Photo by: Leif Norman
Where in the world am I today?: Winnipeg, MB, Canada
I’m back in Winnipeg for another great run at the Circus And Magic Partnership and will be teaching unicycle for the next week, but have also been plugged into a couple of performance programs around town, so along with the teaching I’m also doing some performing. Everything is being organized in association with the Winnipeg International Children’s Festival and the people associated with the Festival are smart enough to know how important it is to have good photos from the various events that are being produced, so while I was doing shows at Portage Place Mall and again when I was performing at The Forks Marketplace I ran into Leif Norman who had been hired to shoot a little big of everything over the course of the week.
Now I’ve run into Leif at events produced by the Winnipeg International Children’s Festival in the past so I recognized him right away and made sure to touch base and chat a bit prior to the beginning of my shows. I like photography myself anyway, so I always find it interesting to chat with photographers, but the benefits of being friendly and nice to the pros who are capturing my show in stills has always been something I aim for anyway.
That tired cliché that a ‘Picture is worth a thousand Words‘ is not only true, but having great photos can help ensure that you land gigs in the first place, can make the media department at an event thrilled to work with you, can help generate excitement about your performance before you even turn up for the gig, can, in short benefit you in so many ways that if you don’t recognize their importance you can seriously limit your options professionally.
A lot of the time photographers are really protective about their work and the images that they create, and you need to respect this, because although the image may be of you, it was their skill behind the lens and shutter that captured the key moment that may help launch or further your career. I remember watching an Annie Leibovitz documentary in which Whoopie Goldberg said that one image that Annie had shot had more of an impact on her career than she could have possibly imaged. The value in this may be hard to recognize initially, but the value to you over time is huge and treating photographers with professional respect only makes sense.
So… Leif shows up at Portage Place Mall on Saturday and we have a great chat before my show and catch up a bit. During the course of my show I’m certainly aware of his presence and occasionally play to him a bit, but my main focus is on delivering a great show to the audience who’ve gathered. We chat after the show a bit and he mentions that he’ll be throwing some images up on Facebook… He’s being paid by the Children’s Festival, the Festival is using these images to promote the events that they’re doing, so getting the images up on Facebook benefits all concerned. A day later I check out the images on-line, see the image that’s attached to this post, drop Leif a line and ask for permission to use it with this blog post, he says go for it, and Boom it’s up.
In this sort of application this casual approach to the use of the image seemed cool to all concerned, but were I to end up using one of the images that Leif took for additional promotional purposes, I’d make sure to check in with him again to make sure he was cool with it. It doesn’t take much to extend professional courtesy to people who capture great images of me, but it never seems to be unappreciated or unnoticed. Make the effort.
