During a recent visit to Boston, we met with creatives from Arnold Worldwide, Mullen, Modernista!, and Fidelity Investments.
About the trip: at Mullen, we projected our website on a large screen, with a few prints adorning the walls, in addition to our photographer’s portfolios and our ever-appreciated spread of food. In addition to our other photographers’ work, Mullen’s people asked specifically about local shooters, so we were pleased to point out the Boston-based photographers’ portfolios that we’d brought with us.
The folks at Mullen appreciated that Michael Thad Carter‘s work has a polished, hyper-realistic finish but doesn’t look over-produced. Many kept his “Mad Men” inspired leave-behinds to bring up as inspiration for their Monday morning dissection of the previous night’s episode.
Modernista!’s (yes, the exclamation point is part of their name) art buyer appreciated our content-heavy blog, as it helps her figure out who some of the up and comers are in the industry.
Arnold probably had the coolest offices, if there was a competition, and they remarked on Tony Garcia, Ken Richardson, and Shea Roggio‘s work, amongst others.
Fidelity’s primary art buyer has been in the industry for almost twenty years, with long stints at both Mullen and Arnold, so it was interesting to hear her take on moving from the fast-paced and highly creative world to a more stable but equally demanding one. They’re often hiring regional photographers, and they already knew of a number of our WM shooters. They were also happy to learn a few new names.
While in the city, we took some time to enjoy a couple of eateries. Sportello, a small, modern diner for authentic Italian cuisine was our favorite (grilled octopus complete with the foam proved their authenticity). The Black Rose near Quincy Market was also a great stop. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to hit Boston’s Little Italy, but all of Fidelity’s creatives highly recommended a visit.
One evening we met up with a couple of our Boston photographers for drinks at Boston Beer Works, which had fourteen local brews on tap. Webb Chappell, Ken Richardson, Ekaterina Smirnova, Bruce T. Martin, and Porter Gifford all stopped by. Webb had the recommendation of the night with the Scottish Ale: try it if you’re ever in town.
-Neil Binkley and Amanda Hanley