The day is set: Saturday, June 14th 7:30p.
Event listed here: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/710412
This is as much a celebration of an personal accomplishment as it is a gathering of community. Tyson Crosbie published “Phoenix 20″ on May 15th and will be having an open house signing party. All who enjoy art, culture and downtown #phx are welcome to attend.
Some wine and beer provided. BYO is encouraged.
A special thanks to those of you who ordered a book for the event. It is what I love so much about Phoenix, that if you show up and work your ass off the community will reward you. It only took two days to reach my goal for the party and orders just keep coming in. If you would like a copy of the book at the party you may order below until June 2nd and I will pay your shipping.
Don’t know what the fuss is all about? Read this new article in Phoenix Art Space.
It is here the culmination of months of planning and work to bring it about. Phoenix 20 arrived by ups today and I documented the opening of the final product.
I am very impressed with the quality of the images produced in the book. All the color is exactly how I intended it, except for the dust jacket that seemed to shift a little grey green, and all the pages seem to be in the right order. Well done blurb, well done.
Remember that you can still order the book directly from me (and I’ll pay for your shipping) until June 2nd by selecting your choice below:
Offer has expired. Thanks to everyone that purchased a book.
AVATAR: An incarnation, embodiment or manifestation of a person or idea.
A traditional headshot in the past was used to present an image of professionalism to potential clients and business partners. The likelihood of anyone outside of this narrow group ever seeing the image remained minimal at best, your pr firm may have used it in a brochure or even put it on your business card. Traditionally these business portraits were used to build trust with people who may not have constant contact with you, professions like lawyers and real estate agents frequently updated their headshot to show their client they can still smile. (okay that last part was a dig from me.)
Google changed everything. Now it is standard practice to google new hires and potential clients prior to meeting them and see the drunken pictures from that frat party in college on your myspace page and the business headshot in the brochure. There is a merging of personal and professional lives that is more often than not referred to as Personal Branding or Gary Vaynerchuk- (made you look) 
The definition for avatar above seems to cover a lot of ground and is generalized for many different applications. Let’s define it for us: A social media avatar is an online representation of who you are online. It may be a logo, text, image or picture, it may even be nothing at all. For me it is a quick way to identify contacts on my IM client or filter a constant stream of information on twirl. For most of us online an avatar is a square image that should simultaneously embody your self image and your perceived self along with representing who you are to your closest friends and how you want to be perceived by strangers.
Look at your current Avatar– Is that image really accomplishing these tasks?
There are almost as many ways to use social media tools as there are people using them.
One of the ways I am trying to use these tools is to open up the process of photography to my audience. I recently started a new flickr account called tysoncrosbieEdit, it is a place where an audience can go to see a soft edit from a photo shoot and through participating there can make a difference in the final decisions. MsHerr for example posted on her blog an open invite to her community to crowd source her final selection. Effectively leaving the entire process of selecting her online identity to an audience that already interacted with her in this online space. A brave move certainly, but when considering personal branding in social media it is important to understand the perceptions of your audience as well as you understand your own motivations for using this space and the only way to gain that understanding is to allow for participation.
Whether we like it or not education changes us, and the experience of participating (even if it is just to say “I like this one.”) garners understanding. The end result is a community that understands the tools and the process, and that community is better equipped to make judgments when hiring their next photographer. It is this potential to educate a broader audience about good photography vs bad that really excites me.
Participation requested below, leave a comment and help me understand.
As a photographer a lot of things end up being outsourced especially printing. Over the years I have worked with all kinds of printers from Costco and Wal-mart to printers that work exclusively for photographers. When I moved to Phoenix I was kind of stuck, I couldn’t find a printer in town that had the right materials or equipment to print my work. I was still outsourcing to a printer in Utah. And then I met Peter and Stephanie at Mighty Imaging here in Phoenix. Not only are they the most approachable of any printer I’ve worked with they use the right materials and the best equipment including a LightJet RA-4 Color printer:
LightJet digital printer has set the standard for true photographic quality. By exposing photo media with laser light, you’ll receive image quality superior to any and all wide format output available anywhere.
There is no ink - no printhead going back and forth, hence no banding and no grainy dot matrix pattern. Just unsurpassed sharpness and color. If you want to provide the ultimate output for fine art, display, exhibits and trade show graphics, this is it.
My Fine Arts work is currently at a maximum size of 30×50″ but Mighty Imaging is true to their name with the ability to print images up to 48×96″. This was a problem for most print vendors that wanted to move my work over to an inkjet printer after 8×10″. Since I pride myself on being a craftsman as well, one of the first things I look for in a printer is what type of materials do they offer, in particular do they print on Fuji Crystal Archive photo paper. Fuji paper is the only paper that can capture the subtleties and particular color palate of my fine arts work and no I don’t want to try Kodak. With Peter’s company this is not a problem they offer every style of Fuji paper that I wanted to use and more.
Our partnership is larger than just a vendor and client because after viewing my work Peter insisted on opening a store of my work on their website giving me access to another audience. This is a partnership that will continue because Mighty Imaging have covered the basics of business and mastered the craft of printing large format images.
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