Book Review Imagine How Creativity Works
Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer is a good book for photographers since it delves into creativity and inspiration and where that all comes from. Since many photographers are also small business owners, the same creativity and inspiration is also useful for running and growing a business. Some of the insights that came out of [...]
Creative tools: the Polaroid Close Up Stand Model 7500
As you probably know if you’ve followed our agency or this blog, we love instant photography and have been happy to promote it to our clients as well often shooting vintage Polaroid cameras with Impossible Project film. Well we lucked out and got a Christmas/Holiday present from the Impossible Project folks of a Polaroid Close-Up [...]
ISES-NCC Education program: The Psychology of Events by Kevin White
Photographing events gives us a pretty broad exposure into the world of how events are run and how people respond to them. However, on Tuesday March 19th, Kevin White, CSEP, and Chief Strategist at XPL presented on the psychology of events. This was an interesting topic since it went much deeper into how to make events [...]
Milton Glaser, IDEO, the d:school and design in everything!
One of the trends that we’re happy to see is the integration of design not just into graphics and marketing but as a general philosophy. We’ve shot things at IDEO and with the d:school at Stanford and this whole design world view seems to be gaining more and more momentum. I recently watched Milton Glaser: [...]
Orange does the Anchor Brewery Tour
Most beer lovers recognize Anchor Steam as the quintessential and/or original S.F. beer brand. But not everyone knows they can book a a tour (up to two months advance notice often required) to see the brewery and learn how their world-class beer is made. Anchor has also been one of my favorite clients over the past few [...]
The new Speakeasy Tap Room!
You may have heard that Speakeasy has a new taproom designed by Kelly Malone and we finally checked it out during a fundraiser for her. The place is gorgeous and we set up a photobooth for the benefit too and because of the design it was a cinch to make it look amazing since the [...]
Review: Instant The Story of Polaroid
Ever since Polaroid announced that it was done with instant photography and the Impossible Project started up, I’ve been obsessed with instant photography. I had some of the last packs of Polaroid film and still have one pack in the fridge that, most likely, I should use pretty soon. Anyhow, when I heard about Instant: [...]
Review: Life is a Gift: The Zen of Bennett
Most people know of Tony Bennett as the amazing musician, but he’s also a painter and does watercolors. I had just come from checking out a watercolor show of a high school friend, Iain Stewart, when I decided to crack open this book and start on it while visiting my family in Alabama. Right off the [...]
Book Review: Garbology
Being a Green business, we are always looking at ways we can keep a minimal footprint while still providing excellent service and photography to our clients. Recently on NPR, I heard Pulitzer Prize winning writer Edward Humes being interviewed about his latest book, Garbology, and finally got to read it. It’s a fascinating piece of [...]
Review: The Art of Being Unreasonable
The title of this business book by Eli Broad appeals to my creative side. As a small business owner and a creative, we know that being unreasonable can result in breakthroughs or at least original thinking. Broad is probably most known for his business and philanthropic success including KB Home, but in this book [...]
Movie Reviews: Chasing Ice, More Than the Rainbow
Two recent documentaries we’ve watched focus on two very different photographers. The first is Chasing Ice, which follows James Balog and tells the story of the Extreme Ice Survey which he’s been doing for many years and follows the travails of Balog as he works to tip public opinion on climate change so that people [...]
ASMP Releases iPhone app review
Software to manage model releases are a great tool for photographers and there are several options on the market already like Easy Release, but now ASMP has got their version out and available for free! Anyone who’s a professional photographer no doubt is familiar with ASMP and all the great education and advocacy work they [...]
Photography as a workout
Just this past week we were in Chicago to shoot the Schwab IMPACT conference and just got back from it. One of the things that came up during the conference that we’ve tackled before, was the amount of walking during a day of shooting. Talking to one of the other photographers, I decided to track [...]
Times and Fashions Change – Ethics Never Go Out of Style! by Joan Eisenstodt
Ethics are a touchy subject and in the events industry, with the GSA scandal in the news recently, it’s an important topic. Even in the sports and academic worlds, ethics has been in the news with the inaction at Penn State resulting in a terrible situation there. Joan Eisenstodt presented at both MPINCC and ISES-NCC and [...]
Leadership and ISES Eventworld
Coming off attending ISES Eventworld, it was fortuitous that the book I brought to read on my flight was Leadership Gold by John Maxwell. As a board member of the ISES-NCC chapter, we attended the conference early for some of the leadership training and I found that to be very useful. The best thing about [...]
Pier 24 Photography
Just last month we finally took our team out to explore Pier 24. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s an exhibition space that’s used to showcase photography. Much of the exhibit is from the Pilara Foundation Collection but they also showcase other work outside of the collection. The collection on display during our visit (and [...]
Shooting with the Gigapan
I remember first seeing/hearing about the Gigapan when David Bergman shot with it at President Obama’s inauguration (see the photo here and read about his experience shooting it on his own blog posting). Recently one of our clients hired us to shoot a group shot with it and it was a lot of fun to use. [...]
Review: My Kid Could Paint That (documentary)
Having seen Amir Bar-Lev’s other work including The Pat Tillman Story, I was compelled to finally check out My Kid Could Paint That. The title of the documentary was interesting to me, even when all I knew about it was something about Marla Olmstead being a kid who paints similarly to Jackson Pollack. But the [...]
Book Review: What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There
Successful people have little reason to change… makes sense doesn’t it? That’s sort of the gist behind Marshall Goldsmith’s book “What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There”. It’s a great read for anyone who works with others and/or is a leader so it really hit home for me. As a small business, one of [...]
Book Review: Zilch
Zilch is a book about doing more with less, something we hold as a value at Orange. Since our inception, we’ve always valued that, not just because we bootstrapped our company but also from a social responsibility angle. Waste is something we don’t like, especially when reducing it can both save the environment and save [...]
Review: Bottle Shock
Recently I saw Sideways again during a trip up to wine country as part of an incentive trip we were shooting. One of the tour guides mentioned Bottle Shock as a better option since it’s about Napa wines more than Sideways was so I knew it was time to finally check it out. If you [...]
My First Favorite… beer
Several weeks ago, Steal Like an Artist was trending online and it’s a great perspective (read it if you haven’t yet). One of the things I like to ‘steal’ are ideas from experiences. In the strictest sense this isn’t really stealing, but more like inspiration. However, when you travel a lot for shoots, you have opportunities to [...]
Productivity tools
As a growing business we’ve now got people in more than one location so we’ve been doing more and more remote collaboration to get things done. Some of the tools we love and how we use them are the subject of this post and hopefully they can help you out as well. Lifehacker is a [...]
Art Basel is not the only thing going on in Miami’s art scene
On my most recent trip to Miami, I had the fortune to actually get out of South Beach (where I typically am for shoots) and head into Miami proper, this time checking out the Wynwood Arts District. This area has undergone a renaissance of late, and anyone who’s been to Art Basel Miami has no [...]