On Monday, our producers Jess and Ben dropped by the creatives at Thinkso and The New York Times Magazine. They gave me the skinny on their West-side visits:
Jess (left) discusses our photographer's work with Thinkso staff. All photos by Ben Weldon.
Thinkso is a boutique graphic design firm with a deep toolbox of styles, and a client list to match (a few fun examples here, here, and here). They were particularly interested in seeing portfolios for annual reports and an international investment firm client of theirs, so we focused more on the institutional lifestyle and portrait work of our photographers.
Unlike most portfolio reviews where the creatives stream through over the course of several hours, at Thinkso the entire design team and one of the partners arrived all at once and stayed for nearly an hour, carefully examining each portfolio on display.
Like many graphic design firms these days (and clients, generally), they were more apt to hire photographers who were local to a shoot’s location to keep travel expenses to a minimum. Speaking of locations, we here happy to share Raleigh photographer Bruce DeBoer‘s portfolio:
Also of note: most of them being designers, they were very aware of the designs of our photographers’ leave-behinds. They gave nice feedback in instances where they thought the photographs were better than the design. Which is a warning to photographers: bad or dated presentations (books, prints, leave behinds) reflects poorly on the images. So if you don’t fancy yourself a designer, seek professional design help on your next rebrand!
For lunch, we met up with Andy Delisle, one of our Phoenix photographers who happened to be in town on business. Andy’s often traveling for work, and recently produced a nice series of images from his visits to the Vancouver Olympics.
Andy DeLisle (L) and Jess Dudley (R) noshing at Stout's in Times Square
Next stop was The New York Times Magazine, relatively easy to find because their name’s on the building!
Jess checking out an art installation which randomly pulls from The New York Times archive
It was nice to finally meet Clinton Cargill and the others from the photo department in-person, because we’ve talked with them by phone and email on so many previous occasions, and the magazine’s staff have become frequent users of our site.
Clinton was surprised that more photographers (not referring to ours, in particular) don’t indicate their city on their websites and portfolios. From the start, he would like to know where a photographer lives, because it will often determine whether or not they get the job.
Fortunately, Richard Morgenstein‘s portfolio case clearly indicates that he’s from San Francisco:
The photo editors were all very interested in the books, and took leave-behinds for every photographer that we showed. FYI: if you haven’t heard, The New York Times Magazine just won “Design Team of the Year” at the ADC (Art Director’s Club) Awards, plus a Gold Cube in the Photography category.
Each creative person goes to different places for inspiration, and I was impressed with Evan Sklar’s “source” for keeping things fresh: his iPhone. It’s interesting to see what this New York photographer, who’s shot for GQ, Martha Stewart Living, Target, Macy’s, etc., comes up with on his cell phone:
"Lamb"
Evan took these first three images with nothing but his iPhone and a tape measure. I asked him to tell me how/why he uses his phone to take pictures:
Iphone = iFun. It’s a tiny portable camera and lab in one. I make way too many pictures with my phone. I make pictures with it every day. Videos also. I have 1,739 pictures on it. I’ve had it for a year. There’s a kind of nice thing about using it which says that I know that this is just a kind of fun and silly one-off picture, not “serious” or “significant” enough to break out the “real” camera so using the phone is a way of having your cake and eating it too.
"Pigeon"
"Gull"
I certainly understand the “guilt” (obsession?) of not having a camera when you’re out doing groceries and see some unusual person/color scheme/quality of light that probably should be photographed. In essence, a camera phone can be almost be a therapeutic alternative to beating yourself up for not having brought your real camera.
"Mr. Sushi"
Sklar says that he’s also used his iPhone as a “sketch pad” for an idea, and has even returned to shoot something again with his “real” camera. The examples below are the original iPhone shot at left, then the professional version at right. Ironically, especially with the ice cream trucks, both takes look pretty good to me! Evan even uses the Photoshop app (I had no idea that existed) on his iPhone to make the occasional tweak.
And just to give you an idea of his commissioned work (not shot with his iPhone):
I guess this gives new meaning to the term, “phoning it in.”
Tis’ the season for awards/contests (PDN, American Photography, etc.). The Art Director’s Club (ADC) held their annual international awards at the SVA Theatre last week in New York, and we decided to pop on up to see who was being recognized for their good work. “We” were actually Sean and Amanda, our Director of Photography and Producer, respectively.
The ADC Awards are arranged into five categories, including Advertising, Design, Interactive, ADC Hybrid (known as “the game-changing award” for its recognition of unusual media approaches), and ADC Design Sphere.
Overall, BBDO cleaned house with wins as Agency of the Year, along with “Cubes” (the name of the statues) for Broadcast, Print, and Design for an enviable client list including HBO, Mars, Chrysler, and The Economist. They also won accolades for their unconventional motion picture exhibit for HBO called “Cube Film Installation.” The exhibit was placed in three cities around the US, with each of the four sides of a box showing a different part of the same story. You can see a video recap of the exhibit here.
The New York Times Magazine (who we just visited yesterday – more on that in a future blog post) took home the night’s ADC Design Team of the Year award, in addition to a Gold Cube for Photography in their Great Performers issue. The Society for Publication Designers has a nice article about the redesign of the magazine itself, fyi.
There were six other Photography awards presented, as well, including Ikea’s Silver Cube for their clever “Furniture Messages” campaign, a humorous take on the difficulties of home improvement. Renato D’Agostin won the Bronze, and the Merit awards went to Achim Lippoth Photography, powerHouse Books, Catherine Ledner (for her 2009 print promo), and BBDO Germany.
And we were happy to see our friends at Design Army take home a Bronze Cube for their “End the Lies” campaign for Human Rights Campaign.
And then the after party began!
The after party took place at the ADC Gallery, which they also rent out for gallery shows and events (rental starts at $7,500, according to their media kit). It was a nice opportunity for the winners to unwind.
Amanda is forced to try one of master mixologist Alex Ott's creations, "The Kim"
Later on, Amanda caught up with ADC president Doug Jaeger, who said of the awards: “So far there has been a tremendous amount of positive feedback.” Sean and Amanda had to agree, considering the level of talent!
A little trivia about the awards: The Art Directors Club was founded in 1920, and the first incarnation of their award was designed that same year by Paul Manship (who also sculpted the famous Prometheus statue that lives in Rockefeller Plaza).
