It is doubtful that the content of any one single article has had as much effect on the American public’s view of the BP Gulf oil disaster\u00a0as any single widely distributed shot of an oil soaked pelican.\u00a0 Similarly, photos of Katrina victims -many of them deceased – we\u00a0confidentially submit, had far more\u00a0impact on our citizenry\u00a0that the millions of words spoken and written about that disaster.\u00a0 Each of you can submit at least another half dozen similar type scenarios where\u00a0photos taken by professional photographers, or an illustration\u00a0or political cartoon influenced our politicians to get off the collective butts to actually do some positive about some political or social issue.<\/p>\n
We have been making the case for\u00a0decades that photographers, illustrators and artists\u00a0perform services essential to the continuance of a free society.\u00a0\u00a0Your\u00a0visual contributions to the maintenance of a well-run democracy\u00a0are indispensable.\u00a0 Traditional media aside, the proliferation of blogs, social network sites, NGOs\u00a0and digital publications in all forms bring home that point every second of every day world wide.\u00a0 So right about now you’re probably thinking, “Why are these guys bringing this up now?\u00a0 What’s the point”?\u00a0 Consider:<\/p>\n
We<\/em> make the point in our lectures, articles and in court.\u00a0 Your trade associations hopefully make similar points with equal vigor.\u00a0 But how about you – the creator<\/em>?\u00a0 Do you advocate, emphasize or dare we say, sell<\/em> the point?\u00a0 There is an obvious\u00a0self-deprecating attitude among most creators.\u00a0 They tend to be reticent about promoting their worth not only to their paying clients, but also to the public at large who are ultimately your clients’ customers.<\/p>\n We submit that you must think and go beyond the clich\u00e9’ of “a picture being worth a thousand words”.\u00a0 Selling\u00a0the importance of what you do to\u00a0your clients, their\u00a0customers and\u00a0your elected officials (local and federal)\u00a0is in your direct financial interest.\u00a0Your continued silence is anything but “golden”.<\/p>\n The importance of police officers, fire fighters, first responders, EMTs, nurses etc.\u00a0is blatantly as obvious to anyone\u00a0possessing\u00a0an\u00a0IQ.\u00a0 Nevertheless, as individuals and groups each\u00a0regularly publicize and remind the public they serve of their individual and collective importance.\u00a0 They do so at contract negotiation time, election cycles\u00a0and during the months in between.\u00a0They advertise and promote<\/em><\/strong> their interests even though their occupations are as distant from the advertising and promotional industries as you can get.<\/p>\n Creators on the other hand, are professional<\/em> convincers and persuaders utterly familiar with what moves people within\u00a0the advertising\u00a0and promotional industries and more\u00a0importantly, what imagery moves individuals and the\u00a0public at large.\u00a0 It is <\/em>what they do.\u00a0\u00a0The disconnect is therefore, even more startling and illogical.\u00a0 Even companies whose sales are substantial know the importance of\u00a0keeping up brand\u00a0recognition and ‘reminding’ their customers as often as possible\u00a0that their goods and services are necessary and important and\/or that they are\u00a0needed <\/em>– even if\u00a0they are not.<\/p>\n With economic times as bad as they are, it is high time that each of you remind, promote and re-enforce your importance and the importance of your craft to the product consuming, reading, viewing public and to those\u00a0politicians\u00a0responsible for\u00a0keeping everything and everybody functioning.\u00a0 Don’t be shy.\u00a0 Silence facilitates irrelevance and extinction.\u00a0 If creators do not care enough to promote themselves, there can be no expectation that anyone else should care about them either.\u00a0 Relying solely on others is and always will be, a doomed strategy.<\/p>\n Ed & Jack<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is doubtful that the content of any one single article has had as much effect on the American public’s view of the BP Gulf oil disaster\u00a0as any single widely distributed shot of an oil soaked pelican.\u00a0 Similarly, photos of Katrina victims -many of them deceased – we\u00a0confidentially submit, had far more\u00a0impact on our citizenry\u00a0that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-copyright-info"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=475"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":479,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions\/479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecopyrightzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}