It feels like I have kept the post office afloat this last 18 months or so with the amount of promo cards we have been posted out.
Next week we prepare our latest mailer to be shipped to the many agencies & clients we would love to work with.This latest one features images from a couple of recent shoots and can be downloaded as a PDF here.
A great site for finding photographers if you are albeit a little bit further away from the UK, is this new Australian site
It ‘s that time of the year when my first quarterly mailers are lined up to get posted out the studio door.
It’s a big undertaking that requires planning,financial investment and a team effort to complete.
So if you are a London based Creative and see one of these watermarked envelopes appear on your desk in the coming month please be kind and don’t bin it- well at least until you’ve had a look ! ….100 down 600 to go.
Promoting what you do is a massively important part of any self employed person’s working life and it’s especially true in the creative fields where competition can be pretty intense.
When I’m not working on commissioned work I’ll be found shooting personal images & projects that I have dream’s up like “Chiron Of Thessaly”
These images are often then used to help promote what I do in various forms of marketing both online and in print.
Over the last 20 years I have done many creative forms of physical mailings from custom made boxes with A6 images inside to clever cards that popped up the image when opened…pretty cool stuff !
In more recent years however I have come to the conclusion that more often than not less is often more and perhaps the good old A5 double sided cards that lets the images do the talking may work best rather than attempting to be too clever.
Another consideration to add is that reproducing that stunning image you shot in Venice as an A2 poster may look the nuts but what does the receiver realistically do with such an impressive monster ! My guess is it gathers dust then ends up in the bin or shoved in the office shredder.
So for me the trusty old A5 card is a cost effective and versatile way to promote my work and with any luck find a space on the recipients wall or least their filing system for future reference.
I’m pleased to announced one of my images has received an Honorable Mention In IPA Awards.
The awards which are in their 10th Anniversary Year received over 10,000 entries and judged by over 80 international photography professionals.
The image which was entered into the Advertising self promotion category is Untitled is one of my Life In A Somerset Landscape series.
The image features a Fox in a spring dawn at Burrow Mump at Burrowbridge on the Somerset Levels.
I suppose it does not matter what you do if you are self employed for a living we all get approached to advertise in something or other.
If you are a commercial Photographer it seems to be calls or emails about placing adverts on photographic web portals or in some promotional book that is being distributed to every creative and his dog.
Don’t get me wrong I’ve done my fair share of promoting in a few of these publications over the years and some are well respected and are actually used by the Designers and Ad Agency creatives who receive them.
I’m pretty picky about where I spend my advertising budget and generally stick to direct marketing these days and give little time to looking at paid space in books. However a few weeks ago I received a call from a very nice Dutch fellow called Eric Kievit who chatted to me about a monster sized 50x70cm photography book his company XXL Books produced.
I have several Dutch friends whom I have met while visiting Turkey where we have a holiday home and so had an enjoyable chat about many things Dutch including Football and how some of my favorite photographers all seem to be either Dutch or German.
Despite my doubts over advertising in this impressive sounding publication this year Eric kindly said he’d send me a copy (all 10kg of it !) in the post of their Dutch Photography edition so that I could experience & enjoy the stunning photography.
True to his word the book turned up a few days ago and it really is an impressive publication not only in size and weight but also in the quality of the reproductions.
I look forward to seeing the U.K version and maybe submitting my own work at some point in the future.
Today after 6 months hard work I finally completed and assembled my new Book (or Portfolio if you prefer).
I say completed but your book never is completed as most photographers like myself are always creating new work and over time your style does shift somewhat too.
The work consists of Life,location & Automotive which should be no surprise as that is what I specialise in.
The last few years have been mostly spent shooting Automotive and Landscape images so last May while away in Turkey I decided I wanted to shoot more People/Life images.
So after many months shooting,editing,printing,re editing and re printing the Book is finally finished today…well for now at least !
Here are a few snaps of the Book being assembled today.
The Glicee prints needed scoring so they will turn in the Book and holes need punching so that they will slip into the brass retaining posts.
The final result looks fantastic and much better than having plastic sleeves although you have to watch creatives with grubby fingers !
I’ve lost count of how many promotional pieces I must have produced and sent out over the years but it’s a lot and many involving some clever design work.
They range from the effective simplicity of an A5 card like the ones shown here to elaborate tent cards which when opened would produce a pop up image from inside.
These days I have gone back to basics producing for most of my promos very simple double sided A5 cards which can be filed, pinned or binned ! very easily.
They get to the point quickly without anything over shadowing the photography and in these days when people’s time is very limited I believe this approach works best.
You can download a Pdf of the card Here
I’m happy to say I have won another Epson International Panoramic Award. I have entered these awards a few times now and always been fortunate to come away with a Bronze or Silver.This year I entered one image into the Nature section which was from my recent series “Life In A Somerset Landscape” and received Bronze.
An interesting article on HDR photography that I was interviewed for has just been published.
