Embracing Change in a Fast Moving World…

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Christine | 1 Comment

Things happen at an amazingly fast pace these days. Something happens, someone makes a video, sticks it up on YouTube, before you know it a meme has been born, and it is remembered for a long time afterwards.

(If you don’t care about all this business stuff – watch the video. It is pretty awesome.)

As photographers, we’re putting photos out there in a digital form. Our clients then take the photos and use them, maybe in ways we didn’t intend originally. What should you do? Should you embrace it? Enable it? Or be angry?

How you choose to react can impact how people feel about your brand for the long run. More & more people think that if they have the files, it is ok to upload them all to Facebook, Flickr, or wherever else. Sharing them with their friends. From their perspective, they’ve done nothing wrong. Even though your license may not authorize them to post them online at all.

I plan to provide all of my 2009 clients with a web-ready DVD, along with instructions that those images can be posted anywhere and everywhere. I *want* them to post them all over the place. I use the Mogrify2 Plugin for Lightroom and put my logo on every file on the DVD. Whenever someone sees the images, they can easily look me up and hire me for their own great photos. My clients love the idea, and I love that I’m giving them a way to spread the love.

I’ve been thinking about all of this for a few weeks now. Peter Shankman, the man behind Help A Reporter Out – aka HARO, came to Houston recently to talk at an ISES meeting about things like Twitter, Facebook, and your business. You know I couldn’t pass that opportunity up!

At the end of his presentation, he closed by showing us the following video. First he told us the backstory. Basically, there was a mime. Everyone hates mimes, probably even more than clowns. So the mime came up with a routine to this song, Torn, by Natalie Imbruglia. Originally, when “the Man” got word that he was doing this performance to a song, they were not happy. Copyright issues, performing to a song without the proper license (you know, sort of like when people put your digital files on Facebook even though the license doesn’t cover that), and cease & desist letters were going to go out. But then the artist’s manager found out about it. It was already a hit on the internet. They stopped and realized that they could take the other route. They could tap into the buzz already generated, and use it to turn it into something so much more.

(I’m such a dork. I get goosebumps every time I watch this video!)

What are you embracing as technology moves at such a breakneck speed? What are you doing to make sure your clients have the best experience possible while working with you, and that makes them want to shout from the rooftops about your work?

(Posted over on PhotoLoveCat too, but I wanted to share it here as well!)

Comments

One Response to “Embracing Change in a Fast Moving World…”

Syd (6 comments.)
February 4th, 2009 @ 10:17 am

Amazing. Really creative. The other day I was reading a blog, a blogger had done a cute video of her dog and used a song as the back ground. She too had “The Man” come unglued about the usage. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the artists point of view (the label, eh not so much). But it all reminds me of the lyric from Wilco’s, What Light?

“And if the whole world’s singing your songs
And all you’re paintings have been hung
Just remember what was yours is everyone’s from now on

And that’s not wrong or right
But you can struggle with it all you like
You’ll only get uptight”