livebooks blog

These past few months I’ve been reaching out via email to some high-profile writers that I’ve never met so that I can cajole them into an interview for my new book. It’s always difficult cold-emailing someone that you don’t know because you are desperate to convey your credentials, but you don’t want to blather on about yourself imperiling your original point for contacting them.

I have found the answer in the oft ignored and under appreciated “About” page of my web site. In each email pitch I state who I am, what I want, and ask them to please look at the link below for more information about me.

Dear Fabulous One,

My name is Lou Lesko, I’m a writer working on a new book titled Nose Hair Photography for the Faint of Heart. I would greatly appreciate the opportunity to interview you for the book at your convenience. My preferred method of interview is in person, but I am very amenable to conduct the interview via phone call or email. For information about me please click on the link below.

My “About” page has been proven a highly effective electronic calling card because it adds all the things I want to say about myself to the pitch email without adding extra text making the pitch look undesirably lengthy. If someone knows me and my work, they don’t have to drudge through a diatribe about who I am. Those that need to know more can click the link to my “About” page and get the scoop.

This, of course, begs the question, “What’s a good ‘About’ page look like?” The matter is entirely up to you but there are a few guidelines that I’ve found to be effective.

The number one mistake that people make in writing an autobiographical paragraph is shoving too much information into it. Understand the end use of the biography. You’re appealing to people who want to know about you and your photography. So starting with the act of your conception as told by your mother might be a little too much information.

A quick sentence about the epiphany that led you to photography is always fun. Here’s mine;

I got into photography by accident when I drove my friend, who was a model, to pick up some modeling test photos from a photo studio. It struck me that that was what I wanted to do.

Mention your formal education if you survived one. In my case I graduated with an English Writing degree.

Shortly thereafter I attended USC and graduated in 1989 with a degree in English. From there I went on to settle in Los Angeles to try and make it as a professional photographer.

Don’t be shy about achievements like awards and high profile assignments, just don’t sound arrogant about it.

Soon after graduating I found myself lucky enough to be sent to the former Soviet Union on an assignment that greatly influenced my current shooting style.

After you’ve written all that, distill it further. The one thing I don’t like about the lines above is that I mention graduation twice. This is about me the photographer, not me the student. Also the lines above are pedantic and have a very “and then” cadence. Don’t be afraid to make things interesting. Think about how you would tell the story if you were trying to impress someone you wanted to date.

I had a crush on a model who was a friend of mine who I took to pick up some modeling test photos from a photographers studio. When I saw the images I was inspired to give it a try. After two years of shooting on my own and three years of earning an English degree at USC, I got lucky and was given the opportunity to go on assignment in the former Soviet Union. That experience turned out to be a huge influence on how I shoot now. Since getting back from Russia I’ve settled in Los Angeles and have been shooting commercial and editorial fashion. A partial list of clients and career highlights is below.

Then go on to list and link to a few things you’ve done. There are two schools of thought about client lists. I like partial clients lists that list your top five clients, others would argue a “if you got em, list them” approach. There’s no right or wrong way.

You can also write your biography in the third person: “Lou Lesko went on to shoot…” I used to subscribe to this method, but I have found that if someone wants to know about you, it should be in your voice. The contemporary reality is at that face-to-face meetings are difficult to set up, so conveying a sense of your personality whenever you can will always help your cause.

Put a picture of yourself on your about page. Portraits are highly subjective things. And believe me you will change yours twenty times before you find something that you’re happy with. That’s okay. You’re supposed to be an obsessive-compulsive lunatic — you’re a photographer.

The last bit of advice I want to impart is, be confident. The “About” page is about you. If you’ve entered into the photography industry, you have the gift of creativity and the balls of an entrepreneur. That is something to be proud of.

Bioluminescent copepods called Metridia. Photo by Chris Linder, WHOI

Celia Gelfman, a technician on the research team, threw down the gauntlet one day while I was photographing in the lab: Capture the beauty of bioluminescence. I followed Celia to the walk-in refrigerator where the tiny crustaceans called zooplankton are stored. Celia presented me with a big jug of water. I could see a few translucent critters about the size of a pencil tip swimming around. Then Celia poured some of the water over a sieve, and wow! For a few seconds after the pour, neon-blue Metridia lit up and raced around the mesh. The challenge was on to find a way to photograph these glowing animals.

The goal of this scientific expedition to the Bering Sea is to understand how a warming climate is affecting the food web. Research teams on the ship are studying phytoplankton (microscopic marine plants), copepods like Metridia, and krill (larger zooplankton that resemble shrimp). These “charismatic microfauna” are found throughout the world’s oceans, and they are food for other zooplankton, fish, birds, and even whales. Among the many zooplankton species that scientists have collected on this expedition, one has a very special trait. Metridia, when disturbed, give off a neon blue light like an underwater firefly. This is called bioluminescence.

I enlisted writer Helen Fields to hold the sieve over the sink and we started experimenting. First, we turned off the overhead lights and blocked the fluorescent light leaking out from under a counter. In order to record only the light from the copepods, I needed the room to be dark. Next I set up my Nikon D700 and a 105mm macro lens on a tripod and aimed it at the surface of the sieve (using a flashlight to manually focus on the sieve). I was assuming that, just like lightning, the neon trails of moving Metridia would burn bright lines into a dark background during a long time exposure. The first exposure confirmed that they would indeed show up. It took a few more tries to find the perfect shutter speed (four seconds) and the best way to hold the sieve (duct tape, of course!) Lastly, the Metridia had to make an interesting composition. It took about an hour to make this image.

Tonight (May 11th), we arrive in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, where this journey began nearly six weeks ago. I’d like to extend a big thank you to our sponsors, the National Science Foundation and the Richard King Mellon Foundation, for supporting the most important and fulfilling work I have ever done. I would also like to thank the RESOLVE blog for helping me get the word out about climate change science in the Bering Sea. What’s next? This July I’ll be trading sea ice for mosquitoes when I travel to eastern Siberia to document researchers studying arctic rivers and lakes. Visit the Polaris Project to follow our adventures.

• Almost four decades after John Filo took his Pulitzer-Prize-winning photo of a student shot at Kent State University during an anti-war protest, the photographer was reunited with the then-14-year-old girl, Mary Vecchio, who appears in the image with her arm outstretched, caught in a terrified scream. The Akron Beacon Journal has a nice piece on the reunion, which was the first time the two met in person.

• The Obama administration and its White House photo team led by Pete Souza proved its distinctly updated understanding of image use recently by launching a White House Flickr photostream in addition to its regular slideshows. Last week, Official White House Photographer Pete Souza did an interview with CBS sharing his insider view of Obama presidency.

• The multimedia dream team at MediaStorm announced this week that it will donate its services for a one-time, TUITION-FREE Advanced Multimedia Reporting Workshop, in Brooklyn, NY from June 20-26, 2009. Expect a very competitive application process as there are only 8 spots available. Application deadline is next Friday May 15. Check out more details on their blog.

• LIFE.com picked the 10 most photographed cities in the world. The results are based on the number of photographs associated with each city on Flickr. Being San Franciscans as we are, we’re happy that the City by the Bay made it to number 4. Can you guess the top three?

Miki Johnson: Did Aina meet with any resistance at first?

Reza Deghati: To give you an image, in 2002 we announced we were going to have a photography courses. There was no telephone, no electricity, no satellite, no running water. I said, it doesn’t matter, we can do it. Two days after we announced the courses, we had 500 people who signed up. We gave them a paper to write their resume on, told them what that was, and how to write it. We spent a few weeks reading the resumes, sorting out 55 students for interviews and we posted that list. The next Wednesday we had 700 people show up. Everybody said, “I didn’t see my name, I thought maybe there was a mistake.” The people in Afghanistan are like a dry sponge. They need every single drop. You cannot imagine how fast-learning they are.

In which city in the U.S. can you bring in seven girls who have never touched anything like a camera, train them, and in nine months they can make a documentary that is nominated for an Emmy award? These are the people who can change their own country much more than we can. And the enthusiasm of those people…You have to be there to see the eyes of the women who listen to the radio. Or when we distribute the magazine, see the whole village come to thank us.

During the first ever Afghan presidential election, everyone was saying, it’s going to be very tough. People won’t show up. And to the astonishment of the whole world community, it was the smoothest election. When all the world’s communities were astonished, Afghanistan’s foreign minister in a press conference said, “One of the reason our country understands democracy, is thanks to AINA.” These are the impact the organization is having now. But for me, the real outcome is 20 to 30 years from now.

MJ: What has been the biggest challenge Aina has faced?

RD: The real challenge and real problem is how to get funding for this project. Because when you are a pioneer, and you have a new idea, many people don’t understand the idea, or they think it’s not matching their organization’s mandate.

So I thought, “Well Reza, look in the mirror, you are a photographer, see what you can bring in.” I made a big auction in 2002 of 50 of my prints and two cameras I used to have with me in conflict zones, a Leica and a Canon. I was trying to send a message to all my colleagues saying that we need to be more involved. We are in contact with this population and we know how they are suffering and we have to give back to them. So from that moment some of our projects started attracting donations. But there were times when some projects, or the whole organization, were not getting funding. So then I started putting in all my income. When that wasn’t enough, I put in 100% of my savings, and did more auctions — three auctions up until now.

The reason I was doing this was that I believed this would be one of the big things the world needs in the 21st century. I believe training these local journalists will help create the big change. The main challenge was helping people understand that giving educational tools to children is more important than just building  schools. But every time I found myself explaining this to someone and another NGO was talking about building a school, at the end they were writing checks to the people building schools, not building minds.

We have done 12 issues of our children’s magazine. Every time we have money, we print 40,000 copies and distribute them free everywhere. This costs 50,000 Euros, about $60,000. Think of 60,000 dollars in front of one day of U.S. military operational cost — and then think about what the result of these 40,000 magazines could bring.

Another challenge for me is explaining the importance of what we are doing to people in other countries. They say, “Our children have bookshelves that are full of books and magazines. They don’t mean anything.” So when I tell people about these children’s magazines we print, it’s hard to imagine what their importance is. But we’re talking about our magazine being the first ever printed color material ever seen in the whole village. Once we brought a single copy of the magazine to a whole village. When I went back after three weeks, 150 people had gone through that magazine. Fifty children had learned by heart some of the stories. That’s one of my challenges, how to explain to people how important these projects are. Or how many children’s lives do we save with one radio by helping women understand what the causes of child mortality are.

So how do we deal with funding? The National Geographic mission program is one way. But who is the second? National Geographic is not for profit. It’s not a foundation with deep pockets. This year they have to cut millions of dollars out of their budget. And we want to expand to other countries, also. The whole project is like a toolbox. When we go to a country and see a government that doesn’t like one of our projects, we can have a tool that is matching every country in the world, because of our concept of a toolbox. We can go to Cuba, Syria, Burma and be accepted by the government. That’s the whole concept. And by working and living in those countries, I’ve come to realize how you can get through those problems.

MJ: What can photographers and photo industry professionals  do to help?

RD: We have launched Aina photo agency. If all the magazines in the world would look first at Aina Photo’s website when they are looking for pictures from Afghanistan, or if we can find a way to promote Aina Photo’s website, it will help its operation. So I’m talking to photo buyers first. If we sold one picture per day, at say $200, it would help the whole agency to run. If we can bring magazines in the world to understand that if you buy pictures from them, you are helping, because we are training more photographers now. You just helped train more photographers. And editors don’t take money out of their pockets, they get good pictures. If you give one assignment to an Aina photographer, instead of sending one person from Paris, you save hotel, interpreter, guide, and security fee. You save a lot of money. You gain by saying : I got better pictures, the pictures I wanted. But also in other parts you have a better conscience.

For photographers to help, when I launch this whole international organization, I will need membership. I’m going to ask all my colleagues if they want to help this project by becoming a member. This is a new form of social networking internationally. Many photographers are passing through Afghanistan, so I invite them to come to Kabul and give a lecture. In return they’ll get a lot of help. One of the projects I’m thinking of launching will be an international worldwide auctioning of prints by famous photographers who want to help this project. Like I did.