– Posted by Mark
We had the opportunity to photograph TEDxPeachtree this year and wow, that was pretty awesome. If you’ve never heard of the TED Talks, it’s all about this:
“TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader.
Our mission: Spreading ideas.
We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we’re building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.”
Of course – since we only allow Alumni and Current Interns to attend our Photography Business/Marketing workshop – most people don’t realize that we show TED videos. Mostly because they’re about ideas – and new ideas combined with executing those new ideas are at the core of our marketing workshop. Heck – it’s really at the core of this business in general. (And yours too if you’re smart.)
We always kind of take note when we find ourselves in a forum full of photographers posting marketing ideas… that they’re just spitting back up after hearing those same ideas from other photographers, who also did the same thing. It’s often difficult to find new ideas within your own industry. That’s not to say that we don’t listen to some of what other photographers are saying – but I will admit – I ignore/avoid hearing a lot of it.
Of course – at the same time I spend a portion of my effort on simply keeping up with what’s going on in ‘Photography’ – because you don’t want to be completely out of the loop either.
And if you haven’t ever heard us say it – one of our core principles/guidelines/things we do is simply to find out what everyone else isn’t doing (by choice) – figure out why they aren’t doing it, and then figure out how we can make ‘it’ work for us. Because if we can do that, then we’ll be the only one doing it. How much is an advantage like that worth to you? It’s worth a great deal to us.
TEDxPeachtree. Atlanta. 2011. Photos. Photography. Zoo Atlanta. Speakers. TED Talks. TED. LeahAndMark.com