livebooks blog

Photo by Mark Mosrie

Matt Bailey, liveBooks‘ own co-founder (that’s him to the left), recently wrote an informative piece for Photoshop Insider about effective ways for photographers to use video on their websites. We wanted to bring you some highlights from the story, which focuses on using video to market yourself rather than offering it as a service to clients. You can check out the full story at Photoshop Insider.

With the availability of affordable, high-quality digital photo equipment steadily increasing over the last several years, the market has been flooded with an unprecedented volume of photographs and emerging photographers. Most searches for images and photographers begin on the web. Yet this can create confusion on the part of the viewer about which photographer is right for what they need. How do you distinguish yourself from the sea of photographic talent available? You can start by marketing yourself as a professional who brings more to the table than a handful of carefully selected images. You need to develop an effective brand for yourself that communicates the value of your personal vision and experience. Video presents an opportunity to add more dimension to this brand in a number of ways.

Help people get to know you
The primary purpose of these videos is to break through the static nature of portfolio viewing and create a more human connection. If a prospective client likes your personality or feels they can relate to you in some way, there is a much better chance they will give you preference over someone they feel less of a connection with. This is human nature. The main challenge with a bio video is to create something that is “on brand.” If you are marketing yourself in a playful way, for example, be sure the video is a bit playful as well. A disconnect in this area can do more to confuse than ingratiate. If you are unsure, consult with an expert. Here are a few photographers whose bio videos have added a lot to their online presentations:

Jules Bianchi: Wedding and portrait photographer
Chase Jarvis: Commercial and sports photographer
Chris Rainier: Photojournalist and National Geographic Society Fellow

Let other people say nice things about you
Video is also regularly being used to highlight various other strengths, including video testimonials, vignettes from an actual shoot, and studio tours, among others. Adding a more dynamic, human touch to these areas brings life to them in a way that can be far more compelling than a page with text. Watching someone gush over how amazing you were to work with can have an emotional impact that makes the difference between someone hiring you or your competitor. This approach can be effective whether you market toward photo buyers, brides, or other types of individuals. In the end, we are all people, and all of us want to work with people we trust and like.

How to get started
Just like still photographs, there are down and dirty methods, as well as more elaborate, polished methods. Using a $200 Flip Video camera or webcam and posting to your blog could be perfect for your purposes. For many, a more professional approach will be more effective. It all comes down to your intentions and your brand. Do you want to be seen as a seasoned professional who projects quality and panache, or as a guerrilla upstart who provides a dynamic, gritty vision? These are the creative questions that need to be answered in advance, so you know what direction to take technically. If you can produce a video yourself or with a friend, so much the better, but, as with any photo shoot, be sure you have everything you need to be successful. If you need help, a video producer can help you sort through these preliminary questions.

Choose the best presentation
Once you have the video shot and edited, you will need to prepare a copy for the web. As with still photos, you will want to find the right balance between quality and loading speed.  A large, high-quality video can look amazing, but take a while to load.  Smaller, more compressed files will load quicker, but may not have the desired impact. If you have the ability to upload your own video and preview it on the web, you should certainly do that. Depending where you plan to display it, you may choose one of a handful of formats, including Quick Time, Windows Media Player, and Flash Video. All liveBooks’ websites give the user the ability to upload any of these formats on their own, or you can have us design a custom page structure and player in Flash. Here are clients who have taken that approach:

Justin Francis: Music video director
Double Plus Good: Advertising video producers
Oliver Rduch: Documentary filmmaker

However you are able to do it, do not hold off on leveraging video to your advantage if you feel you can benefit from it. Ultimately, creating a better connection between you and your clients could result in more bookings with people you are more likely to relate to. It can also result in clients who are more informed about you and your business before you even speak to them. And who knows, maybe you find you have a knack for it and can offer an extended range of services in the future.

Be Part of the RESOLUTION: How are you using video to help market yourself? Have you seen tangible results from it?

Afganistan seen through a woman's burka, by Aina-trained photojournalist Farzana Wahidy.

As a photojournalist I have observed an important thing, that most coverage of world events — especially in places like Afghanistan –- is done by white men between 30 and 40 year old. All those male journalists do interviews with Afghan men but have no access to the lives of the other 50% of the Afghan population. What about Afghan women’s stories? Who can tell them? Even if you have one or two women journalists there, the minute they have their own male interpreter and bodyguards, they cannot go inside the houses. They may be able to go inside some open-minded families’ houses, but they are are only talking to a tiny percentage of Afghan women. So who is the best to cover Afghan women? The Afghan women themselves.

This was how we started the Aina video project for Afghan women, asking them to make documentaries. The first ever documentary like this was called Afghanistan Unveiled. We trained seven Afghan women to hold a  camera for the first time, and nine months later their film was shown on PBS, the National Geographic channel, more than 20 international channels, at festivals…everywhere. In 2005 it was nominated for an Emmy award as one of four best foreign documentaries. It was because the story was totally different from what we’d heard before. The women knew where to go and who to talk to and how to express themselves. We also had one of Aina’s former student, Farzana Wahidy, who got the National Geographic All Roads honor. She was the first Afghan female photojournalist to receive this award.

In these ways we continued to develop the idea that Aina was founded on. Then one day the UN came to us saying, Reza, what would be the best tool to send out messages to the maximum number of people in the villages and cities? Obviously, as a visual person, I came up with this idea, which was used before in many countries a long time ago, of the mobile cinema project. We have mobile units going from village to village, school to school, with big screens and nice projectors. And Aina students make films that are informative and educational. It connected the population immediately and the whole cycle became local.

We also created a children’s magazine designed to provide both children and their families with important  information. It’s not an entertainment magazine; it’s about understanding each other and the whole world, which is especially important in this part of the world. so little-by-little this children’s magazine and women’s radio have become our main projects.

I think that the 21st century needs a new humanitarian organization, and for me this is Aina. I call it a “third-generation” humanitarian organization. It’s not giving people bread; it’s helping them to make their own bread. The big difference between all the existing NGOs and what we are doing is that we want to train local people, help them to become independent completely, to take their countries in their own hands — and then we leave.

So today, after almost nine years in existence, here are some very brief figures: Aina has trained 1,000 Afghans, three to four hundred of whom are women. The first Afghan independent media, called Kabul Weekly, is still going on, and it’s highly respected. We launched an Afghan women’s radio station; we launched a kids’ magazine; we have this production unit making films. And we created the first Afghan photo agency, AINA Photo Agency. It’s an independent photo agency, whose shareholders are the photographers that we trained. They are the owners of their own agency. Kabul Weekly is 100-percent independent media that seldom needs outside help.

By creating a national messaging system, we’ve created all the tools now to replace these psychologists we would need to help people in war-torn countries heal. But the biggest result will be long term. When you start educating women and girls, you are educating the next generation of mothers to educate their children. And we not only trained 1,000 people who then found fantastic jobs, we also created jobs.That’s why Aina, as the first of this kind of organization in the world, has such a positive outcome. That’s why in 2009, with the help of the National Geographic Mission Program and for which they named me a fellow of the National Geographic society, I’m going to launch an international organization to bring the most important aspects of Aina to other countries.

• In the latest update on Iranian-American photojournalist Roxana Saberi, after being charged with espionage two weeks ago, she was subsequently convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison. Her parents, Reza and Akiko Saberi, who are staying in Tehran to press for her release and Roxana has announced a hunger strike in protest. In the meantime, students at Northwestern University, where Roxana received her graduate degree in journalism, are rallying in her support. According to ABC News, Roxana’s parents have hired new lawyers for her appeal, which could be decided within a week.

• Congratulations to Damon Winter of the New York Times and Patrick Farrell of the Miami Herald, the winners of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes for photography. Damon’s coverage of the Obama presidential campaign garnered the award in the Feature Photography category, and Patrick’s photo story of the aftermath of Hurricane Ike in Haiti earned him the award in the Breaking New category.

• Showing that they aren’t resting on their Pulitzer laurels, the New York Times posted a nice multimedia slide show featuring Tyler Hicks’ photographs of American soldiers in Afghanistan.

• Photojojo alerted us to World Pinhole Camera Day on Sunday (April 26) and also to the extravagant pinhole cameras for free download from Corbis. They come as a pdf that you cut out and assemble yourself — warning, these are the most complicated instructions we’ve seen in a while, but they look cool! All the designs are created by Fwis, a small design firm based in New York.

"Silos" ©Brian Kosoff

Co-ops are a good place to start

My very first gallery presentation was actually in 1976 when I was 18, which resulted in my first solo show in New York City. Times were very different in 2001 when I presented to a co-op gallery, to which my acceptance was already a certainty. With co-op galleries, if your work is of reasonable quality and they need another paying member, well…you’re in. But co-ops deserves consideration, since my show there eventually led to my first gallery presentation that “mattered.”

What brought me to this co-op gallery was simple — my wife. One of the attractions of our cute Hudson River town was the fact there were seven galleries near by. When we’d walk by a gallery, my wife would nudge me about joining one of them or seeking representation. Even though I was spending a fair amount of time shooting landscapes after rekindling my interest in it a year earlier, I’d usually dismiss the idea saying I really didn’t have that much time to spend on it. But to be honest, I was uneasy about being seen as a commercial photographer “playing” at being an artist. But my wife continued to encourage me, and I eventually showed them my work, handed them my check, and was accepted as a member. If only it was so easy at non co-op galleries!

Look at all your work together

A few months after joining this co-op gallery, it was my turn for my solo show, in April 2001. The day I hung the show was the first time I had been physically surrounded by my new work and the first time I noticed that I was already showing rudimentary signs of having a style. It was illuminating. I highly recommend that every serious photographer literally surround themselves with their work and give it a good look all at once.

The show opened and I have to admit I was extremely curious how the viewers would react. I pretended to be just another viewer while eavesdropping on people in an effort to hear their honest reactions. I was very pleasantly surprised. My fears of being chased out of town by torch-wielding townsfolk turned out to be unfounded. Not only was the work well received, I actually sold prints — quite a few in fact! By the second weekend of the show, I had made a very respectable profit, and it began to appear that I could make a living doing this type of work. I would no longer need an expensive photo studio in Manhattan and the pressure from such a high overhead. I was elated; however, one gallery would not be enough to replace my established commercial photography business. I would need more galleries.

Show them what they want to see

First I did a little research to narrow down my list of galleries to ones that seemed to have an appreciation or interest in my genre of work. Just like showing my work to advertising clients: show your hamburger picture to MacDonald’s ad agency, your lipstick photos to Revlon’s.

Once I had my list of potential galleries in NYC, it was time to make calls. Some galleries were willing to see me for an in-person presentation; others just wanted me to drop off my portfolio. I had two 11×14” portfolios of my landscape prints, matted and mounted — one for drop-offs and one for in-person presentations.

Be prepared to put on a show

On day, I had arranged to drop off a portfolio at a gallery and also had made an appointment for an in-person presentation at Edward Carter Gallery. Both galleries showed a lot of B&W landscape work, ECG at one point touting itself as the biggest collection of Ansel Adams prints. The morning of the Carter meeting I received a call from the gallery where I had dropped off my portfolio. They thanked me and said I could pick up my portfolio at any time. I was disappointed but arranged to pick up the first portfolio and then went to see Mr. Carter at ECG.

When I walked into ECG I was blown away with how beautiful the gallery was. It was not the typical white walls and emptiness. This gallery had dark gray, nearly black walls and the prints, mostly Ansel, just popped off of them. There was a seating area, double Eames chairs, and Mr. Carter asked me to sit. He removed an Ansel print from the small wall directly in front of the chairs and asked me to present my work in that spot — the same spot where the Adams’ print had just hung!

Now, I had a lot of experience, about 25 years worth, showing my work to people: art directors, creative directors, picture editors, etc. But this was different, it was my personal work. It’s one thing to show an AD who works on a cosmetics account your assignment work with other cosmetics clients, and something else entirely to show someone work that has much deeper meaning for you. And as I held each image in the spotlight for Mr. Carter to see, I couldn’t help but notice that I was facing several Adams prints, and behind me were several more, and I’m starting to think to myself, “Who am I kidding?”  Whether you love, hate, or are neutral regarding Ansel Adams’ work, there’s no denying his contribution to photography. He’s not called St. Ansel for nothing. There’s actually a mountain named after him.

Don’t jump to conclusions

So I finish with my presentation, and the whole time Mr. Carter had been stone-faced, poker-faced, so I was not expecting a desirable outcome. I boxed up my prints, sat down next to him, and he turned to me and said, “I’d be honored to represent you.” That was not quite the response I was expecting. So, trying to be cool and acting as though no other outcome could have been possible, I ask him what the terms of representation were (good comeback!). Of course I started dialing my cell phone the second I walked out of the gallery, only to be frustrated by a lack of reception until I stepped outside onto Broadway. “Honey, I got an NYC gallery!!”

Coincidently, later that week I receive a call from the owner of the gallery where the staff had told me to pick up my portfolio. She asked why I had picked up the portfolio when she had been interested in meeting with me and talking about representation. Apparently someone on her staff had made an error. I had to tell her that I had just signed with another gallery — a real bummer since 9/11 ultimately put ECG out of business, and her gallery is still doing really well.

About a week after my meeting at ECG, I went with my wife, my parents, and my uncle (who was an avid photographer and had introduced me to photography) to ECG. There, next to prints by Ansel Adams, hung my own prints. It meant a lot to me then — and whenever I see my work hanging in the company of gifted photographers, it still means a lot to me.