Couple weeks ago I got an email from NYCphotoWorks:
Greetings Photographer,
I’m writing to you today to tell you about a new Manhattan based
company, headed by photgrapher Marc Asnin, that is working for
photographers. NYCPhotoWorks is a company that is designed to help
photographers on all levels become better photographers, gain
professional insight and exposure, and eventually get work. We offer
services in many different aspects of professional photography, from
consultations on personal branding to meeting face
to face with the top editors in the magazine world, to workshops taught by
working professionals.NYCPhotoWorks will be hosting Portfolio Reviews in the fall that are
certain to provide photographers with unprecedented opportunity and insight.On October 22nd-24th, NYCPhotoWorks will be hosting a Portfolio Review
event at the newly renovated Sandbox Studios in lower Manhattan that will
bring together more than sixty of the top photo editors in the business.
Participating publications include Time, People, Stern, Vanity Fair, Conde
Nast, Details, Forbes, ESPN, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, National
Geographic Adventurer, Redbook, and many more. Photographers must apply
to be accepted into the event in order to ensure quality of work. If
accepted, the photographer will be given the chance to meet with 14 photo
editors 1-on-1 over two days, plus a third day of workshops taught by the
Directors of Photography for Conde Nast Traveler, People and Redbook.
This is an unprecedented opportunity for talented photographers to
personally show their work to top photo editors and build lasting
professional relationships.In a world as competitive and dynamic as editorial photography it’s not
enough simply to drop off or mail in your portfolio. Meeting the editors
in person lays the foundation for a working professional relationship.
Don’t miss this chance to personally present your work to the top editors
of the magazine world. Spots fill on a first-come-first-serve basis and
you must submit your work prior to being accepted into the event.For more information about NYCPhotoWorks please visit our website at
www.nycphotoworks.comThanks for your time and please feel free to contact me with any
questions. I look forward to hearing from you.
Is it me or do they go out of their way NOT to mention money?
So I apply and get taken to a very nice website with a lovely list of editors. Two weeks later, voila, I am accepted and get a login to register.
WHAMO!
$699-599-499-399-Just like iPods, one for every size…
I’ll do the math for you, that’s roughly $45 dollars a sitting.
Ok so you say, Robert…everyone knows it is pay to play…what is your problem? This is no different from paying for LeBook or a promo piece or portfolio pages.
Well, it is different. It is like the wheel has finally come around full circle. Really? Really?
It’s not like I am not already paying out of pocket to do editorial. You know my views on that. But now I really am paying out of pocket! Have we all forgotten folks that we used to drop portfolios off at magazines and have meetings and actually sit down in conference rooms and lobbies and show work to editors for free? This was how business was conducted, the editors need to meet you to get an idea of what you were like, they needed to see prints, they wanted to form a relationship so that you could work together. It was part of their job. Some even liked it! And if it went well, it was not some cherry pick one time assignment where because you shoot waterbuffalo on painted backdrops with a ringflash in your MFA portfolio they just knew it had to be you? But after that, via con dios…
So apart from the efficiency aspect of being able to deliver 200 (? I have no idea the size of this cattle call) culled photographers to 50 editors for example-because, we really are doing them a favour-the magazines, getting their editors all on site on two days for a blitzkreig portfolio review-they are going to come away with something don’t forget-I just don’t get it. Yes, it is highly efficient to be able to see 14 editors in two days, literally, something that would take weeks or months to do conventionally-now. But do you really have a portfolio that is suitable for Business Week, ESPN, Field and Stream, Popular Mechanics, NYTimes Style, Lucky, Prevention and Redbook? Does it make any sense? So right there, out of 32 publications represented, just how many are you really suited for? And if you respond, ‘all of them’, then I think your portfolio needs some cutting…
Sure you could spend $699 every quarter and do a very nice printed Z-fold of new work and blanket all your contacts and I know that might have zero results. But this is no different. Except for the fact that it is something that used to be free, and now, or going forward, probably will not be. File this under “blame commoditization…”
On a secondary rant, part of this has to do with the myth of “personal work.” I guess now that no one is working we all have time to do “personal work.” I’m doing it as fast as I can…have you noticed yet? Perhaps someone with a little more history in the business can corroborate this, but to my recollection, this little bit of slight of hand came up in the 90′s. It was a differentiation tactic. Pure marketing. It said, “you are not just a commercial photographer.” Well I ask you, for example, when Ad agencies are looking for a TV commercial director, and they are shopping reels, do they ask-”hey, where is the personal work? Lemme see his friends half naked at the beach?” Sounds ridiculous huh?
The situation is comparable to the rise and fall of indy cinema, first as outlier, eventually as profit center, with no investment-does this sound familiar-and now as undifferentiated from the rest.
To be “truthy” there is nothing wrong with hiring a photography to do what they do if all they do is shoot to assignment (brilliantly?). You see the perversity of the logic when in the last couple of years we have seen what I would term the “exploitation” of artists in the commercial realm, being hired to reproduce on assignment what they do for themselves. Can anyone put that logic right-side in? How is it any different from hiring an assignment photographer to reproduce what they do on assignment?
If anything, I trust the assignment photographer who has had to deal with more crises on location than the photographer hired to reproduce personal work, which by definition, is work made under the circumstances of the photographers choosing.
Can you imagine asking an Avedon, a Penn, a Meisel, etc, so, where is the personal work? Like the assignment is not good enough?
We are in a brave new world where to top of the photographic food chain is now devouring the bottom and now middle of the food chain on a wholesale basis. Indeed, as it used to be when you would show your work for free, now the top dogs give “workshops” on how to get more “work”.
The only reason they are inventing these “workshops” is because they don’t make enough money on “work” anymore. So it’s time to stick it to the little and mid range guys and suck whatever money they have left in their pockets so they can learn the secrets from the masters themselves.
Well folks, the top dogs don’t make enough to sustain their lifestyles anymore so now they’re targeting you as a big chunk of their income stream, while it lasts, or until they get busy enough to ignore you again.
Everyone makes out in the end, the photogs that run these things, the editors, the places they rent, and whoever else is part of this party. Except of course you, the person who just wants to learn the secrets of success, or get noticed by someone who holds the key to your future success.
Cynical, me? No.
With regards to the secondary rant, personal work is irrelevant unless you can get it published. Avedon, Penn and Meisel had or have their personal work published in books and magazines, so everyone knows about it, no reason to ask. VERY few photographers below the 98th percentile of commercial and editorial photographers that get all of the attention and adulation ever have their personal work noticed or published. Why? Because no one can sell the work of someone unknown. So go do the work, but do it for the love of doing it, not because you’ll ever turn a dime with it.
This is a classic post. These things are happening all over the surface of the creative arts. I teach lighting courses, mostly to amateurs and weekend shooters. It’s fun. I make a few bucks.
But I draw the line at “portfolio reviews” and marketing gurus – in fact any kind of ‘guru’ at all.
It so much reminds me of the modeling industry where ‘agents’ will all come to the part… er, “Talent Shows” and see hopeful young girls who’s daddy’s took a second loan to send her there to be told that 5’5″ girls are not gonna ever walk the runways in NY. Could that young lady found that out on her own by spending a week at the Holiday Inn in Jersey? Sure… but there is the salesmanship of the dream merchants that makes the show so much more appealing.
The industry is really, really changing. Now we are seeing these kind of things and it makes me both sad and angry. I am not sure what will happen, but the situation where people who are in one industry work the others in that industry for all that it is worth that will kill it.
And while I may not be as doom-&-gloomy as some, there are things that make me think about what a lifetime of working in an industry is worth. $45 an hour?
Nawwwww
You have just gained pounds of respect from me. (I just wrote something on the same exact line)
The foundation was the megaflopel-pixel wars between the cameras and of course software that makes every 10 fingered person a Professional photographer. Then everyone jumped one boards, the PS guys, plug-ins, etc… I love the example above of the runway models…..
I’ve Titled this “The Great Light Hype”
So, did you pay?
nawh I’m gonna pitch them to write a blog post about it and git in fer free!
Good stuff as usual.