Mixt - Staying True to Brand
The Strength of Community
Hello All, I hope you’re all doing ok and doing your best to stay healthy under these circumstances. I wanted to share with you some of the ways I am working on feeling of empowered during these challenging times. Don’t get me wrong, I have been feeling overwhelm and fear at times, but I know it makes a difference to stay hopeful and take steps in a positive direction.
For myself and the commercial photography industry we have seen a complete shut down since the shelter in place went into affect nationwide. Knowing there was only so much I could do right now I realized there was a great need to support the photography industry with staying afloat and educated about how to move forward. From there I started a weekly podcast series titled, Biz Talk, with the help of American Photographic Artists’ national Executive Director Juliette Wolf-Robin. It’s largely in response to our current challenges, but it’s intention is to discuss business topics throughout our industry on an ongoing basis. Each week we have been bringing in anywhere from 1-4 guests to talk about different subjects. We are in our 5th week and have covered topics including navigating govt. financial support, licensing stock for commercial photographers, and started the discussion last week on set safety and creative ways of shooting while in shelter in place.
If you would like to watch past episodes, go here, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFQCQDDkRglIk9jTmoUP3d9HhGNOwgoBN
If you would like to get notices for future episodes, go here: https://signup.e2ma.net/signup/1835969/7850
What Work Looks Like Now and in the Future
I want to go a little more in depth about the topic of future set safety during productions. The photography production community has been thinking up creative ways to make something happen within the circumstances we are under. Everyday we are working as a community to share new ideas about small and large productions. Producers, food stylists, makeup artists, catering, digital techs, etc. are sharing solutions on how to keep everyone safe. If you have ideas of how to keep sets safe please reach out, it is an ongoing conversation and I hope to have it with all of my clients.
These are the best resources for production guidelines for getting back to work:
Art of Freelance
https://www.artoffreelance.com/af-blog/2020/4/25/99sy17j7okd64cmfozavvio5yew3hh?fbclid=IwAR1w0PdrZHO02-FM5Lsvhn526tqb5WRTm7rsd-Bp6CEovSPSpIBlus5j4iY
Smuggler (production company)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQ_vvpRSjEX92gHxlXhcLAktQbH6BcZoAOn8YzUVlArx-sVMwSPJ_Sp0YwfY-2POvTxVqKo0GkWT5Ez/pub?urp=gmail_link
AICP (Association of Independent Commercial Producers)
https://www.aicp.com/business-resources/business-affairs-information/aicp-guidlines/covid-19-workplace-guidelines/
How I Can Help My Clients Right Now
If you are a brand who is considered a non-essential business, but still want to create content now I have put together a document to give you an idea of what capabilities I can produce during the shelter in place order.
Create in Place and Produce in Place
https://naderkhouri.photofolio.com/INFO/Shelter-in-Place-Capabilities/thumbs
Exciting News! I am also now part of a Stock Photography collective called UnStock. “There’s a reason why stock photography gets such a bad rap: a sea of sameness, a mass of bland, unnecessarily anesthetized, commoditized pixels that wastes your time and devalues ours. It’s a morass of mediocrity we didn’t want to contribute to, and you dread wading through. And that’s why we’re here: because your ad, your brand, and our work deserve better.”
https://unstockcollective.com/nader-khouri/food/thumbs