I have to admit, the history of Wonderful Machine is a little messy, so I’m a little hesitant when it comes to celebrating anniversaries. It’s not like America, where we can all confidently point to July 4th, 1776 as the date of our founding. I suppose I could figure out when I had my first conversation with Chris Farber about having him start shooting my overflow assignments. Or I could point to the date that I persuaded Chris Crisman to quit working for Dave Moser and build a cooperative with me. Or I could find the day when my studio manager Neil Binkley and I agreed on the name Wonderful Machine for our new company, or the day that my old studio manager Steven Raniszewski built our first website, or the day I hired Jess Dudley and promised him that we were going to have a real company someday. And then there was the day I got invited to join Bigshotstock and I remember thinking that they might be on to something.
Those were all significant milestones for me and I’m grateful for the contributions of all of those folks. But when it comes down to it, Wonderful Machine is nothing without our member photographers. And while I could also point to the date (8/15/07 to be exact) when our very first photographer, Greg Vore, agreed to join us for free (and then we proceeded to get him a $30,000 assignment), it wasn’t until January of 2008 when we finally had the nerve to charge photographers money to be on our site.
So now that we’re halfway through the year, I thought I’d say a big thank you to all of the photographers who joined us as paying members back in 2008 and who are still with us 10 years later:
Teri Campbell / Cincinnati, Ohio
Nick Nacca / San Diego, California
Todd Meier / Boise, Idaho
James Rajotte / Madrid, Spain
Jeff Padrick / Denver, Colorado
Kenny Johnson / Kansas City, Missouri
Scott Suchman / Washington, D.C.
Todd Winters / Chicago, Illinois
Jon Kownacki / Avondale Estates, Georgia
Tanit Sakakini / Los Angeles, California
Christian Fleury / Montreal, Quebec
Ryan Nicholson / Leawood, Kansas
Michael Nemeth / Bowling Green, Ohio
Heather Ann Thomas / Maryville, Tennessee
Trent Bell / Biddeford, Maine
Matthew Gilson / Chicago, Illinois
I appreciate the trust that they’ve placed in us, and I’m honored to have contributed to their success!
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