Author: Leslie

Catching up with the Social Media world, here’s another way to stay in touch. I hope we can start dialogues on the discussion page too.

Burns Auto Parts–Consultants’s Facebook Page

Promote Your Page Too

After getting through my extremely academically heavy Monday and Tuesday, yesterday I had the pleasure of going to an APA-SD event about SEO and social marketing for photographers. This evening I get to see Judy Herrmann at ASMP-SD–woo hoo! And ASMP posted the last of my SB2 videos on their blog.

After being so deeply in the books for months and months, it’s been great to connect with people again and to get my head more firmly in the photo realm.

In the future I plan on being more active here on this blog, as well as in the community. I’ve missed being a full part of the dialogue and am happy to be back in it more.

This guy is a professor at the law school I attend. I haven’t had a class with him yet, but I have had a few conversations with him. He’s terribly smart, funny, and rather like the Energizer Bunny.

What I didn’t know about him was his past life…as a photographer. Now I have to seek him out. Maybe I can take an independent study course with him focusing on photo IP. Hmmm…

Anyway, the article is about his work fighting IP piracy in Latin America. Lots of interesting facts, like the funding of terrorists via IP rip-offs.

So protect your IP and help defend liberty and democracy in a much more important way than you might ever have thought!

Heather Morton has a fabulous interview with Sylvain Dumais which all of you need to read. Don’t just look at the work (though that is worth seeing), but rather pay attention to what he is saying about the convergence of still and motion imagery.

He may be very right when he says that, in a few years, still-only photographers will be rare and struggling.

This is not a bad thing unless you choose to make it so. Your vision can transcend the still medium into motion, I’m betting. At the very least, exploring the possibilities will open up your mind to new ways of thinking creatively. The technology is not anywhere near as daunting as in the past.

If anything, the traditional technical videographers are going to be more threatened in this new world. Like when digital transformed still photography, the technicians without vision will be pushed out by the new breed who produce vision-based work.

I’m looking forward to seeing what a lot of you produce. This is an exciting time.

This is a brilliant idea. Spend $50 a month at local brick and mortar stores to help rebuild the economy. In so doing, in giving back to your own community, you also get the added benefit of getting out of your cubbyhole (studio/office) and reconnecting with humanity. You might even end up connecting with a client while you’re at it. (Thanks to Brandon Barr)

One of the classes I’m taking this (summer) term in law school is called Business Organizations; better known as BizOrgs. I just got out of my first class. The professor explained that at any law school, this class gets the reputation of being dry and tedious and he expressed his hope to make it as little of both as possible. He then went on to say that much of how we perceive the course is up to us, the individual students, because in his view, it isn’t dry or tedious at its heart. To slightly paraphrase him, he said, “BizOrgs is about, as the refrain from the famous song in Casablanca says, the fight for love and glory. It is, in other words, about creation.”

Wow. That really struck me. We don’t think about the business side of our businesses as being creative; but, if you shift your perception, there it is. Any business creates value and wealth and opportunities. Successful businesses are founded on the passion (love) for the product/service and the desire to succeed (glory).

So, the next time you feel bogged down in doing your books or filing your taxes, just hum As Time Goes By and remember, you are (still) creating.

Another reason to absolutely insist on advances! Chrysler owes a TON and do you think the agency vendors are going to really get paid?

A third video of me talking about marketing for photographers is now online at the ASMP Strictly Business blog. This time, I’m talking about other tools to consider.

I was recently talking with a photographer-friend here in SD about some significant changes in my life. I had been a bit down and while trying to help me through some rough bits he asked me about my plans, including whether I was going to join a law firm when I graduate. I couldn’t say “no” fast enough! Besides the dress code issues (I am not a conservative suit kind of woman), I couldn’t imagine not doing what I do now!

I do feel incredibly lucky about my professional life. That’s really important. Sure, there are days where it’s hard or the bank balance gets low, but overall, yeah I love my job.

How do you feel about yours? I mean overall–not just now when maybe things have been particularly slow. Here’s an interesting “quiz” (from the Harvard Biz folks) to give yourself a bit of a professional check-up.

I agree with the author that it is important to feel some relevance, happiness, and satisfaction in your work. Sometimes we get distracted from the overall picture by the day-to-day negatives, but look at your work from a distance to get a good view of the whole thing. Are you happy with it–with your legacy?

If not, don’t get depressed or throw in the towel. As Scarlet O’Hara said, “Tomorrow is another day!” If you’re not happy with your work, start making the changes to get happy with it. For example, your images. Think about the images you make and the images you WANT to make. How can you make more of what you want? And start doing that work, even if it is just making one image on the new path. Tomorrow, one image…next week, another, next month, more…before you know it you have the body of work you meant to make, with intention. That will go a long way to a deeper satisfaction in what you are doing professionally.

Want to know what I think about these tools? Then check out the ASMP SB2 blog for a video presentation.

(Hint: DO THEM)