livebooks blog

Alan's portrait of a man working a concession stand at the Pepsi Center during the Democratic Convention is a reminder that, in spite of the demonstration of populism inside, inclusion -- especially with all that wealth and power around -- has its limits. ©Alan Chin

The method I have with Alan is to compare what’s happening on the ground, as he’s experiencing it, with the media and/or the political narrative and show how they illuminate each other. Ideally, we try to illuminate the contradictions, the artifice.

I decided not to go to the Obama inauguration and the reason is, and this is what was weird, in Denver I got really disoriented. The problem, I realized later, was that I couldn’t read the spin because being at the Democratic National Convention was like being on a giant stage set.

On the last night of the Convention, I only had two press passes to Invesco Stadium, but there were three of us. So I ended up staying behind.  And, although I was disappointed at first, it turned out to be a great relief to watch the whole “show” on TV in The Bloggers Tent. The experience really was stunning. It was the first time in the whole four days I could see the show through the media lens, and I could really appreciate how much this whole experience was constructed for television.

You know, what we see of politics, and even governance now, is so contrived, whether it’s mediated by the media’s agenda or by the agenda of parties, candidates, and elected officials. And I think we — meaning Alan and I, my other contributors, and the BAGnewsNotes — have to stay outside of that. So when I have someone like Alan on the scene, the idea is to be able to see beyond or though what the stakeholders necessarily want you to see.

Because the parties and the media are so sophisticated in the use of imagery (we’re talking Madison Avenue-level expertise), our mission is simply to try and narrow the perceptual gap between the public and the spin.  Readers are pretty smart when it comes to breaking down words, slogans, and text. But when it comes to pictures, I think there is still a lot of work ahead to raise the level of visual literacy on the part of the news and politics consumer.

• According to an Associated Press report, Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton called for the release of detained American-Iranian photojournalist Roxana Saberi at a press conference yesterday, two days after the NPPA released an announcement that the Iranian government admitted Saberi was held in prison. Since the US currently has no diplomatic relations with Iran, the State Department is now working with Swiss officials to find out details of her detention. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) started a Facebook petition which had already collected over 5,500 signatures as of yesterday afternoon. NPPA has more on Saberi and the arrest here and here. For a complete story and update, go to Free Roxana website.

• Moodboard, the London-based stock photo agency that has gained popularity in this struggling economy, debuted its digital magazine ONE this week. While some think that the stock industry is in freefall, Moodboard CEO Mike Watson thinks it is the perfect solution for photographers and creatives to counter the slashed marketing and photography budgets companies everywhere are experiencing. Regardless, we think the 34-page magazine is visually pleasing and a great attempt to connect with the photography community at large.

• The 50 States Project published its first “assignment” on March 1. The innovative online gallery pulls together 50 emerging photographers, one from each state, and asks them to make a photo according a bimonthly theme. The first theme was “People,” and the photographers were asked to create images that convey their own style as well as the feel of their home state. A Photo Editor has already given it his blessing and undoubtedly other editors have bookmarked the page as well.

Dietmar Busse's portrait of designer Isabel Toledo, part of his new Artists and Starlets project. ©Dietmar Busse

After high school, I was just traveling. I was going to go to university, but I was really too busy hanging out in Spain, Morocco, Turkey. I registered at Berlin University to become a lawyer. That was the only thing where you didn’t have to have a certain kind of average; they would let anyone become a lawyer at that time. And since my grades were very mediocre, they were just good enough to become a lawyer without being on a waiting list. The day I was supposed to start school, I got a little job offer taking care of a farm in Spain for German people. I went there, realized the job was not for me, and on my way back to Germany, I got stuck in Madrid. I was only 20 years old, and started going out and partying while university had started in Berlin. I was having a nice time being a club kid, and started to meet people there on the scene. Everyone was a model or designer or photographer. And this kind of sparked my imagination. Meeting people who were involved in that kind of business made it seem more possible for me to be part of the business, and I started to think I could become a photographer, too. I went with a model friend of mine to a photography studio to check things out and I just kept going back. The first assistant was a German guy, so I somehow got connected with him and the studio. And that’s how I started. I really didn’t know anything about photography; I never went to photography school or anything like that.

While I was going to that studio, I picked up books on photography and just taught myself. I went to the studio every day until I became an assistant, second assistant, and eventually first assistant. I worked at that studio for almost two years, from 1987 to 1989. After that, I freelanced. Well, I was also working as a bartender, night jobs. Just sort of getting by. The freelancing wasn’t going very well in Spain. There was not enough of a market. I planned to move to Italy, since I wanted to stay in photography and I wanted to stay on the Mediterranean. Me being German, I liked the idea of living where all the rest of the Germans had to go on vacation. I was getting ready to go to Italy, and then somehow, through fate, I met someone who had moved to New York City, and he gave me his business card. A month before I planned to go from Madrid to Milan, I talked to a friend, and he said, “You’re crazy, you shouldn’t go to Milan, you belong in New York.” And when he said that, I knew I was doing that.

Rossy de Palma ©Dietmar Busse

So I came to New York in 1991. I knew one person, the guy who had given me his card. I called him to see if I could stay at his apartment. He said yes so I just packed my stuff in two bags and bought a ticket to New York. I’d never been there before. I rather quickly found a job at Industria Super Studio, a big studio down on Washington Street in Greenwich Village that had just opened. I was very naive, and very nice, and Germans have a good reputation for work ethic. So I got the job I think just by my nationality. I worked there for few years on a freelance basis as a photo assistant. One of the perks of being so closely associated with Industria was that you could use their equipment and studio. They were very friendly and supportive. The payback was not so much in the kind of money they would give you, it was very much in the access one had to the other photographers, assistants, and their equipment. So I ended up working with different people. It was very open. It was a good place to become part of a network.

I worked like this until 1995 when I started getting my first gigs as a photographer. When I look back on it now, my transition from being an assistant to becoming a working photographer went really quickly. Within a very short period of time I was working for magazines, like the New York Times Magazine, Visionaire, Interview, and Paper Magazine. It was great. This is how I became a photographer.

©Lou Lesko

When I made my first TV pitch, I was less than a nobody in Hollywood. I was able to get a meeting with a TV somebody only through the help of another huge Hollywood somebody. The Bravo Channel producer, who had a reputation for deciding the fate of a project based entirely on the pitch meeting, granted me ten minutes of her time. The advice I received from other industry veterans was to practice my spiel, tighten it up, and practice it again. Producers at this level hear so many pitches, I would only have sixty seconds to grab her attention. In spite of the confidence I gained from hours of practice, at the end of the meeting I had two puddles in my jeans pockets where the sweat dripping from my armpits had pooled. My pitch propelled the project to the next level, but it ultimately didn’t make it. I didn’t mind. I had learned one of the most valuable lessons of my career. Being able to deliver an effective pitch is as important to your business as knowing how to make an image.

Photography is an industry of cold callers and connection hounds. Even with a solid introduction to a heavy weight advertising person from your brother’s, cousin’s, ex-girlfriend’s cell mate, you need to make a solid, swift impression with your first contact. A pitch. Doing so requires that you take a few minutes to prepare.

Email is the easiest. You can write, read, edit, read, and edit some more. Yes. Edit that much. Also, if you’re thinking about employing a grammar school business letter model, they are totally outmoded. Consider the following:

Dear Super Heavyweight Person who could get me a high-paying gig,

I’d like to introduce myself, my name is Lou Lesko. As you may have heard from our mutual friend, Miki Johnson, I am calling on you in the hopes of setting up a meeting to show you my portfolio. I’ve been a photographer for 25 years with extensive experience in the fashion and lifestyle genres. I feel confident that I would be a valuable consideration for any future jobs at your agency, and I am ready to meet you at your earliest convenience at a location of your choosing.

Contrast that to:

Dear Super Heavyweight Person who could get me a high-paying gig,

Our mutual friend, Miki Johnson, let me know that it would not be a problem to contact you to set a meeting to show you my portfolio. I appreciate you offering your time. Please let me know the earliest date and a location that is convenient for you; I will make myself available. In the meantime, some of my work and my career background can be found on:
http://loulesko.com

The first example isn’t bad, but it’s about as dry as a Saltine cracker on a hungover morning. The second one is a bit more in your face, but it identifies in the first sentence the individual we both know and the reason why I’m exploiting the friendship. The rest shows that I’m reasonably polite and accommodating, but if the reader skipped reading the rest of the email, they would still know exactly what I want and why I feel justified in asking. And that is the pitch.

Leaving a voicemail requires the same pitch-style communication. Articulate why you’re calling in the first sentence, followed immediately by your contact info. A person you don’t know that’s listening to your message will not want to drudge through a long drawn out treatise about “how great it is you know the same person and, wow, we’re both in the same industry and, boy, I could sure use a shot at that new account your agency just won.” Conversely that first sentence can’t be a brash assault on the recipient’s voicemail, and should have a dash of your personality. Unless you’re an ass. Then fake it.

In pitch situations, when I’m a bit nervous, I have a dreadful propensity to mumble. To avoid doing that, I leave a few practice messages on my own voicemail. I know it sounds a bit like a high school boy practicing a speech to get a date with a girl, but it is totally effective in polishing my pitch.

The same tactics will also prepare you for the contingency of (oh my gosh) the person picking up the phone when you call. I’m not saying you should be as disengaged as you would if you were leave a voicemail, but having taken the time practice will put you a in a great position to start a great conversation that could lead to more work.

One last tip. If you’re sending a web link in an email, test it first by sending the email to yourself. One of the most common mistakes is to place a period at the end of a link because it closes a sentence like this: And you can see my articles on http://loulesko.com/articles.

The period at the end of the sentence will make the link fail. That’s why in my example above I put the link on its own line without any closing punctuation.

That’s my pitch, thanks for listening.