PhotoPlus: Who Cares If Your Photos Sell?
More from the PDN PhotoPlus International Conference + Expo...
... This morning I appeared on a panel with with Jim Pickerell, Ron Rovtar and Chris Ferrone (who all run web sites about stock photography) and moderator Patrick Donehue of PACA and Corbis. It turned into a fairly technical discussion of stock pricing models, with lots of thoughtful questions from the audience. (I was reminded of some good advice I read once about public speaking: Assume the audience knows everything you do.)
A weird thing happened near the end of the session. Donehue said there was time for two more questions. A man I hadn't noticed before, sitting near the front, raised his hand. He stood up and launched into an emotional, shame-on-you lecture about how he takes photographs for himself, for beauty, not to make money. "I don't care if anybody buys my photos!" the man said, nearly shouting. He sat down and the audience applauded, somewhat uncomfortably. The mysterious man left the room before any of us could get his name. Why he sat through a three-hour seminar on stock photography I may never know.
... I just left Vincent Laforet's seminar on digital workflow. He ran the presentation through his souped-up Macbook connected by remote desktop software to his home servers (which cost thousands of dollars a year to keep running in air-conditioning bills alone). Is he man or machine? Either way he's so far ahead technologically it's scary.
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Daryl, I'm ROTFL re the mystery man at your session on pricing models. If only we could see his portfolio!
Posted by: Jain Lemos | October 19, 2007 at 05:25 PM
Your mystery man must not do photography (ie. professional) for a living. If he does, I for one would like to know his secret for paying his bills.
Posted by: Bruce Riccitelli | October 25, 2007 at 07:43 PM
Attending an exhibition showcasing the latest in photography technology and information, spending around $90 to attend a seminar, waiting until the end of three hours of technical market analysis, and in a room full of photography professionals, isn't an ideal situation for preaching an "I'm holier than thou - I don't sell my art" message.
...but it was entertaining!
The audience applauded to make him stop. I did. It worked too, as he stopped abruptly and sat down as soon as the applause started.
Posted by: Lee Torrens | October 31, 2007 at 10:18 PM