Okay, so anyone who reads my blog via a feed reader has probably gotten the hint that a print sale is in the works. I was doing some testing, making sure that my Google Checkout button was working, and my post went live before I was ready for it to. I’ve since deleted it, but it may still be in your feed reader.
I should have the details worked out in the next couple days, and as soon as I’m ready, I’ll go live with it. Stay tuned. And sorry for any confusion!
Too long ago for me to only be writing about it now, Patrick Romero sent me a copy of his self-published 28 famous views of los angeles. My delay in writing about the book should in no way be seen as a commentary on the work itself—it’s beautiful, the kind of book I aspire to producing myself someday. In 28 photographs—a mix of portraits and landscapes and street photography—he finds a way to evoke the essence of Los Angeles, which is no easy task.
I had my copy sitting on my desk. S. and I were on our way out the door, and I thought he was right behind me. When I realized he wasn’t, I went back to my office and found him sitting in my chair, looking at the book. “This is good,” he said. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Word is, Patrick may have a few copies left for sale. Snag one while they’re still available.
Can’t get enough of me? Check out this interview on You Call This Photography? A big thank-you to the guys at Farting on Thunder for asking the questions. I had a lot of fun answering them.
Last week I took my first steps toward editorial photography, by sending samples of my work to photo editors at five magazines that I would want to work for and, more important, where I could see my work fitting in. I know it’ll take follow-up and persistence to get into these places, but I specifically chose just five—as opposed to sending out a blast of hundreds of promo cards—because I want to build relationships with these editors and their publications, and that takes effort. I sent handwritten notes to each editor, with five or six 5-x-7-inch archival prints of my work—prints I know may have already ended up in the recycling bin, but ones that had some chance, I think, of at least being stuck up on a bulletin board. My next step is to follow up in a month with a few more images. And it’ll go on from there.
In my other life, as a freelance book editor, I’ve done well for myself—getting plenty of work from a core group of clients—by working to foster those relationships. Part of it, of course, is just that you want to work. But a bigger part of it, for me, is that I want to work for people I like and respect, and publications that I admire. As an editor, I’ve had the occasional one-off project—some publisher calls me up and asks if I can work on such-and-such book on a rush schedule and politely haggles with me over my rate—and while it’s nice to pick up a little extra cash here or there, those aren’t the publishers or projects I remember. The ones I care about are the ones that I’ve worked with for a decade, people who respect my work and whose books I actually like. That’s what I’m looking to do with my photography. It isn’t just about adding a magazine to my client list—it’s about the long haul.
I also sent my book to a rep I met a few months ago. She represents some photographers I really respect, and she’s given me some excellent advice—advice I put to use when I decided which magazines to contact and how to do it. I want this woman to be my rep someday. Why? Because a) I like the diversity of photographers she represents, b) she gets the interplay between fine art and editorial/commercial and she encourages that in her stable of photographers, and c) I had a ton of fun talking with her when we met. Again, it’s all about building relationships, so I e-mailed her to ask if I could share my book with her, she said she’d like to see it, and it’ll be delivered to her today. Do I think anything significant will come out of this one experience? Nope. I think I’ll need to work at this for at least a couple years, continuing to show her my work, continuing to produce work and put it out there (in galleries, in contests, in magazines), continuing to seek and heed her advice. And then, maybe, if she has as much fun dealing with me as I have dealing with her, she’ll rep me.
In the meantime, back to my day job. Today’s assignment: Finish copyediting a travel book on Egypt. I keep hearing the Bangles in my mind.
I decided today, in the midst of procrastinating work that I was supposed to do today because I procrastinated doing it on Friday (still five and a half hours left in the day—I’ll finish it), that I wanted to play around with the layout of my blog. I moved the sidebars over to the left, and I increased the width of the posts. So far so good. Then I decided that since I have this increased width to work with, I really should just make all the images 500 pixels wide, upload them myself to my server (instead of using Blogger’s image upload utility, which creates two versions of each image—a small one that appears in the posts, and a larger one that you can get to by clicking on the smaller version), and have just one version of the file (not the small and large ones previously used). Again, lovely.
But this is how anal I am: A sane person would implement this image-sizing strategy going forward. I, however, am not sane. I don’t like the fact that some of the images will be 400 pixels wide and some will be 500 pixels wide. I don’t like the fact that some of the images you’ll be able to click on to get a larger version and some you won’t. I want things consistent. So I’ve just spent the past hour resizing all the images for all the posts in the month of April. I’m going to have to take this one month at a time—it would take me days to do the whole blog.
Why can’t I procrastinate this kind of crap instead of the stuff that pays the bills?
I’m a huge fan of Simon Roberts’s Motherland—it was my favorite photo book of 2007—so I was absolutely thrilled to read on Hipshots about Simon’s new project, We English, and the accompanying Web site and blog. I’m long overdue for a trip to England, and as I’m skint, the closest I’ll get to being there is reading a blog that makes use of the word whilst. Hats off to Simon for braving the high petrol prices (currently £1.10/liter, or approximately US$8.25/gallon) in a motor home, sponsorship or not.
