Last weekend, I attended the first annual Colorado Photo Review, which was held in Golden, CO – home of Coors Beer! ASMP Colorado hosted, and it was organized by René Pirolt, Trish McGinity and Rich Douglas.
The event kicked off with a speakers’ dinner on Friday night at the Table Mountain Inn where I rubbed elbows with all the local photo dignitaries including the legendary Rich Clarkson, who over the course of his career has been a photographer for Life Magazine, director of photography of National Geographic, has had his pictures appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated more than 30 times, and he’s shot the Final Four every year for the past fifty (yes, 50) years.
Attendees showed up bright and early on Saturday morning (lucky I was still on Philadelphia time) to hear me prattle on about Branding & Marketing and Pricing & Negotiating. Then liveBooks CEO Andy Patrick showed me how to really engage an audience. As you might expect from a technology guy, Andy covered the nuts and bolts of marketing, like SEO and the value of a good prospect database. But he also talked about how even in this age of technology, success often comes down to human interaction. Do you know how to look someone in the eye and shake their hand? Are you ready to give your “elevator pitch” when an unexpected opportunity arises? And when you do use technology such as websites to convey your message, does it engage, entertain, and inform?
After a quick lunch, we dove into an afternoon of speed-dating-style portfolio reviews. Sarah LaVigne of 5280 and Picture Society, Leslie Dela Vega of Fast Company, Angela Mateus of Factory Design Labs, Chris Thomas of Cohn Marketing, Randall Erkelens of Philosophy Communication and Angela Barnard of Crispin Porter + Bogusky all met with photographers.
I was really impressed with the quality of work I saw from Ryan Dearth, Cassie Kotnik, Ashley Davis Tilly, Dennis Lane, Brent Yoder, Paul Wedlake, Chris Mostek, Kevin Hoth and Carl Bower. Particularly memorable were Dennis Lane’s beautiful hand-made portfolios of athlete portraits (including a cool pop-up book made by artist Colette Fu), and Carl Bower’s heart-wrenching photos of a woman battling breast cancer and reconstructive surgery.
We capped the festivities with a visit to Indulge Bistro & Wine Bar where we enjoyed some excellent Yucatan Ahi Tuna guacamole and filet mignon sliders. And I learned that in addition to great beer, Colorado has a quite excellent whiskey made by a company called Stranahan’s.
Here’s a copy of my Branding & Marketing Powerpoint:
And the Pricing & Negotiating Powerpoint:
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