me studio

I’ve been very busy so hadn’t had time to write about the photography seminar last week yet… we had a full house and it was good to see that so many people turned out (mainly photographers, the art directors apparently aren’t that interested in the future of their business)

we had chosen our speakers well I think and all three made a good presentation…lewis blackwell had a pretty slick story and obviously felt ‘on the defensive’ from the start, even opening his talk by reading a letter out loud from someone who attacked him for being a ‘money grabbing parasite’ or some such term… he barely had time to finish talking before the audience started firing ‘odd’ questions at him, it must be tough in his position to constantly have to defend your company against worried photographers, the point of his speech was precisely that:
we aren’t going to go away so think about what it could mean to you, adapt or die… and he is of course, right

next martin cornelissen from DDB had an amusing speech that sounded like he hated ‘stock’ only to end up by stating the truth (in my opinion) stock is generally poor when it is used poorly (i.e. by lazy art directors) the third speaker martin beckett spoke from the perspective of photographers and was somewhere in between the other two, in terms of his standpoint, he also made the point that, the best way to survive change is to make change yourself…

the second half of the evening involved a panel discussion with krijn van noordwijk(art director turned photographer, a smart move for him) julia llamas (art buyer) and fabian schulting (art director and self confessed stock user)
unfortunately the discussion was largely in english which put the audience who were invited to participate at a disadvantage, the photographers largely demonstrated the point that they are indeed worried but don’t really know why or about what precisely, I had suggested that it maybe a good idea to do some live searches on internet during the discussion and did so using google, flickr, getty images etc. picking out keywords form the talk and doing live image searches on the beamer behind the speakers on stage, it was good fun to do but a lot of people complained afterwards to me at how annoying this was! others thanked me for giving them something to look at during the long winded discussion

all in all it was a successful evening and worth the effort