The frontline of self promotion.
By Joel Aron
26 March 2008
My day job allows me several scattered minutes of web browsing throughout the day. A good deal of those thin slices of time are spent clicking "Yeah! it rocks!" or "Nah, Next Time.". Maybe it's just me, however, my sole officemate tends to agree, that more than 50% of the images posted to a theme are not even falling within visible distance of the suggested target.
There are some images that find their way to the hot list because (and this is just a guess), the subject is a hot provocative nude, and the title of the image has the name of the theme in it.
Okay, so maybe I spend way too much time viewing theme images! ..but I'm sure I fall way short of the time the JPG team spends looking at the theme images. My heart goes out to them all.
This is where my question rest on the table. Before writing this medium length yarn, my thought was about the time it took me to find the images that I felt best fit the theme. For one image, it took me weeks.
Today, I decided to pry the opening to my thoughts about self promotion a little wider. A dangerous port that needs gentle pressure so your pride doesn't spill all over the floor. The only way any photographer gets their images seen, is by putting it out there. Not to say that either way is better, but some photographers post images that miss the mark requested, and some do what I've chosen to do... write a story to show you the work that is being submitted. It was difficult for me to come to this, but having just read the book, "Magnum", it's clearer than ever, that the only way you find out if your images are what people like, is to show them, and not wait for them to be seen.
So here they are. Below my new self portrait, are the three images that I have submitted to this month's themes. Please have a look, and you decide. :)
btw.. "Magnum" ..great read about the first 50 years of the agency I plan to work for some day.
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