Black Star Rising

“Partisanship is our great curse. We too readily assume that everything has two sides and that it is our duty to be on one or the other.”

– Historian James Harvey Robinson

Funny thing is, that quote’s about 100 years old. So when we talk about the excessive partisanship that plays itself out across the U.S. media landscape on a daily basis, we’re not talking about a new phenomenon.

With all the emphasis photographers are placing on social media and online marketing these days, it’s easy to overlook the value of the good old-fashioned business card as a means of introducing yourself to prospective clients.

Bogota-based Black Star photographer Richard Emblin had the opportunity to interview Joel-Peter Witkin during the photography legend’s recent visit to Colombia. Here is his story.

For much of August, Joel-Peter Witkin moved through Bogotá without the custody of bodyguards and the media hype usually associated with an artist whose work has reached the celebrity stratosphere. As we meet in the Parque 93, Joel puts a condition on our meeting and the chance to talk photography: that I treat him to breakfast with “real juice.”

I’m currently teaching a course at the University of South Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication on how to start and operate your own successful freelance business. The course is aimed at students who want to become photographers, videographers, graphic designers, Web designers, and other creative professionals.

I recently purchased billboard space for two months to promote my wedding photography business. We’re in booking season, so now’s the time for aggressive marketing — especially in today’s economy.

Fortunately, advertising rates have come down as a result of the recession, making the billboard a pretty good deal for us. We’re already getting positive feedback and I expect to get some bookings from it.

Having spent the past several months on Twitter tweeting and reading the tweets of the people I follow, I’ve gradually evolved a strategy for using this service to market my photography business without being too obvious about it.

I’m a concert photographer. And being a concert shooter, it helps to be aware of — and show respect for — the people around you at events. So, for example, I hand-hold my camera with fast lenses attached. I stay low so I don’t block people’s views. That kind of thing.

As a newspaper photographer for 22 years, I covered just about every kind of news or sports event you can think of. But one thing I never got to try was glamour photography.

So I decided to step out of my comfort zone recently and attempt a shoot, with the help of my model, Lesly Garcia. Here are six lessons I learned from the experience.

As most photographers on Twitter likely know, Twitpic is a service that makes it easy to post images to Twitter, and to view and comment on photos from your Twitter account. It’s also emerged as the trendy new candidate to kill old-school spot photojournalism once and for all.

You can spend your life savings printing photographs and many people do.

An exhibition-quality, 11×14 print from West Coast Imaging, one of the finest labs in the country, goes for well over $100, and you won’t be disappointed by the quality. But put that print behind glass, in a frame, in a dimly lit gallery and how much of that beauty really shines through? And are potential buyers even aware of what you’ve spent?

I’m sure you are familiar with the concept of the “elevator speech.” The idea is that — if you are asked what you do for a living or what your company does — you should be able to give a complete, compelling answer in the time it takes to ride an elevator to your destination.

I’m not a photographer (a casual look through my family albums will offer proof of that), but I’ve been hiring photographers for corporate assignments for more than 15 years now. I’ve hired photographers while leading the corporate communications function for billion-dollar companies, heading up marketing for a tech startup I co-founded, and today, as owner/president of a boutique public relations firm.

One of the most challenging things about teaching is crafting course assignments. A good assignment must meet several requirements. First, it must engage the students and give them something interesting to do. Second, it must build on previous assignments and lay the groundwork for future ones. Third, it must produce a result that can be evaluated. And fourth, it must further the course’s learning objectives.

In August, I traveled to New York to take photos of the Statue of Liberty for several book projects. Going in, I knew exactly the kind of image I wanted: Lady Liberty’s green copper face against a rich, blue summer sky.

If you’re a professional photographer of any kind, you probably take a lot of headshots. When I worked at the Miami office of EFE News, the Spanish government’s official information agency, headshots of Latin pop stars, mostly taken at organized press events, were our bread and butter.

To win new photography clients, it’s important to be able to distinguish yourself from the competition. Obviously, you hope to achieve this with the quality of your work. But sometimes, credentials that illustrate your professionalism can be just as persuasive.

As a travel photographer, I generally spend about three days doing research for every day that I’m on the road. I tend to look for oddities — those strange, twisted places that rarely make it into the tour books.

Since I currently teach photography to college students part-time, I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on my own formal education in photojournalism. I’ve realized that many of the most important lessons I’ve learned — ones I hope to impart to my own students — were never actually taught in school. Here are a few of them.

The future of photography is in original, exclusive content.

That’s harder to achieve today than it used to be. When photography was still film, print and slide, no one could really copy you, as they could not see what you had shot. As digital distribution has become the standard, more and more photographers see your work online and say, “Hey, I can shoot that.”

Recently, I visited the forum of a modeling Web site where a photographer boasted about his microstock image being used on the cover of Time Magazine. He was proud that Time had purchased the image — for $30.

There was a time when publications assigned photojournalists long-term projects with the goal of thoroughly documenting an important story over time. Unfortunately, with rare exceptions, those days are gone.

When I started working as a newspaper photographer in the mid 1970s, there was a clear division of labor: I shot the pictures, and the reporters did the interviewing. Today, photographers and videographers are often called upon to record both images and words.

At a time when client budgets are tight, it’s tempting to reduce your photography prices in hopes of boosting your business. But successful photographers know that it’s better to focus on the value you deliver, rather than price you charge.

If you’re thinking of selling, or even just displaying, the photos you take of other people, it’s a good idea to get the subject or subjects to sign a model release. Photographers and attorneys can debate when such a release is actually needed — but when I have recognizable faces in my images, I like to have a release just to be safe.

A camera obscura box with sliding door from the early 1800s trumpeted as the world’s first camera was recently on display in Macau, China. Its simple method for capturing light and projecting an image continues to drive camera technology today.