Author: Leslie Burns

Not quite what you expect…seems that some publications are actually making their models look, while not fatter, at least not as skinny as they really are. Here’s the story from WWD (second piece on that page).

At first glance that sounds like a positive step, but in reality I think it’s only going to make girls want to be skinnier because they’re not going to see how super-skinny really looks. Instead of the jutting bones and other “ugly” attributes of being too thin, the models will look fabulous and even more skinny than the healthy ones do now.

Creatives in the communication arts all have an odd relationship with Truth (yes, with cap-T) and reality. With that comes a responsibility that some would rather ignore. What you do affects others–be that in their buying habits or, in this case, body image. Remember that when you get that creepy feeling on the back of your neck, it just might be because you’ve gone too far.

Last week I spoke at Brooks Institute of Photography in lovely Santa Barbara, California. There I stood, before a classroom of Seniors who are about to go into the “real” world and try to make a living. What did I tell them? To follow their passion if they wanted to become successful, even if that means NOT becoming photographers.
We all seem to forget to follow our professional passions from time to time, but it really holds true no matter what your profession/career choice. On the train home, I was sitting next to a man who was involved in commercial real estate finance. We talked about following one’s passion and he said he most definitely had and it has brought him not only financial wealth but happiness. He had originally been involved in media sales (advertising) where he made good money, but he wasn’t emotionally fulfilled with the work. He was always fascinated by numbers and, specifically, finance so when this opportunity presented itself, he went after it…and hasn’t regretted it ever since. I could see the fire in his eyes. When he spoke about what he did, he made it sound terribly interesting and I could tell he had found his niche. He followed his passion.
We talked about how some people never retire, a point I also discussed with Bill Robbins of Brooks. They don’t keep working for the money, but rather they can’t imagine their lives without their work. Creatives who keep creating, businesspeople who keep running companies, they all share the passion for their work. They found their vocations, in the classical sense of the word–callings. And it’s what I recommended to those students, and what I want to recommend to you.

We all have pasts–maybe yours includes studying photography or design or writing so when you graduated you felt you had to become a photographer, designer, or writer. But it never quite fit. You can do the work, maybe even very well, but you’re not excited about it…at least not often or extremely. This isn’t because the work is bad, it’s because you aren’t doing your best work–and that may mean taking the leap to follow your passion. If you studied photography, maybe what you really would love to do is be a photo editor or even a rep. Writers make great strategic thinkers, like planners in ad agencies. Designers might do better running a creative department for a corporation rather than producing their own designs. Who knows!?!

I’m not saying that if you have a bad day at work you should chuck it all and change careers. What I am saying is that you should be open to what your heart is telling you. Maybe that means shifting from shooting people to objects, or doing interactive rather than print design or writing that novel you’ve always meant to write, or maybe it means going back to school to become a lawyer or doctor or working for a homeless shelter or opening a bookstore. Only you can know what is in your heart, your passion.

But whatever it is, when you find it you’ll also find that your work is no longer work and the thought of retiring one day seems much less a goal. You’ll be happier and better off financially (even if you make less money–because you’ll be happy).

Don’t be afraid of passion, it’s the key to your success.

Vincent Flanders nails many of the common errors found on sites, listing 14 design-related issues in this article. It’s brilliantly written too. My favorite quote starts #14.

(hat tip to Jane G. and Adlist for the link)

Over the weekend a blog posting by an advertising agency got the photographer community in a well-deserved snit. The post essentially said that photographers have some guts claiming to own the photos they make on assignment for an agency. After all, their argument went, the agency created the concept and all the photographer had to do was shoot the thing. The authors then went on to utterly misinterpret the copyright law in regards to photography and, well, they came off insulting just about any creative vendor they have ever worked with.

By this morning, the agency was hit with many emails from upset photographers. The professional groups got involved as well. This tiny agency in a small market in Illinois managed to bring together people from all over the US (and beyond) in a show of solidarity against the self-serving bullying tactics used by so many agencies–particularly the small- to mid-sized ones.

The article has been pulled, and an apology (a lame one, in my opinion) now takes its place. I’m not linking to any of it because I don’t want the crappy agency to get any more publicity. My point in writing about this is that the photographers stood up for their rights and made a difference. Individual creatives changed a company. It can be done, and here is proof.

You have lots of power. Every creative does. You can say “no” to bad deals and take back control. Call out companies who demand all rights or only offer work for hire contracts or who won’t pay on time or whatever. You can make a difference. That agency in Illinois had its post seen by one photographer who thought enough about it to share it with others, resulting in postings on all the major photo forums and, voilà, a difference was made.

Remember your power. Use it wisely and do not give it away. No one can take it from you. Use it for good–your own and your industry’s.

I went to a medical “spa” to talk to someone about getting some laser treatments for a skin issue. The nurse practitioner who would perform the procedure took over 30 minutes to talk to me and answer all my questions. One of those questions was about getting a second treatment for a separate issue. This would have been hundreds more and with one word from the NP I probably would have seriously considered having it done. However, the NP said I should wait, offered some advice and products that her company did NOT sell, and discussed other, much less expensive and invasive things to try–again, things her company did not provide or, when they did, she even suggested alternatives where I could find the products for less money.

I left the consultation with ideas, samples, and a feeling that the NP was more interested in giving me the service I needed, not just what I wanted. She cared; or at least I felt she did.

That’s effective marketing. By doing the right thing, the NP got a new client (me) and some fantastic word of mouth. Unless she screws up the procedure, which I doubt will happen, she’ll have a loyal client who will recommend her and her company to others.

For service-based businesses, and all creative businesses fit that category, building that trust is the best thing one can do. Doing the right thing, being honest with your clients and offering ways to help them achieve their goals, will result in increased return clients and better billings.

Need another reason to specialize and go after a highly targeted market rather than being a generalist who will shoot anything for anyone for any money? How about this–Yahoo and Reuters are teaming up to provide “user-generated” images for the news. Forget about making any money shooting low- to mid-level photo-journalism in the future–everyone and their brother who has a photo cell phone are the new stringers.

This is happening in other creative industries as well. Look at the Superbowl ad contest, for example. Millions of dollars get spent every year on Superbowl ads, but now any schmo has the chance to get his/her idea made and placed into the most prized media buy of the year. Ouch.
I think the high-end professionals will always have work. But for those of you who are going after “whatever I can get” kinds of work, now is the time to re-examine that plan.

Didn’t you become a creative pro to be something more than a techie? As the army used to say, “Be all that you can be!” It’s your best shot at making it financially to boot.

Creative Lube, our podcast service, is now a part of iTunes. Tell your friends and colleagues (including those non-photographer creatives you know) about Creative Lube, and let them know they can find it at the iTunes store. Oh, and it is still free, as always.

I was just at Whole Foods where my credit/check card got declined. Of course, this was unexpected, but it happened and I hurried home to check my accounts online. As I had just done my books a couple of days ago, I knew there was money in that account, so the declination wigged me out a bit. When I checked, there was a charge from a department store in Atlanta ($1.00, I’m thinking that may have been a test by the thieves) from a couple of days ago and another from a gas station in Montreal, Canada. That one was for over $90 and it was posted three hours after I made a purchase at a bookstore here in San Diego.

Someone had gotten my card number and was ripping me off.

I called my bank and the first woman I spoke to was, to put it kindly, snippy and no help. She said “the charges are only authorizations and haven’t hit your account yet so there’s nothing anyone can do. Check back in a couple of days.” Um…hell no. I’m not going to wait a couple of days to see how much more I lose. I mentioned the declination and she actually said “I don’t see that here so it couldn’t have happened.”

Look lady, I was there. It happened.

I finally got her to transfer me to the fraud department which she did in a huff. There I got lots of kind and caring help. The woman I spoke to said, right off, that she would do whatever she could to fix the problem then she told me that my account had been frozen because the bank had caught the Canadian charge and thought it was suspicious. That’s why my card was declined. She then said that she marked the suspicious charges for removal and that I’d be getting a bunch of paperwork (and a new card) in the mail, etc.
In other words, my bank had already seen there was a problem and had been trying to contact me to check out the charge. They were being the good guys. Too bad I never would have known that from the first Customer Service person I spoke to. If I had listened to her and not been the pushy broad I can be when necessary, who knows when this would have gotten resolved! And how much stress would I have gone through and how likely was it that I would even stay with that bank if I lost money this way?
When one of your clients calls you with a problem do you go into defensive mode (“I don’t see that here so it couldn’t have happened”) or do you try to help? Even (especially!) if it’s not your problem, you can do a world of good if you set aside your defenses and simply try to help.

When it counts, a client will remember the person who saved his/her (client’s) ass in a pinch.

There’s an important article on the Wall Street Journal site about how using non-exclusive stock images is causing image duplication between competitors. It also says that as new media campaigns get bigger and bigger, exclusivity is going to become more popular. And exclusivity means more value to the client and thus a higher price.

Good news.

On one of the forums recently someone objected to my using the term “crappy” when referring to work one might get from a self-made, none-too-well-designed photographer’s website. The poster seemed to get his knickers in a twist over the idea that I would judge anyone’s work in any way, much less to judge it crappy.

Well, I’m here to tell you that there is plenty of crappy work out there and we need to stop being afraid of calling it crap. But the poster completely missed my point–in this case I wasn’t calling the work produced crappy, I was calling the work offered crappy.

Creatives need to stop agreeing to do crappy work–the crappy work that is offered by cheap clients who barely want “good enough” creative work and don’t want to pay anything close to a fair price for it. You know crap when you see it–when a client comes to you with a stock image and wants you to reproduce it because they don’t want to pay the “high” (cough!) stock usage price; or the one who wants the logo by tomorrow and wants it to look just like their competitor’s, but better and for $250; or the one who wants the ad to show “free” at least 3 times, with a starburst, and make the logo bigger, and make sure you can see that the people in the image are black, white, Asian, gay, straight, male, and female, but keep it to two people to save money–oh, and the insert date is tomorrow but there is no reason to have a rush charge since “all you have to do is find the right stock image and change the font a teeny bit.”

All of these clients, and so many others, are offering crappy work and it is up to the creative to say “no” to it. In saying “no” you are liberating yourself. You free your mind from the burden of doing work that depresses you. You don’t have to “sell out” but instead can hold your head high and say “I am not the right person for this project” and look yourself in the mirror without wincing.

The added bonus is that some of these crappy clients will learn from your refusal; they will go back to their bosses and say “we can do better–the creative I wanted to do this project can do much more with this, if we let him/her.” This will take time, and it won’t happen with all the crappy clients out there, but the contacts who want to work with you and who are impressed with your honesty and integrity will, when given the opportunity, come back to you with the not-crappy work.

The crap-seekers will just find some other “desperate” creative to do their bidding.

So go after the best clients out there and take passes on the crappy work. Seek out the work that will fulfill you creatively as well as financially. Feed your soul as well as your accounts receivable. Don’t forget, they won’t know you are out there unless you market to them–the good clients. There are loads of them out there. Plenty to go around! Find them, work with them, and keep your heads up.