Who’s behind the curtain?
Since 1989, I’ve been a partner in Herrmann + Starke, creating distinctive imagery for advertising, editorial and corporate clients that has won recognition from Graphis, Communication Arts, Lurzer’s Archive and numerous other award annuals. Though we primarily focus on still photography right now, we’ve been actively learning Computer Generated Imaging (CGI) with the goal of expanding into producing hybrid photography/CGI still and motion projects. To me, the creative potential of these new tools is unimaginably cool.
My partner and I were early adopters of digital photography, and the process of mastering that technology before the internet – hell, before any books on the subject – existed was SO hard, that I decided that the only way to make all that work worthwhile would be to make it easier for everyone else. In 1995, we gave our first seminar, Going Digital, at an industry conference in New York and I’ve been speaking and writing on photography and business practices ever since.
A past president of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), I served as an Olympus Visionary for 10 years and was awarded the United Nations International Photographic Council’s Leadership Award for my work as an educator and industry advocate. Since 2016, I’ve also served as adjunct faculty for Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, where I teach a graduate level course on career planning and development.
Why 2 good things?
There’s this riff I do in some of my seminars about how there are only 2 good things you get from working:
1) the opportunity to generate income and
2) whatever feelings of satisfaction, pride or pleasure you’re able to coax out of how you’re spending the vast majority of your time on this planet.
Everything else you get is bad. Seriously. Think about it…
What’s up with the V sign?
My first thought was 2 good things – 1 -2, right? Plus it symbolizes Peace. And Victory. I mean, who couldn’t live with that?
Then I learned that in some countries, the “two-fingered salute” is the equivalent of us Yanks flipping the bird.
That’s when I fell in love.
So this is my line in the sand. I’m lighting a candle and cursing the darkness all in one go. Good Money, Good Work, Peace, Victory and if anything gets in the way? Well, we got that covered, too.