The Art and Commerce of Editorial Photography

Speaker: Brian Smith
Date: Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Time: 12pm-2:50pm
Location: School of Visual Arts – Room 101C
Address: 132 West 21st Street (between 6th – 7th Ave) New York, NY 10011
Price: Free (yea, we knew you’d like that one…)

Despite rumors to the contrary, the death of magazine photography has been greatly exaggerated. Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Brian Smith, president of Editorial Photographers, will discuss how to maximize the creative and commercial rewards while avoiding bad contracts, stagnant rates and rights-gobbling appetites of multinational media corporations. He remains a firm believer that editorial photography can remain financially viable provided photographers retain unencumbered re-licensing and reprint rights to their photos, Smith will reveal what it takes to make a living in editorial and what it takes to get and keep the attention of photo editors and art directors at top magazines and how production value can make your work stand out, citing examples of production involved in small, medium and large editorial shoots.

He will discuss the need to charge properly for the time and expense of digital capture and processing and why photographers and agencies may be to blame for unreasonably low caps that some magazines that some magazines have placed on digital fees. Photographers, when united, have been able to affect positive change to the industry for fair contracts paying higher fees and space usage and how photographers unwilling to turn down bad deals can send it all tumbling down.

Smith’s first magazine photograph appeared in Life Magazine when he was a 20 year-old student at the University of Missouri. Five years later he won the Pulitzer for photographs of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Based in Miami Beach, his work has won awards in World Press Photo, American Photo, Pictures of the Year and Communication Arts Competitions and appears regularly in ESPN the Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Time, Forbes, Business Week and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. His corporate clients include the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, Kraft, Nabisco, TNT and NBC. His work can be seen at: briansmith.com

Getting the Job: Marketing and Self-Promotion

Speaker: Pat Harbron

Patrick Harbron started his career music photographing the major stars of rock and roll for album covers, concert tours, books and magazines. Patrick’s work grew beyond music to become a unique kind of portraiture. His work now appears in magazines, advertising,film, annual reports and books. His clients include Rolling Stone, Time, Forbes, People, Business Week, New York, Discover, Money, Boston and many others. His imaginative style of photography is well suited to advertising and design for whom he has created ads for Apple Computer, Home Box Office, IBM, American Express, GTE, AT&T, Showtime, ABC, FX Network, NBC and Disney Films.

Patrick has produced three books of photography published by The Bantam Dell Publishing. Recognition for his work includes numerous awards from American Photography, Communication Arts, Society of Publication Design, How Design, The Art Director’s Club of Canada, PX3, The Lucie Awards and Print. His work has been exhibited in group collections and three solo shows, most recently, ‘Desert Sea Shores – Views Of The Salton Sea’.

Patrick is a faculty member of the International Center of Photography in New York City and he lives in New York’s Hudson Valley. His work can be seen at patrickharbron.com

Sponsored by Editorial Photographers