February 2012 Edition Copyright © 2012 Ian Summers . . . Dear Reader. . . I hope this finds you well and thriving. Today’s edition offers opportunities to participate in an alternative application for the visual arts. Here are some good reasons to create personal work applying idea stimulators. and  the wisdom of the sages. One of my articles published by Agency Access about creating work that comes from your heart recieved the honor of being named one of the best 100 photography blogposts of 2011. Manifest Passion, Ian . . . . Copyright © 2011 Michael Regnier . . . . About two years ago, when commercial markets were ravaged by the recession and fear was pervasive, my Heartstorming Think Tank Team Teleconference groups began to seek new venues to sell their work; not instead of what they were already doing, but as additional markets. We explored, researched and discussed creating a company that would offer healing art to the healthcare and corporate markets, among many other alternatives. Eight of my clients and I invested time and money to bring GlowArtworks into being. . . . . Copyright © 2011 Cameron Davidson . . Our website went live about six months ago and we are learning, exploring,creating, taking risks, making mistakes, curating, selling, promoting, publicizing, and growing. Our curators are seeking the most diverse and excellent fine art collection of files that are printed on-demand by artisans in most any size and substrate. Click the logo to visit our site. You may wish to contribute some of your work to be curated. You will find a PDF that will guide you in choosing and preparing your submission. If you have questions, call me at 610-393-6816. . .. Art has deep roots as a primal healing force. From the moment the first cave painters imprinted their hands dripping with clay on the walls of a cave to the most recent installations by healthcare facility designers, Art has awakened archetypes and aroused the human spirit. It has the power to heal, to change, to create a world of peace, hope, and community. . . . Copyright © 2010 Ian Summers . There are times when Art appeals to patients seeking tranquility; there are times when Art helps people get in touch with their sadness, their joy, their fears. We believe that Art in healthcare facilities should be as varied as people themselves. Art that does not challenge the eye and heart may quickly become wallpaper. We believe that healing Art should be tasteful but not timid. Art affects patients, as well as their loved ones. The hospital environment, the doctors, nurses, orderlies, cafeteria workers, custodians, and administrators can all be positively affected by Art. In essence, consciously chosen Art sets the stage for the healing environment. Art may take the focus away from pain and fear – even for a moment – thus encouraging healing. Our work is a labor of love, and love in itself is a healing force. . . .. Copyright © 2007 Ian Summers . . 1001 More Pithy Quotes Questions & Pondering on The Creative Process with Idea Stimulators .. Lao-Tzu said… . ALL BEHAVIOR consists of opposites… Learn to see things backward, inside out, and upside down. . SELECT A CREATIVE PROBLEM you have been working on. Make a list of all the truths you know about it. Then make a list of the opposites of all the truths. In what ways does thinking contrarily help to see things differently? Susan Sontag said… THE RELATION of a still photograph is a film is intrinsically misleading. To quote from a movie is not the same as quoting from a book. Wereas the reading time of a book is up to the reader, the viewing time of a film is set by the film maker and the images are perceived only as fast or as slowly as the editing permits. Thus, a still, which allows one to linger over a single moment as long as one likes, contradicts the very form of film, which is a process, a flow in time. The photographed world stands in the same, essentially inaccurate relation to the real world as stills to to movies. Live is not about significant details, illuminate in a flash, fixed forever. Photographs are. . SONTAG OFFERS a most acute analysis of the differences between still and video photography. It is foolish to believe that because camera manufacturers include HD video in their product, that still photographers would be passionate or naturally adept at this alternative form. The ways still photographers see and work are actually contradictory to shooting film. If you are a photographer and do not feel the calling to become a film maker, find alternative or additional markets that help to manifest your art. Video is not a panacea for all still photographers. . George Segal said… . I DEAL PRIMARILY with mystery and in the presentation of mystery. If I cast someone in plaster, it is the mystery of a human being that is presented. If I put him next to an object, it also raises a question about the nature of that object. . HOW IS MYSTERY represented in your work? In what ways does juxtaposition create mystery? What questions does your work ask?. . . . . Announcing a Free Series of Pithy Heartstorming Quote Salons . . Over a thousand copies of my free eBook, 1001 Quotes, Questions & Pondering on The Creative Process have been distributed to my clients and readers of this newsletter. Thanks for all the kind words. The next edition of 1001 More Pithy Quotes… will be published in May. Readers have been commenting on how my Idea Stimulators accompanying each quote have been helpful, challenging, interesting, and useful in their own creative process. The salon will meet for an hour and a half every other Wednesday morning at noon EST. Upon enrolling, you will be sent three quotes for discussion and protocols for the salon. We will create a Google + video conference hangout. You will need to enroll in Google + and have a video camera on your computer. I will facilitate a lively discussion and encourage you to create inspired personal work in response to the discussion and to share it at our next session. . . Who Should Attend . . .Anyone who wants to grow creatively including photographers, illustrators, videographers, painters, poets, novelists, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, etc. If you are creating personal work, this is for you. Call me for more information and to enroll at 610-393-6816 Google + allows only ten people on a videoconference at one time. So enroll now and save your seat. . . When . First Session on Wed. February 22nd at noon EST. . . Fee . This is my gift to the community. . . . . Call me for more information about my group and individual coaching services. . Does your organization need a sp.eaker for your next event? . . Ian Summers, Raconteur Career Coach, Public Speaker, Workshop Presenter, Artist 145 South Eleventh Street, Loft #4 Easton PA 18042 610-393-6816 . eMail www.heartstorming.com www.iansummersartwork.com www.glowartworks.com New Articles by Ian Summers at Agency Access The Creative Lab . . Company Logo

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I have been following Lou Beach’s work since the 70s. He is a master illustrator. This book of marks his mastery of words. Each story is told in 420 characters or less and is every bit as vivid as his artwork. These are word pictures and I doubt that any two people would see the story the same way in their mind’s eye. Each story was posted as a status update on Facebook. Each entry is a short story in its own right.

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You may peek inside of this book on Amazon.com or read excerpts at 420characters.com While at the website you may listen to readings by Jeff Bridges, Ian McShane, and Dave Alvin.

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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, December 2011: Lou Beach takes the prize for best Facebook status update on nearly every page of 420 Characters. Most of us find it difficult to reduce the day’s events or our current emotional state to just 420 characters with spaces and punctuation, yet Beach manages to tell entire stories within these strict confines without losing anything you’d expect from a story with no character limit. These micro-stories range from funny to tragic to absurd, illustrated by Beach’s original artwork and collages. Taken separately, they’re the stories of dreams, both broken and realized; of relationships healthy and strange; of disillusionment and contentment. Taken together, they’re the story of life–or lives. Though there aren’t any overtly recurring characters, the stories still combine into a powerful cohesive whole that’s just as fun to read straight through as it is to read in chunks of 420 characters or less. –Malissa Kent

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Today’s post contains a discussion on why multimedia is not likely to save the commercial photography industry and what may.

In a previous post, I wrote about the 70,000 or so advertising agency people who are out of work and do not know what to do. Many are spending buckets of energy to get jobs similar to those they left and have discovered those jobs no longer exist. So if that affects you or someone you know, it is time to take different actions.

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Change everything, except your passions.

Voltaire

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The use of the term art medium is , to say the least. misleading,

for it is the artist that creates a work of art not the medium.

It is the artist in photography that gives form to content by a distillation of

ideas, thought, experience, insight, and understanding.

Edward Steichen

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Multimedia is not a Panacea

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Photographers frequently ask me what I think of the multimedia market?

Some photography pundits emphasize multimedia as being the savior of the commercial photography business. Photographers are encouraged to get into the multimedia markets.

Multimedia is not a market. It is a medium in the same ways that the Internet, magazines, newspapers, movies, poor old television, etc. are media. Media are ‘devices’ for disseminating information, culture, news, entertainment, sales messages, and much more.

Multimedia has been around for at least forty years. It simply means using two or more combinations of media to tell a story. When I first entered the business, the technology consisted of nothing more than racks of carousel projectors, dissolve units programmed with tape, some footage, a script, a narrator, live actors, a script, perhaps some live entertainers or speakers. The applications were for sales meetings, new product introductions, motivation, public relations, etc.

As a young producer/director I was responsible for new business, client contact, proposal writing, sussing out a story, hiring scriptwriters, still photographers, cameramen, editors, choreographers, recording studios, sound engineering, and an array of other technicians. The producer/director was the orchestrator. Being a producer/director opened the door for me to the advertising world.

It is not enough to learn multimedia technology. In fact, it is probably mandatory. However, if a photographer is only a technician, s/he will be competing with thousands of people who have already entered the field and the tens of thousands about to arrive believing it is a panacea. The competition will be keen. It is unknown how much work will be available. Technical expertise is important but it is only part of the picture.

Those who will offer multimedia assignments, include art buyers and others who assign still photography and those learning new media themselves .Television commercials, sales meetings, trainings, in-store promos, etc. may be media or applications themselves. I believe a large part of the market will come from corporate direct.

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Multimedia Requires Storytelling

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Still photographers need to learn a very different way of storytelling. They need to learn how to direct and to produce multimedia. They need to think sequentially. According to Albert Maysles one of the greatest and most original American documentarians, “A documentarian finds stories where none seemed to exist.”

My concern is that so many still photographers believe they ‘should’ learn multimedia as a survival action rather than having heard the calling.

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 urge 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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Some Storytelling Essentials

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The graphic novel as a model for multimedia storytelling

The following excerpt is from Will Eisner’s classic book Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative

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Will Eisner 1946

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The telling of a story lies deep in the social behavior of human groups — ancient and modern. Stories are used to teach behavior with the community, to discuss morals and values, or to satisfy curiosity. They dramatize social relations and the problems of living, convey ideas or act our fantasies. The telling of a story requires skill.

In primitive times, the teller of stories in a clan or tribe served as entertainer, teacher and historian. Storytelling preserved knowledge by passing it from generation to generation. This mission has continued into modern times. The storyteller must first have something to tell, and then must be able to master the tools to relay it.

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The Story Itself Abides

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…A story is the narration of a sequence of events deliberately arranged for telling. It is kind of like reporting an event except that the storyteller controls the events. All stories have a structure. A story has a beginning, an end,and a thread of events laid upon a framework that holds it together. Whether the medium is text, film, comics, or any combination of these elements, the skeleton is the same. The style and manner of its telling may be influenced by the medium, but the story itself abides.

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Basic Principles of Storytelling

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…A story may begin as an abstraction. At this point, it is still a lot of thoughts, memories, fantasies, ideas, floating around in one’s head waiting for it to find structure. It becomes a story when told in an arranged and purposeful order. The basic principles of narration are the same whether told orally or visually or both.

The story form is a vehicle for conveying information in an easily absorbed manner. It can relate very abstract ideas, or unfamiliar analogous use of familiar forms of phenomena.

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A Good Place to Begin: Tell Your Own Story

Themata

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How Your Earliest Childhood Memory May Forecast a Life Theme

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I am a reader of autobiographies, journals and letters between people who interest me. I recognized a phenomenon while reading the Letters of Georgia O’Keefe. There she described her earliest childhood memory. She recalled being kept in her dark bedroom before the age of two. Her mother would bring her outdoors on sunny days and place her on a patchwork quilt. Young O’Keefe remembered the great joy of watching the ways the light changed the colors of the quilt. This triggered something in me and I ran to my library and started pulling books off the shelf.

I found an interview with Mike Tyson. He said, “The first thing I remember is being a naughty little boy of two. My father threw me into my crib. I pulled the arms and legs off all of my dolls. It was orgasmic.”

Next I found a letter by young Albert Einstein to a colleague. He wrote about his earliest childhood memory. Albert had no clear memory of his father before the age of five. He caught some childhood disease. His father took the day off from work and spent the entire day with him. Father Einstein brought his son a compass. They spent the day trying to figure out why the needle always pointed in the same direction.

O’Keefe, Einstein, and Tyson remembered incidents which forecast their life themes. Since then, I have found dozens of examples.Hundreds of my clients

I recall my own memories. I see a corner of a room in a house I moved from just before I turned two. There was a Victorian painted porcelain light switch on the school green painted wall. I saw a table which held a Tiffany lamp and an upright telephone. The interpretation was fast. My life is about communications and turning on lights. My early childhood memory confirmed my life purpose. I am a compassionate teacher who helps others turn on the lights.

What is your earliest childhood memory and how does it forecast your life theme? How might you turn your life adventure into a multimedia presentation?

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Watch Examples from a Variety of Non-Fiction Storytellers (Each Image is a Link)

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Capturing Reality A National Film Board of Canada presentation of brief interviews with 33 documentarians

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An Interview with Albert Maysles

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Salesman – a 1968 documentary classic by Albert and David Maysles (Here is 9 minute segment)

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Help Gail Mooney and her Daughter Erin Kelly Open Your Eyes 2010

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Stavit Allweis’ Photographic Novel in Progress was funded through Kickstarter

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