by Kayleen Kauffman
Portfolio meetings brought me back to New York City this month. This time around, I was traveling with Paul Stanek, our photo editor who I was happy to have as my travel companion, as he’s great at maneuvering through the streets of New York. Plus, as I later discovered, the creative ladies love Paul!
Our first meeting of the day took us to Harper’s Bazaar, where we met with Senior Photo & Bookings Editor Ashley Curry. Ashely was really impressed with the quality of our roster and the portfolios shared, especially those of Greg Vore, Claire Benoist, Cecilia Austin, Quavondo, Cade Martin and Jeffrey Westbrook. She also enjoyed seeing the work of some of our international photographers like portrait shooter Antoine Doyen and fashion photographer Martin Bauendahl. Although Harper’s Bazaar tends to hire New York photographers most frequently, Ashley says she likes to see work from a wide-variety of locations to keep her options open.
After wrapping up our Harper’s Bazaar meeting, we made our way to Maxim to meet with Photo Research Editor Stacey Pittman. When we arrived they were in the middle of setting up to shoot musician Sean Paul for the Maxim site. The segment involved filming Sean Paul giving one lucky person a mohawk, which our own Paul volunteered for right away. Their producer thought he was perfect for the spot, but to everyone’s dismay, Paul had to decline since shooting was scheduled during our final meeting of the day.
Even though Paul didn’t get his hair done by Sean Paul, our Maxim meeting went really well. Their photo team had requested to see fun/humorous portraiture work and we delivered with work from Michael Clinard, John Fulton, Saverio Truglia, and Austin Hargrave. We also brought along a few “sexy” shooters like Carmelo Donato and Caesar Lima. The creatives seemed pleased with the variety and Stacey informed us that even though they love meeting photographers, they hardly get requests for one-on-one meetings anymore.
We left Maxim on a high note and instantly began to search for lunch—we were starving! We popped into a fun, Irish pub around the corner called P.J. Moran’s for a quick bite.
Once refueled, we jetted to R/GA for a quick meeting with their head art buyers/producers, Mackenzie Khristov and Kris Pito. R/GA is a highly regarded digital agency with a full production house, capable of handling any and all aspects of their clients campaigns. Usually, their shoot productions are fully handled before a photographer even jumps in the mix. I had a great conversation with Mackenzie and Kris about what Wonderful Machine does and how we’re able help creatives like themselves with productions.
After saying goodbye to Mackenzie and Kris, Paul and I made our way to Money Magazine. Getting into the Time Inc. building proved to be a difficult task that had us dealing with three security guards, two freight elevators and one drug sniffing dog before finally arriving on the 18th floor. We were quickly spotted by Money‘s photo editor, Shayla Hunter, who guided us to the office she shared with fellow PE Ryan Mesina. Shayla and Ryan’s favorite books included Vincent Ricardel‘s, Michael Clinard‘s, Saverio Truglia‘s, Eric Millette‘s and Jeff Singer‘s. Encouragingly, they hire for assignments more than they use stock and love meeting with photographers.
With our meetings done, we weaved through Times Square to get to Beer Authority, where we met up with Greg Vore, Mimi Ko, John-Francis Bourke, Axel Dupeux, Gil Lavi and Tim Soter. Paul and I spent time catching up with everyone, learning about recent projects. Greg had just completed an iPad project for JCrew and Mimi had literally just wrapped up a shoot for Time Out New York when she arrived. It was great to chat with everyone over beers but we eventually had to get back on road. We left our photographers mingling and swam through a sea of New Yorkers to get back to our car, closing the book on yet another successful New York portfolio trip.
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