Shooting in the wild
When I’m shooting in public spaces, I want people to know where they can see my work, if a) they seem the slight bit interested, or b) I’ve made a decent photo of them. I used to have a “personal” card that had my name, e-mail and cell number on it. And I handed those out to a number of people at the sledding hill, for example, asking them to e-mail me and I’d be happy to share the pic with them.
But after the sledding hill, I realized that giving my card (with my cell number) to random strangers might feel to them like I’ve revealed a little too much information, like the guy who walks up to you in the bar and starts telling you about the colon surgery he had last week. TMI! OK, maybe not that bad, but still a bit uncomfortable nonetheless. And they might think that by giving me their e-mail address (if they sent me a message) would then subject them to spam from me.
Since I’m not really worried about making that contact for a longer term harassment, I decided to change my “personal” card to a “pics” card. On this card is my name, e-mail address, and an address: http://pics.nearbennett.com. This is a page with a Flickr slide show embedded and links to my Flickr and Facebook profiles. That way, if the person wishes to contact me they can. But if they just want to see the picture I made, they can do that and not have to reveal anything to me. For me its win-win (I think): they see my pics, I get someone to look at them.
To this point, I’ve not handed out a lot of these cards. For example, when I shot 9 Castle Close at Byrne’s today, I didn’t go around handing out these cards. I do this for subjects of my pics, not just everyone who was present.
The “pics” cards, as I’m calling them, are printed on my own printer using pre-perforated cards from Staples. They are obviously done at home. That’s no longer good enough for me in promoting my band photography. Enter moo.com. I just had a set of real business cards created by Moo.com with a selection of several pics on the front, and my contact info on the back. They look incredibly sharp and cost a wee bit more than your average business card. So I’m intending that they are for potential band photography contacts. Today I got to hand them to a band for the first time since they arrived this week.
So, that’s how I shoot in the wild–with two different cards to hand out. A “pics” card that I hand to random strangers who might be interested in the shot I made, and a “band” card that I hand to band members, bar owners, or others who might put me in contact with a band interested in a photo shoot.
