Slightly down is the new up.
We will see fire sale buyouts (a la Business Week) of a few big titles rather than shuttering (a la Gourmet).
More photographers will get into the workshop, book writing and teaching side of the photography business. This is proving by all appearances to be super lucrative, but will get very crowded and competitive as people with an impressive oeuvre enter the market.
Photographers who market with ideas and innovation will be snapped up by marketers who need fresh ideas and innovation.
Product photography will heat up as companies realize products online need great photography to convert online shoppers into buyers.
Local markets will go red hot as local online markets get competitive and companies that normally needed no photos for a yellowpage ad now need lots of photography for a nice looking website.
Video goes nuclear, because nothing is commissioned anymore without video and hey, “doesn’t that camera shoot video too.”
Web 2.0 ideas will give way to Web 3.0 which is fundamentally the joining of content with social tools.
–Jim Spanfeller, president and CEO, The Spanfeller Group (formerly CEO of Forbes.com)
Staff sizes will rebound as managers realize that staffs designed for print can’t do print and a whole host of new initiatives on top of that, at least not effectively.
–Tony Silber, general manager, FOLIO: and Audience Development
Only one or two magazines for most major vertical markets will survive.
There will be many changes at the top of editorial mastheads with more e-community management skills supplementing traditional journalistic skills for the winners.
Print will become richer, better paper will be used, graphics will improve, quality of content will improve and distribution/circulation numbers will drop.
–Don Pazour, CEO, Access Intelligence
One hopeful breakthrough: the four color e-reader. It will be really helpful. Some of the big publications will probably get a few hundred thousand digital e-reader subscribers paying anywhere from $10 to $50. This will bring in anywhere from $3 million to $15 million in subscriber revenue. Unfortunately, some of those same magazines have seen their ad revs drop by $100 million. Get the picture.
–Keith Kelly, “Media Ink” columnist, New York Post
Plenty more to see (here).
“Only the mediocre are always at their best.”
–Jean giraudoux
Publisher Bonnier worked with design agency BERG to come up with the Mag+ tablet:
via, Gizmodo
I like this guy already because he says the page flipping is lame (my word) and scrolling is more natural. I also like the idea where you find the things you’re interested in reading in an image based environment and then when you want to drill down in a story the images fade back and it becomes a pure reading experience. This allows the device to be quite small. Of course, photography is so critical to the future of media, I can’t overstate how well it works to communicate ideas quickly and helps you navigate a ton of information.
The only critical piece of the puzzle left here (besides building the damn thing) is the price. This is where the magazine industry will inevitably drop the ball because they’d quickly like to get back to the large profits they were used to. I think cell phone pricing will be critical for mass adoption. The device should be $100 or even free and then users will pay for a tiered number of magazines or articles to look at each month and lock into one and two year plans. On the other hand if they want to charge $800 for the device the yearly subscription for a magazine should be $1. The cost of making a copy and distributing it is zero. I would pay the dollar to have access to a bunch of magazines where I might read a couple articles a year or only look at the pictures. Sort of a newsstand type of arrangement.
The publishing industry is looking a little brighter these days. Just in time.
thx, anthea.
“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit,” Hemingway confided to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934. “I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”
via Copyblogger.
A little while back I linked to a survey Jim M. Goldstein was conducting (here) to see how photographers are using Social Media. The results are in (here) and can be seen in this slide presentation:
We all now know the value of social media in strengthening a community or bringing together groups of people with similar interests but the big question hanging out there is always “can it bring me new business.” Certainly, it’s been proven that you can build your reputation as a very connected photographer online and garner assignments because of this and you can also sell products back into the community you’ve created, but what about your average professional photographer looking to add blogging, tweeting or facebook as a component to their overall marketing? This survey doesn’t seem to prove that it works (Jim says the potential is there), but I do think we are trending this way faster than we think, just not the way you might expect. It’s less about your connections buying something from you in the 1000 true fans model and more about them spreading the word about something you’re working on or buying into a product your been assigned to shoot.
Looking at it from a magazines perspective I think that hiring 20 photographers and writers each month who are each connected to 1000 people who might then each be connected to 100 people makes a lot of sense as a consideration in the hiring decision.
I FEEL THAT the camera finds its main importance as a recording and communicating mechanism, and I should like to see it develop until it takes its place with the pencil and the typewriter as an instrument of our everyday language. Photography should be taught in the schools along with penmanship as part of postwar education’s expansion.
It is possible to perfect the camera to the point where it will become an automatic instrument which will focus, expose and process the film by the mere push of a button. In this way we will be able to realize a medium possessing an immediacy between seeing and recording unachieved by any other art.
via A Photo Student
Of all the things that make up a magazine, paper buying is probably the least understood. It’s also the most expensive line item in the monthly production of magazines. The quality of the paper was always a huge gripe in the Art Department, but I would have gladly taken a cut in quality for an increase in the photography budget.
Dead Tree Edition has a post called “The 10 Most Common Paper-Purchasing Mistakes” and I think it may even be possible to apply some of these cost savings ideas and not take a hit on paper quality. Wouldn’t that be awesome. People working in management positions at magazines owe it to themselves to understand the jobs of the other people in the office who have a stake in the monthly budget pie. And, who knows maybe some day you’ll find yourself creating a magazine on your own and need to buy paper. More insight (here).
“some problems don’t have answers. That is the flaw in the ‘they will find a business model’ logic. As if business models grow on trees. Don’t assume there is always an answer.”
via Daily Intel.
Mediaite picked up a story that Perez Hilton ran about Men’s Health using the same coverlines from 3 years ago (here) on their December issue and they have a quote from Zinczenko defending the practice.
Most magazines recycle coverlines. Maybe there’s a little rewording or maybe they just lift one off an old cover, but it’s not unusual to refer to a cover book for inspiration when writing lines. I’ve heard that Time Inc. has a book where words, colors and cover subjects have sales numbers attached to them (that’s why you see so many Jesus covers on Time) for further insight into how things will perform on the newsstand.
The problem is not the recycled coverlines, it’s the recycled content. There are only a limited number of ways you can say the same thing over and over again and magazines keep reaching for the same high performing content to keep the ship afloat a little bit longer. For a magazine like Men’s Health they actually create content specifically for the newsstand and in many cases it’s fluff so they can write a line that contains the magic words “sex, abs, best body, ultimate….” Rodale is notorious for fluffy coverlines that have very little payoff inside (not to mention fake numbers). I think we’re all very aware by now that magazines are digging their own grave.
In a interview with Blackbook (here) George Lois doesn’t pull any punches on the state of magazine design today. I was at the SPD awards ceremony when he received a lifetime achievement award of sorts and remember getting so charged up after listening to him talk and watching a video Fred Woodward shot. Of course once back to reality, in an office filled with editors who wanted to cram information in every nook and cranny of the magazine that energy soon drained out. I can’t wait for magazines to stop trying to become websites and go back to being magazines again. George agrees:
“Magazine design is almost an oxymoron with most magazines today. It goes for even a great magazine like Vanity Fair. If you get even one inch of white space to breath you’re lucky. Everybody’s just packing in the information. Most magazines you pick up — you choke to death.”
“They say, ‘People buy magazines to read, for information.’ Well, you buy a magazine not only for that but so you can have exciting visual experiences. They try to jam words and pictures on every square-inch of the page like they’re working on a Web site.”
“Look at Vogue. Oh my God. Vogue and Harper’s once were very well designed magazines. I mean they were exciting to look at. You could not give a shit about fashion and be excited by the whole look of the magazine. You look at Vogue now: it’s not even designed. What a difference. You pick up a Vogue back in the days of [Condé Nast’s Alexander] Lieberman and those guys, and you look at it now, and it’s a disgrace.”
“Very few magazines do you look through — and I’m not talking as a designer, I’m talking as a normal person — do you look through something and you open a spread and it takes your breath away a little bit…
“I know, you’re pressured by your editor. If not the editor, the publisher: ‘Look at all this wasted space here.’ Blah, blah, blah. ‘Your readers want information.’
“Well, oh shit. Go fuck yourself.
“Meanwhile you go to a newstand, there’s about 200 magazines that all look the same. They got pictures of somebody — some asshole — I’ll never understand how editors and publishers think — showing just a famous person with blurbs all over their face. I’ll never understand why they think that would be something people would want to buy. I don’t get it.
“It’s a joke. A couple of years all the editors and publishers [at ASME] invited me to come down and kick their asses about covers. I go down. Standing ovation. ‘Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow!’ Nothing changed. It’s all bullshit.”
“The thing that’s important to know is that you never know. You’re always sort of feeling your way.”
“I never have taken a picture I’ve intended. They’re always better or worse.”
“It’s important to take bad pictures. It’s the bad ones that have to do with what you’ve never done before. They can make you recognize something you hadn’t seen in a way that will make you recognize it when you see it again.”
— Diane Arbus
Murdoch admits that “The old business model based mainly on advertising is dead.” Digital ads cannot support newspaper journalism. “This is not going to change, even in a boom,” he warns.
via MinOnline.
Via, It’s Nice That.