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Many photographers (substitute illustrator, designer, art director, copywriter, and other creative services) are off their paths. Some were never on their paths at all. They saw what appeared to work and followed in the footsteps of their heroes hoping they would reach their goals. We must reset our own goals clearly based upon our heart’s desires. It is only then that we own them..

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Blame Leads to Victimization

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Others are easy to blame for current conditions in the industry. There are many factors contributing to the overall malaise: crowdsourcing, recession, technology, 70,000 out of work advertising people, threatening changes in copyright law, devaluation of photography, etc. Threads on professional forums are filled with complaints that villainize the people with whom we want to do business. Why would you want to do business with villains? When we have villains, we often become victims and we make everyone and everything wrong. These projections are shadowy behaviors.

We do not feel safe. The level of safety that many search for is an illusion. Creating demands change. Change entails risk. Risk requires a temporary suspension of security. Creators know they are on the wrong path when they resist change, growth and innovation.

Some wait for something to happen to them rather than making something happen.

It is no longer effective to do the same thing, or even the same thing differently. We must redirect our passions to bring something new into being.

We must take a long hard look at the road we are walking on right now.

The photography industry is grieving the road familiar. Some feel lost. Others are wandering in new woods on unbeaten paths.

The answers are inside. Yet we were taught to search for them outside of ourselves. Creators who do not approach their work wholeheartedly become heartbroken, suffer heart attacks, heartache or heart failure, face angst, despair, desolation, heartsickness, lose heart, and more.

What may be done to help manage change? Apply the same creative energy and spirit used to make images. Embrace change. For me, it has often been about redirection of my passions. Passions do not change all that much. However, it is possible to redirect them. Our industry has changed so rapidly, many have not had a chance to catch their breath. Rather than gather in places where people spend time supporting negativity, accentuate the positive.

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Redirect.

Fan the Embers.

Set Yourself on Fire!

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Notice I have used the word redirection rather than reinvention. Reinvention means that your career is wrong and that you may need to invent it all over again. Redirection is finding new places, actions and methods to place your passions.

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Calling and Talent

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Vision is a calling. A calling is an inner urge or a strong impulse, a passion, some believe a calling may be divinely inspired. How will the world be a different place as a result of your visit on the planet? What is your calling? What is it that you feel the urge and passion to bring into being no matter what?

Do you have a natural marked innate ability, for artistic accomplishment? That is a definition of talent. Talent and calling must be present to sustain a career as a professional artist.

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The Heartstorming Career Redirection Workshop

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Discover new ways to manifest and redirect your dreams.
Articulate your calling.
Explore alternative markets.
Learn how to set goals based upon your passions that
don’t end up in the back of a drawer.
Find ways to stay on your path.
Identify what you want and set priorities.
Create an action plan to do what you want
and overcome the obstacles.

I am planning a series of career redirection workshops beginning in the Fall. I know money is tight. However I believe many would benefit from redirecting their careers. So, I have come up with a plan.

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What if?

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What if we present a two day workshop? What if we charged a fee of $500 a person? What if we offered it at half price, if you were to bring one of your business friends who may wish to redirect their passions too? What if we offered the workshop for free, if you bring two others?

This will allow you to become a linchpin by linking yourself to a wide range of people from other disciplines and to make a difference in their careers and your own.

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Feedback Requested

I am searching for sponsors for these events. I would like to let them know what you think about this idea. Please respond by commenting on this post or email me at iansummers@heartstorming.com or call me at 610-393-6816. I will be happy to answer your questions and to discuss the possibillities. I am creating this workshop to meet your needs and desires.

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Alfred A.Knopf in 1935

b.1892 – d.1984

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Back in the 70′s when I was a Creative Director at Ballantine Books — the paperback division of Random House — I had the privilege to meet some of the most extraordinary men and women in the book pubishing world: Donald Klopher, Robert Bernstein, Ronald Bush, Robert Gottleib, Ian Ballantine, and Alfred Knopf, to name a few. Read Knopf’s bio for the history of publishing in the 20th Century. He was brave, strong, powerful, opinionated, creative, a risk taker and one of the few publishers willing to publish poetry in the so-called mainstream.

After receiving his B.A. in 1912, Knopf worked as a clerk at Doubleday (1912–1913), then as an editorial assistant to Michael Kennerly (1914). He founded his own publishing house in 1915. The company initially emphasized European, especially Russian, literature, hence the choice of the borzoi as a colophon. At that time European literature was largely neglected by American publishers; Knopf published authors such as Joseph Conrad, W. Somerset Maugham, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, André Gide, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud, and Franz Kafka.

Knopf also published many American authors, including H.L. Mencken, Theodore Dreiser, Vachel Lindsay, James M. Cain, Conrad Aiken, Dashiell Hammett, James Baldwin, John Updike, Shirley Ann Grau, and Knopf’s own favorite, Willa Cather. He often developed a personal friendship with his authors. Knopf’s personal interest in the fields of history, sociology, and science led to close friendships in the academic community with such noted historians as Richard Hofstadter, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Samuel Eliot Morison.

For more bio info

Honoring Knopf’s passion for publishing poetry, Knopf (a division of Random House) offers a Poem-A-Day each April. Go to Knopf and sign-up for a free daily poem, which often includes recordings of readings, broadsides, biographies, comments, background material, and food for the soul.

How may you use poetry as a point-of-departure? Post your artwork and comments here.

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What’s next in the exciting turbulent world of marketing and creating commercial art?

Not a month goes by where there aren’t at least a few seminars presented on multi-media by our professional organizations. There is an article in the current edition of PDN presenting interviews with art buyers and others regarding the need for professional photographers to create and offer multi-media. There are lots of caveats and expectations associated with this. This can be exciting and lucrative for those who function towards the top of the Scale of Innovation. However, if you are not growing creatively, your business may atrophy.

I believe it is imperative to explore and develop alternative markets and to learn how to be less dependent upon old marketing models. It is vital to apply all you have learned about creating to develop new places and ways to sell your work. Not instead of what you are doing, but rather in addition to traditional markets such as advertising and publishing.

In Art is Work, Milton Glaser identifies four categories of work. Work that goes beyond its function and moves us in deep and mysterious ways, Glaser calls great work. Work that is conceived and executed with elegance and rigor, he calls good work. Work that meets its intended need honestly and without pretense, he calls work. And finally there is everything else, the sad and shoddy stuff of daily life, comes under the heading of bad work. If that is the case, most of the work we produce is either just work or even bad work. The last two categories will disappear for the professional and will be replaced by crowdsourcing.

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We must become mountain climbers. And we must stop using the word ‘great’ for everything we create unless it moves us in deep and mysterious ways.

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Rejoice! It is National Poetry Month

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When was the last time you created art that was filled with poetry — with metaphors? When was the last time you read a poem aloud to yourself or someone else? Did you know that April is National Poetry Month and that Knopf offers a complementary poem a day? Read a poem each day and discover how it may effect your work.

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The Second Coming

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Steve Heller, wrote that there is hope and opportunity associated with the I-Pad. I know half a dozen photographers writing original and useful apps. If you do not subscribe to The Daily Heller, I highly recommend it. Editions of The Daily Heller are available for free at Print Magazine’s website. For $29.95, you can receive on-line access to 21,000 winners of their Regional Design Annual..

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Easter was just yesterday, yet the second coming for magazines is still on the way.

The new savior, you may surmise, is the iPad or iPadius (in Latin).

Spreading the iPad gospel are the media pundits (puditus mediasus) including David Pogue and Edward C. Baig.

They don’t just love it, as Woody Allen once said, they “lurve” it for all sorts of reasons.

But the most significant concern for the design field, and specifically the editorial design field, is the magazine Resurrection.

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The subject line in a recent missive from Seth Godin was: I’m Mad at Everyone. It got my attention immediately. And it resonated with some notes I have been making about pronouns. So using Seth’s cue, I expanded, adapted, paraphrased. Godin’s latest book Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? may be the most important and readable book about marketing you will read this year. Yep. I am a Seth Godin fan.
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Who are Everyone Anyhow?

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Using pronouns such as these can get one in trouble, be misunderstood, connote arrogance, lack specificity, are vague, and often incongruent. I cringe when I hear people make statements that presume that everyone is alike.

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Everyone
They
Them
Those
Someone
Whatever
Whomever
Everywhere
No one

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True or False?
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Everyone who is anyone uses Twitter.
No one responds to creative promotions.
Everyone is too busy to answer their telephone.
There are so many of them, I do not know whom to target.
Everyone already has a favorite photographer.
No one ever returns telephone calls from photographers or reps.
They say that sending an email every six weeks is all one needs to do to be successful in this business.
Everyone says you need to specialize.
Everything you create is great.
I show my work everywhere.
Nobody’s doing anything right now.
Every photographer needs to create multi-media in order to survive.

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Them Shirts

My first job at an advertising agency was with Waring & Larosa which was one of the hottest shops in post Madmen NYC during the early 1970s. Our client, Gant Shirts, known for popularizing button-down shirts, wanted to reach a younger market with hip colors and stripes. We named the shirts Them and a line of ties Those. Them and Those were introduced via radio which the creative and account team believed could be a very visual medium. We had some fun with pronouns. The commercial went something like this:
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SFX: department store bells and background noises.
Customer: Whistling nervously trying to get attention of salesman.
Salesman: “How may I help you today sir?”
Customer: “Do you carry Them?”
Salesman: “Yes Sir. We have a full line of Them.
SFX: sounds of footsteps and opening display cases
Salesmen: These are Them. Any particular Them.
Customer: I don’t know.
Salesman: Which do you like better? This Them or that Them?
Customer: That Them.
Salesman: Good choice Sir. May I show you Those ties. This Those go best with that Them.

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Tunnel Vision: Tear Down The Walls
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Harry Beckwith wrote a great book called Selling the Invisible. Think about it. Isn’t that exactly what we do when selling commercial photography? We are selling something that cannot be seen because it does not exist.

Beckwith tells an anecdote about tunnel vision and how it is prevalent in the world. Especially the corporate world.

He says, I cannot walk into most companies without being aware of their walls. The walls do more than keep the weather out. They block a clear vision of the world. When companies discuss their problems they talk about themselves. People tend to talk about what they know. And one of the things they know is their company. But what you really need to know is what is out there. For example, you need to know your prospects and customers. So get out of here. Get out of yourself. See the world. Climb the highest mountain. Astral travel. Whatever it takes.

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Pithy Quotes
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Character

Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down with incredible swiftness.
Faith Baldwin, 1893-1978, Author of over one hundred novels
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Infinite Possibilities

There are many tunes still to be written in the Key of C.
Arnold Schöenberg, 1874-1951, Composer

Schöenberg was speaking about synthesis.
There are an infinite number of ways to manifest creations.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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Breaking the Rules

The young know the rules, but the old know the exceptions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809-1894, Author, Professor, Poet, Physician
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Certainties

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
Erich Fromm, 1900-1980, Psychoanalyst, Social Theorist
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Photographers Must Make Photographs

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write,
if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
Abraham Maslow, 1908-1970, Psychologist

This is a good case for photo walks
which I wrote about in the March Newsletter.
Photographers must make photographs.
Photo walks are a way to make photographs
without an attachment to an outcome.
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Jim Marshall

.Too much bullshit is written about photographs and music.

Let the music move you, whether to a frenzy or a peaceful place.
Let it be what you want to hear—not what others say is popular.
Let the photograph be one you remember,
not for its technique, but for its soul.
Let it become a part of your life—
a part of your past to help shape your future.
But most of all, let the music and the photograph be
something you love and will always enjoy.
Jim Marshall. 1936-2010, Photographer

A Tribute to Jim Marshall
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Branding

Clothes don’t make the man, the man makes the man.
Clothes (and the brand) just amplify that.
Seth Godin, b.1960.

Godin is so right. Your brand can’t be fixed.
It is not about your logo, the design of your website, or even your work,
which we may refer to as clothes.
It is about what you stand for.
What makes you different?

Branding is about choosing the clothes that fit.

Vision

Is there any doubt what Robert Motherwell stood for?
Try reading Motherwell’s words aloud.
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My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is Heaven,
my road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions are few,
my guide is reliable, my mission is clear.
I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away,
turned back, diluted, or delayed.
I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice,
hesitate in the presence of adversity, negotiate …
at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity,
or meander in a maze of mediocrity.
I won’t give up, shut up, let up, or slow up.
Robert Motherwell, 1915-1991, Abstract Expressionist, Writer

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Ian Summers

Copyright © 2009 Tom Kosa

Call today.
I can help you grow your career; to do what you love.
My coaching includes creative strategies, vision, portfolio enhancement, market development, sales promotion and advertising,
sales training, identifying developing alternative markets and much more.
I will tell you about one-on-one coaching and group teleconferences.

The first telephone coaching session is free.
At the conclusion of the first meeting, I will discuss a customized
approach based on your desires.
There are no obligations.

Call or email me with some alternative dates and times to meet.
I will confirm via email and will tell you how to prepare for the free session.

Tel 610-438-5707
Cel 610-393-6816

The Heartstorming Philosophy

Ian Summers
145 South Eleventh Street
Loft #4
Easton PA 18042

iansummers@heartstorming.com

www.heartstorming.com
www.iansummersartwork.com

Heartstorming Webinars
Free at liveBooks‘ Website

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