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On the twelfth day of February, associate producers Jemma Dilag and Natalia Martinez traveled via the cosmopolitan transport Bolt Bus to New York City to meet with Discovery Español, freelance designer Claire Brown, Domino Magazine, and Money Magazine.
They started their day of portfolio events at Ess-a-Bagel in midtown Manhattan, which is just across the street from the offices of the Discovery Español, their first stop for the day. The bagels were sumptuous but the coffee was ungodly hot! Despite these obstacles, Jemma and Natalia pushed on to their first appointment.
At the Discovery office, they met with Cristina Sarnoff and Andrea Mascaro, the Executive Producer of Branded Entertainment and Sales Research & Insights Manager, respectively. The Discovery Channel being what it is, its needs are greater for motion rather than still photography, although the latter could be of use to their sales team. In particular, Discovery seeks documentary 10-minute shorts, sometimes with materials and projects brought to them and other times from ideas they have developed. Our team was also told that they make an effort to find creatives that are both women and/or Hispanic.
Cristina and Andrea had not previously used the Wonderful Machine’s site, so Jemma and Natalia demonstrated the site’s formidable capabilities as well as gave them a sneak peek into the beta version of WM. They perused the portfolios and promotional materials for Mo Daoud (New York, NY), Lauryn Ishak (Singapore), Martin Westlake (Jakarta, Indonesia), Lauren V. Allen (Chapel Hill, NC), Nicolas Axelrod (Bangkok, Thailand), Clay Cook (Louisville, KY), and Joanna Lentini (Greenwood Lake, NY) — the latter four being of especial interest. They were also curious about the stock requests tool.
When Jemma and Natalia left, they had just a short stroll to find the Starbucks where they met with freelance graphic designer Claire Brown. Claire had worked at Hachette before she went freelance. She primarily does projects designing covers and pages for books going into print, especially for independent authors. For her needs, the stock requests tool was a valuable resource, but Claire also appreciated WM’s directory in the event she would need to produce a shoot.
The third stop for the day was Domino Magazine. Founded back in the halcyon year of 2005 by Conde Nast, Domino is an online design and lifestyle publication that equally produces quarterly print issues. The magazine does photography shoots in Los Angeles and New York but has been looking for a photographer directory to help its producers find photographers in cities outside those metropolitan areas. WM to the rescue! Among the work that caught their eye were the portfolios of Liz Kuball (Los Angeles, CA), Cherry Li (Beijing, China), and Erin Little (Portland, ME). The producers at Domino were also interested in video content for more limited budgets.
Jemma and Natalia then took a Lyft down to Wall Street for a meeting at … [wait for it] … Money Magazine. Money is now digital, although it is well known as a print publication founded in the early 1970s. They met with art director Lixia Guo, who previously collaborated with photo editors but now works with a lot of photographers directly. The magazine is planning on doing more photo shoots in the future, so a photographer directory like WM is a windfall to Lixia and her colleagues. That day she was interested in viewing travel portfolios but also wanted to see portrait work. Among the portfolios she leafed through, those of Nicolas Axelrod, Ben Weller (Nagoya, Japan), Al Aguretta (Austin, TX) [who enjoyed rave reviews!], Cherry Li, Greta Rybus (Portland, ME), Liz Kuball, and Mark Lehn (Teneriffe, Australia) piqued her interest. She was also pleased to be left with the promotional materials of Lauryn Ishak, Martin Westlake, Tegra Stone Nuess (Seattle, WA), Elizabeth Cecil (West Tisbury, MA), Antoine Doyen (Paris, France), Drew Anthony Smith (Austin, TX), and HollenderX2 (Brooklyn, NY). As if all of that was not enough, Lixia was pleasantly impressed to learn of our crew search page.
Thereafter, Jemma and Natalia mounted those weary steps of the Bolt bus to ride back to Philadelphia, to be warmly welcomed back by their beloved co-workers.
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