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by Kayleen Kauffman
The Magenta Foundation invited us back this year for their annual Flash Forward Festival and since we’d be in Boston for the event, we decided to schedule some portfolio events as well. Even though the summertime is notoriously tough for scheduling meetings, we were able to fill our schedule right up. So, last month, we loaded up our hand truck with portfolios and WM swag and hit the road… and a quick 7.5 hours later, we arrived in Boston!
Craig and I woke bright and early on Thursday morning with four meetings on our schedule. Our first stop of the day was at PARTNERS+simons, a design firm that focuses primarily on healthcare with bigger clients like Blue Cross Blue Shield and Genyme Biotechnology. Here, Craig and I met with production manager David Simpson who handles their art buying.
We had a great batch of local photographers on the table which included Bruce Peterson, Kevin Brusie, Jason Grow, Ken Richardson, Michael Piazza and Bob O’Connor. Non-locals included Robert Houser, Bruton Stroube Studios and Bruce DeBoer. David told us that he really enjoys meeting with photographers and that they hire frequently.
Our next two meetings brought us to Cambridge, a neighborhood that’s home to Harvard and MIT. Here we met with creatives at Toth + Co, an advertising agency that works exclusively with fashion. Brands include, Chicos, LL Bean, Rockport, Naturalizer, K-Swiss and Nautica. This was a great opportunity to showcase some of our diverse fashion shooters like Chris Sembrot, Tania Quintanilla, Jodi Jones, Harold Daniels, Stephen Landau and Danno Watts to name a few. Craig and I learned that several Toth creatives are avid rock climbers which explained why they flocked to Tim Kemple’s book to admire his climbing shots.
Next, we made our way to Tank Design, which has their home base in Cambridge but also has offices in New York and San Francisco. Tank handles an array of clients like Sony, FedEx, Puma and Cole Haan. When we set up this meeting, Tank requested to see work from Boston, New York, San Francisco and England. We happily obliged and brought books from David Foster (Boston), Ken Richardson (Boston), James Ross (England), Dom Romney (England), Thomas Broening (San Fran) and Naoko Kakuta (San Fran). Creatives started to filter into the room and flip through books while munching on some delicious treats we brought from Pacific Street Cafe, a favorite lunch spot for Tank employees.
Time flew by, and before we knew it, we were at ISM Travel and Lifestyle Marketing. ISM is an advertising agency that works exclusively on, you guessed it, travel and lifestyle. Accounts include Four Seasons, Emirates, Barbados Traveling and American Express. Since they handle accounts across the globe, they requested to see a diverse range in travel and lifestyle photography. We had books from Ball & Albanese, Kevin Steele, Jessica Sample, Julian Love, Christopher Shane and Anya Chibis and were also able to introduce creatives to our new advanced search. Several creatives told us that they have been using more stock recently, due to budget constraints, so they were pleased to find out that we handle stock requests as well.
Before long, we were packing our books a final time to get over to our photographer happy hour at Post 390. There, we met up with Ken Richardson, Bob O’Connor, Bruce Peterson and new to the site, Peter McGowan. It was great to meet face to face with our Boston photographers and talk about recent projects over a couple drinks. But we eventually had to head back to the hotel to prepare for our last day in Boston.
Friday—our last day in Beantown—Craig gave a Pricing and Negotiating presentation at the Flash Forward Festival. The festival took place on the Fairmont Battery Wharf, which was a beautiful backdrop for the day’s events. Craig gave his presentation and took several questions from the audience about copyright and estimates. After, we both hung around and answered questions from photographers about Wonderful Machine.
We wished we could have stayed for more Flash Forward events, but we had a long drive ahead. After thanking the Magenta Foundation for having us again, we began our long journey home so we could start prepping for next month’s reviews!
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