Wednesday is Ask an Art Buyer day. Send your questions to heather@heathermorton.ca with the subject line Ask an Art Buyer. I’ll answer as many as I can every Wednesday.
Today’s question comes from Christopher:
Ok Heather… As an emerging commercial/advertising photographer trying to break into the SF Bay Area market, I have a TON of questions for you… for example…
How do you go about finding new talent, and of the talent that you DO work with on a regular basis, how did you come to work with them?
I often get asked about how I find talent. Going back through my archives, I found two useful posts on this issue. Instead of repeating myself in tonight’s rant, I’m going to point you to two other AanAB posts, here (Talent Scouting) and here (Sourcebooks etc.).
But, while we’re on the subject of Sourcebooks, I thought I’d talk about FOUND. Subtitled A Sourcebook with a Difference, FOUND is the latest brainchild from the whizkids who run Adbase. Because they are so clever (surely you’ve listened to the Buyer Interviews and read the Insight articles), I have no doubt that this will be different. On the eve of it’s launch, I asked FoundFolios president Juliette Wolf-Robin to explain.
Our main focus with FOUND is that the book is edited to showcase top photographers and then separated by industry segments making it easier for a buyer to find talent in a specific category, and know that the talent has a portfolio to back up their work. This will make the book a valuable resource. By limiting the number of artists in one book, and each having their own spread (never a shared spread), it makes it easy for the buyer to see the work and find what they need.
The FOUND book will be on line later this week. Next month, will be a portfolio site starting with the photographers who are in FOUND. In 2010 we are producing a “consumer” book that will be distributed in April and October with lifestyle, product, health, food sections. For Fall 2010 we will be introducing “fashion” split into couture, lifestyle, product, beauty.
And the press release promises:
FoundFolios’ attractive, large-format sourcebooks enable commercial photographers and illustrators to reach the buyers who will be most interested in their work. When an issue of FOUND lands on a buyer’s desk, that buyer knows that the artists featured inside will be strong candidates for exactly the kind of projects they need to fill.
I’ve had a sneak peek of the portfolio site and it is easy as pie to navigate and browse. The design is simple and attractive too. Here are some sample layouts (click for bigger):
© Blaise Hayward in FOUND
© Robert Tardio in FOUND
As I said, the peeps at Adbase do their homework and I’m curious to see the final product.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Sounds like they are knocking off/following the AtEdge model. That’s not a rip or anything but it sounds very similar. Except the books will be bigger?
How would one get their images into FOUND or one of the other creative directories?
I had a ball browsing through the website. Found a lot of great product photographers to add to my list of contacts. Thanks.
aww heather,
i was hoping you’d address him specifically and not just point to old posts! maybe a quick , more detailed follow up / update?
rocksteady,
danno~
Since you are a faithful reader Danno, I will give you a further reply.
Keep in mind, I’m in a relatively small market- most of the jobs I do go local. So, I keep current on everyone in the city. Initially this was all word of mouth- who did the AD/agency like working with? who had done good liquids (for eg.) for us in the past. I skim Canadian mags for new shooters too.
I also regularly read Archive, CA, Applied Arts, Creative Review, PDN etc. These are great resources.
There are several blogs I review and will catalogue from there.
I try to keep all of the shooters I like catalogued and bookmarked and will occasionally review these for inspiration or specific needs. So if I see a printed or email promo that I like, I bookmark it. When a suitable job comes up, I scan my bookmarks and make a shortlist from there.
I also belong to an Art Producers Forum. There are well over 100 members (moderated by the great Allegra Wilde) and we are constantly asking each other for reco’s for any possible search you can think of. So this is basically a word-of-mouth tool and it’s a fantastic resource.
Hope that helps.
hey thanks for the detailed follow up, much appreciated :)
rocksteady,
danno~