livebooks blog

There’s nothing more ego shattering than interviewing a photographer who is as old as my career is long and finding out that she has kicked my ass in a market place that I coveted for years. Shooting book covers for literary works is downright respectable in a bizarre, pseudo-erudite sort of way.

“Did you read Rolling’s Recalcitrant Ruminations of Ruskin?”

“Why no darling, but I did shoot the image for the cover of the hardback.”

“Oh, bravo. Glass of sherry?”

I tried to get into that publishing circle for years. To say that they didn’t give two shits about me is, to be honest, crediting myself with one shit too many. Which brings me to my guest, photographer Claire Rosen. She was recently contacted by the boutique global publishing firm Random House to shoot the cover (left) of Sarah Addison Allen’s book The Girl who Chased the Moon.

The folks at Random House were intrigued by Miss Rosen’s distinct style of photography when they came across it at one of her gallery openings. The assignment (I’m not joking): Read the book and pitch some ideas of how the cover should be shot. The folks at Random House chose one of the ideas and Claire was, (I promise, I’m not joking), free to go shoot it and send in the results.

That kind of paid creative freedom with a high-profile client is practically nonexistent in contemporary society. Not only do you get paid to do your creative thing, you can window shop at a Barnes and Noble on a date and feign surprise when you see your book cover. If I want to accidentally-on-purpose show off my book cover I have to start a fire in the café of the book store, convince my date that it’s safest in the photography section and then use my book to fan away the smoke. “You okay? Hey look at that!”

Gigs like Miss Rosen’s can become a wonderful source of work. In just a week since receiving her first assignment, she has landed another book cover. If you’re interested in doing this type of work, you need to keep one thing in mind: The people at publishing houses who are green-lighting covers aren’t looking for photographers. They are looking for covers.

I reached out to a senior art director at Little, Brown Books to find out what he’s looking for from photographers. He suggests going to the bookstore to find covers, illustrated or photographic, that are similar to your narrative style. Check the imprint names on the books’ spines and contact those publishers to get the name of their art director.

The best way to reach out art directors is by mailing a hard-copy promo with an example of your work. Email promos have become the bane of art directors, my contact said. The barrage of email promos from listing services has resulted in a backlash, and they are routinely deleted out of hand.

One phrase that stood out in my interview with the Little, Brown art director was “cover appropriate.” Take the time to do your research. If your work doesn’t look like any cover you’ve seen, then don’t send it to the publishers.

With all that in mind, take a day and hang out at the bookstore — you could find a whole new direction for your photography business. Just please pretend not to notice if you see a guy in the café torching a pile of coffee beans.

This week my writing career is in the toilet. Literally. I was standing in my hotel room lavatory recently, evacuating a few gin martinis, when I happened to glance at a fabulous picture hanging on the wall. This wasn’t some trashy iStock photo, this was a gorgeous image. (I love boutique hotels — they take the time and money to get the good stuff.)

I had a look around the rest of my room and realized that all the art was of equally high quality. Of course my next thought was, “Is there a money to be made in photography sales to hotels?” So I thought I’d find out.

I started with a call to Jill Crawford, a world famous interior decorator who you would recognize from TV’s Guess Who’s Coming To Decorate. She told me that she sources photography for her interior designs in two different ways: directly from the photographer or from an art consultant like Fresh Paint Art Advisors in Los Angeles.

Ms Crawford advises photographers to pursue both strategies — direct to the designer and via art consultants — if they want to get into this market. Also keep in mind that the people you connect with for hotel projects will also be your conduit to corporations, restaurants, bars, and large mansions with empty walls.

Speaking with Helene Brown, of Fresh Paint, one immediately gets the sense that she has a singular passion for art and photography, as well as a veteran sensibility for brokering it. Ms Brown explained that the usage rights for the photography she negotiates is based on 1) the quantity of the prints, and 2) the quality of the medium that the image is printed on.

Higher quality print processes will fetch a higher premium. But on the other side of the coin, a large run of offset lithographic reproductions can also get a good return. The rights granted are one time to print, with varying levels of exclusivity based on the negotiated deal.

If this all sounds like a good idea to you, you’ll want to do a little research before launching the hotel art section of your website. My suggestion is to do a cocktail crawl through a few five-star hotels and have a look at what is hanging on their walls. You’re not looking to emulate the work so much as you’re trying to understand the artwork’s tone and how it fits into the interior decorating palette.

Finally, remember that the designers and consultants you’ll be contacting are savvy people, so don’t try to pitch them crap. And if on your cocktail crawl you encounter a writer holding a martini glass in the washroom, that’ll be me looking for an idea for next week’s column.

There is something very validating about seeing your name in the gutter of a magazine, or, even better, in the “about the cover” blurb. Kind of like a great one night stand: You feel confident as hell the next day and you get great bragging rights for as long as the magazine is on the news stand.

Lately my throne reading has included the Magazine Death Pool blog (you may recognize their logo at left), which I peruse with the fascination of a rubber necker passing a freeway accident. Part of me is sad so many periodicals are ascending to printing-press heaven. If I hadn’t landed the occasional regional magazine cover when I was a rookie, I would have had to look for a real job a long time ago.

As I watch the weekly demise of many small and large publications on the Magazine Death Pool, I wonder about the next generation of shooters. Will they be shit out of luck? Will they even have the opportunity to get underpaid to shoot magazine assignments in return for promotional and bragging rights? There is still hope.

As blog content continues to improve, some blogs are being thought of as replacements for expiring print publications. Most  of the images those blogs run are either micro stock images purchased for a buck or an image legally lifted under the fair-use provision of the copyright law. These should be the images of enterprising photographers looking to get some notoriety. I know that you won’t get paid enough to buy a single pinto bean for your next burrito, but avoiding blog publications ain’t doin’ nothing for nobody.

But before you take my advice and go bounding, portfolio in hand, into the living rooms of the bigger blog publications, I’d like to make a salient point. There is a distinct difference between needing to get exposure and already having exposure, like my favorite editorial shooter Brian Smith.

Mr. Smith has earned a phenomenal reputation along with a Pulitzer Prize. He is trusted with heavyweight assignments and heavyweight celebrities because he has proven on several thousand occasions that he can deliver what editors need. The strength of his work and his name gives him a lot of syndication opportunities. He’s definitely not a candidate for throwing his work at the blogging community until they start offering real money. That is an appropriate option for photographers who are looking to build a name like Brian Smith, though, preferably using different letters.

There is nothing more important in the photography world than exposure of your name. It used to be that you would go to a library, research all the periodicals, large and small, and make a list of the magazines that would be a good fit with the style of your work. The small publications were particularly attractive because they were approachable and offered a better-than-average chance of publishing your photos. Granted it was for the price of a single frosty beverage, but fame is fame.

The blogs of today are no different — except for one thing. Young photographers are not yet approaching the high-profile blogs offering images for attribution. Why not be one of the first? Search around the web for blogs that have large readerships. Services like Alexa can help you determine how popular a blog is. Then drop them an email with a link to your site. Tell them where you live and what you’d be willing to do to get your photography with a link attribution on their site (please wipe that smirk off your face). The bonus could be free access to events, a corporate shooting gig, who knows. Nothing ventured… The goal of this is to get your name out of the coffee shop and into the real world.

At some point you’ll have to draw a line in the sand and determine when the freebies stop. A couple of factors to keep in mind when determining the location of that line: Has any connection in the last nine months been a result of your efforts? Has anyone commented that they saw your work on any of the blogs? Is the time you’re putting into creating images for a blog starting to cost you more than its worth?

These questions are no different than the ones you would ask yourself if you were doing the same for a magazine. Magazines just seem more legitimate because they’re paper and stuff. But in the contemporary grand scheme o’ things, and given the rate magazines are disappearing, the gap between online publication and printed ones is diminishing rapidly. Get your name out there. Then please let me know your experiences by leaving a comment here or contacting me through my web site at Lou Lesko Dot Com.

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.