Client Holiday Gift: Robot Inspired Cameras

By Peter Clark

During November, I had the extremely fun challenge of tackling the design of our 2011 art buyer/photo editor holiday gift. When we first started thinking up ideas we had to ask ourselves, how can we ever top last year's Wonderful Machine Holga camera? All of our proposed ideas just seemed to fall short--no matter how tasty chocolate covered pretzels are, they just couldn't compete. While researching ideas online, we came across CustomCameraCollection, a company that sells client-designed custom disposable cameras...

Read more

The Photographer's Bio

by Maria Luci

While there are ample resources available on portfolios, websites, leave behinds and promotional materials, there's one important subject that I've found little helpful information on: The Bio.

Almost always found on a professional photographer's site, the bio can make or break you. In a world where creatives often only have a couple minutes to view your site and understand who you are, the bio can play a substantial role. A biography is a quick peek into your personality and gives the reader a sense of what you might be like to work with. Creatives will often seek out the bio to help them make their quick judgements, so just having great pictures isn't enough. Many people will quickly abandon one website just to jump to the next, you have to make sure your entire site is not only engaging, but successfully portrays your personality. With bios being one way you get to express who YOU are, I'm always surprised at just how many dreadful ones I find. So, after reading one too many boring, exaggerated, absurd, grammatically incorrect and simply over the top biographies, I decided to come up with some bio Dos and Don'ts...

Read more

New York Diary: Arnold Worldwide, Discover Magazine, Reader's Digest

By Craig Oppenheimer

Waking up at 4:30 am isn't so bad when there's an action packed day to look forward to. This was the case for Paul and I as we geared up for another fantastic portfolio trip to New York City. After our festive Wonderful Machine holiday party the night before, we loaded up the car with cases of books and promos and began our journey up the turnpike.

Despite the traffic, we arrived exactly on schedule to our first meeting at Arnold Worldwide, located just around the corner from Union Square. While Arnold's headquarters are located in Boston, their New York office is just as full of talented creatives producing work for clients such as Jack Daniels, Hershey's, Titleist, Volvo, Carnival Cruise Lines and many others. After a quick ride up their freight elevator, we found ourselves in front of a giant conference table, waiting for us to paint with books...

Read more

Ads of The World

by Peter Clark

Another month, another round of web ads across the internet! For December, we headed back over to Adsoftheworld.com since our last set of ads on their site were so successful. In case you haven't heard of it before, Ads of The World is a social site for advertising creatives to post recent work from around the globe. It's one of the most popular websites for creative professionals and a source of inspiration for many of them.

This month we helped inspire art directors, art buyers and photo editors with six unique images.

Read more

Spotlight Emailers

Last month we sent 54,466 emailers to art buyers at ad agencies, magazines, and corporations in North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia and Oceania. Click on the thumbnails below for a closer look.

Uncover Great Work

by Maria Luci

For the ever-so-eventful month of December, we decided to let it snow (figuratively) in the mailboxes of creatives. To do this, we needed someone who knew a thing or two about snow, so we called up our Denver-based shooter, Ethan Welty. Ethan is certainly no stranger to heavy snowfall and had just the right image for our December print promo. Printed by Modern Postcard, our flurry of promos went out to thousands of creatives, inviting them to visit Wonderful Machine to uncover the great work of our photographers...

Read more

Non-Fiction Book Cover

by Jess Dudley

Recently, a notable publisher commissioned one of our NYC-based photographers to shoot a building’s exterior for the cover of a non-fiction book. Initially, the publisher agreed to pay the photographer to shoot the assignment without a licensing agreement. After the photographer completed the shoot, he brought me into this unique situation to help determine licensing fees and negotiate with the client...

Read more

• 3 Ways to Use YouTube to Drive Traffic to Your Website http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/3-ways-to-use-youtube-to-drive-traffic-to-your-website/
• Get More Twitter Followers http://www.chrisbrogan.com/morefollowers/
• The Best Photography Blog Posts of 2011 http://blog.photoshelter.com/2011/12/best-of-2011-our-fav-photo-blog-posts-of-the-year/

Santa Fe Photographic Workshops: Date: Ongoing

World Press Photo Contest | Deadline: January 12, 2012

Pictures of the Year International | Deadline: January 12, 2012

2012 Applied Arts Photography & Illustration Awards | Deadline: January 13, 2012

San Francisco International Photography Competition | Deadline: January 20, 2012

PDN Photo Annual 2012 | Deadline: January 25, 2012

AI-AP American Photography 28 | Deadline: January 27, 2012

2012 Michael H. Kellicutt International Photo Show | Deadline: February 29, 2012

F8 Magazine - Photo Contest: Faith | Deadline: March 10, 2012

We are constantly finding new ways to promote our photographers. It's a good idea, at least once a year, to revisit our Jumpstart page so you can be reminded of how you can help us help you.

We are constantly striving to improve all the ways we help our photographers. Your feedback is crucial to that effort. Please contact our CEO Bill Cramer with your comments, compliments, criticisms, ideas, or suggestions.