by Kayleen Kauffman
This month’s portfolio reviews brought Sean and me to New York City for a very busy day of meetings with Food & Wine, Departures, Popular Science, Y&R and Mother New York. Armed with travel mugs of coffee and several cases of portfolios, we left Philadelphia for the Big Apple.
After some last minute schedule changes, thanks to a broken train, we made our way over to Food & Wine Magazine, in the American Express Publishing building. There we met with photo editor Anthony LaSala, one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. Anthony was kind enough to squeeze us into his hectic schedule to check out a small selection of food photographers. He was really impressed with Denmark-based Martin Dyrlov and his use of light, as well as Jennifer Davick’s versatile skills in both photography and motion. Anthony told us that being able to find strong photographers in markets large and small is what keeps him coming back to Wonderful Machine.
Once we’d said goodbye to Anthony, we made a short trip up the elevator to the 17th floor, where we met with Tania Fernandez, photo editor at Departures—a luxury lifestyle magazine available to American Express’ Platinum and Centurion card holders. In the mix we had Scott Suchman, Micheal Haug and Joe Schmelzer. Tania was new to Wonderful Machine but was pleasantly surprised when she found we have internationally based photographers and that we handle stock requests. She explained that while they often use LA and NYC based photographers, they’re always looking for more international shooters for location assignments.
Next, we hurried over to Popular Science—published by Bonnier Corporation—to meet with photo editor Thomas Payne and intern, Jackie. Thomas, a huge fan of Wonderful Machine, gave us a sneak peek at June’s issue, which featured the work of four Wonderful Machine photographers. Thomas said that when he isn’t looking for photographers in LA or NY, we’re the first resource he goes to. Out of the work we showed, Thomas and Jackie really enjoyed the portraiture work of Joseph Escamilla and Michael Clinard.
Bonnier Corp Magazines
Though we could have chatted all day with Thomas and Jackie, we needed to jet over Y&R (originally Young & Rubicam) for our next meeting. Y&R represents several well-known brands including Campbell’s, Bacardi, LG, Virgin Atlantic and many more. We arrived with roughly 20 books which creatives perused while munching on the delicious treats from Dean & Deluca. The favorites among this group were John Fulton‘s “painterly” images, Christopher Villano‘s hospitality work and Saverio Truglia‘s conceptual portraits. We had a good time with the Y&R creatives but before we knew it, it was time to pack up again and head over to our final meeting at Mother.
Kayleen with Y&R creatives.
Sean pushing the books through the mean streets of NYC…
When we first arrived at Mother—who handles accounts such as Tanqueray, Stella Artois, Virgin Mobile, Target and JCPenney—, we were slightly confused. At first glance, you might think it was a restaurant and they have an amazing full service kitchen/bar conveniently located right through the door. Mother’s creatives told us they’ve actually had people walk in and ask to be seated. After passing their kitchen, bar and taxidermied bear, we made our way over to a tree-infused conference table and started to lay out books. It wasn’t long after that we had a full house fawning over the work of Kyle Dreier, Jordan Hollender, Eric Prine and Sherwood Cox among others.
Mother creatives flip through portfolios…
The last stop of our whirlwind day was a well deserved happy hour at The Landmark Tavern, with a handful of our local photographers. Sean and I met with a small selection of our New York shooters including Jordan Hollender, Benjamin Norman, Stephen Landau, Eric Prine and his partner at Attic Fire photography, Jeremiah Hull. We chatted about marketing and photography over a few drinks and a lot of wings. It was a great end to a very long but productive day.
NYC photographer happy hour. Left to right: Benjamin Norman, Jordan Hollender, Sean, Eric Prine and Stephen Landau.
…But before we could leave the city and go home, we had one very last stop. We needed to pick up our producer, Jess Dudley, from a shoot he’d been producing. Once Jess was on board, we were finally able to leave the city and head home!
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