Update: for the S.E.E. Photo Class: 6 Classes total AND Invigorade, the natural endurance drink company based in Hermosa Beach, will be providing us great drinks for our class hikes!
Sign up here for the series of 6 Parent/Child S.E.E. Hike + Photo classes: http://www.meetup.com/SEE-LA-Hike-Portrait-Photo-Class-for-Parent-Child/
Clif Kid of Clif Bar just confirmed partnering with Amy to provide very healthy snacks to kids and parents during the S.E.E. Photo + Outdoor Education classes Oct. 4 – Nov. 8th.
What is S.E.E.? A portrait and environmental photo class for one parent + their child to learn together. See the Environment and Each Other:
Class Itinerary:
**All photo instruction combines:
Oct 4th: Hike + Tree Lesson + How to Recognize + Use Outdoor Light
Oct 11: Hike + Cactus Lesson + Landscape Photography Class
Oct 18: Hike + Flower Lesson + Portraits – Photographing Each Other
Oct 25: Hike + Plant Lesson + Landscape Photography Class
Nov 1: Hike + Tree Lesson + Environmental Portrait Instruction
Nov 8: Hike + Plant Lesson + Final Class Group Photo Critique
Class Dates: Oct 4th – Nov 8, Sunday, 6 Fall Classes, 9am – 11:30am
Location: Griffith Park – Meet in front of the Observatory steps
Class is Limited: 7 Parent/Student Groups. 1 Parent + 1 Child per group. 1st come / 1st served.
Payment: $325 total for each Parent/Student pair
Payment Link: http://www.meetup.com/SEE-LA-Hike-Portrait-Photo-Class-for-Parent-Child/
Payment Due: Online via credit card before 1st day of class
Refunds: Yes, if cancel within one week after 1st class only
Contact: studio@thriveimages.com or 323-638-9737 w/ any questions
August 26, 2015, Wednesday
Happy Women’s Equality Day! So designated in the United States August 26, 1971 by a joint resolution of Congress (personally just one and a half years before I entered this world) at the “behest of Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY). The date was selected to commemorate the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote.” **
So, 51 years after women got the right to vote, a woman finally championed a way to help us all celebrate this right: out loud, with apt assertion!
I look to the next generation of young women and girls to continue the celebration. New narratives are possible as long as they are crafted with intention and integrity, and then celebrated. What young women are seeing and sharing now, and how their unquestioned presence in a room is affecting the lives, markets and communities we share is in fact fantastic.
They will, at some point, vote in the first woman president of the United States, and when they do you better believe the celebration and the change will be extraordinary in all of our lives, markets and communities. Equality births tremendous communication. And new communication births amazing new course of action. Happy Women’s Equality Day 2015! I look forward to more celebration! ~ Amy
**National Women’s History Project: www.nwhp.org: link: http://www.nwhp.org/resources/commemorations/womens-equality-day/
Come join in our talk on June 17th in Los Angeles, when Rachel Murray Framingheddu, Amy Graves, and Photo Editor Aimee Santos and myself talk about the times it has been a plus, and/or a challenge, as a woman working red carpet events. RSVP via this link here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/female-photographer-roundtable-tickets-5546740450
Happy Friday Clients! Your viewing, selecting + sharing images workflow JUST GOT EASIER with me, thanks to my vendor PhotoShelter.
This is what you get:
Here is PhotoShelter’s how-to video about it: You’ll have to scroll down their page a little to find the video.
from my Sea and Sand – double exposure series
Self Portrait, by the Pacific Ocean, Malibu, CA
Celebrate Celebrate Celebrate! Earth Day is today!
I truly do celebrate Earth Day, and am thankful a holiday was created to remind us all to care for this amazing place right under our feet.
At age 10, Fontana Elementary, Wisconsin, taught me a lot about what the earth has to offer. It had a long tradition of environmental education. I learned about ecosystems in the arboretum, hiked woods to learn about deciduous vs. evergreen, and researched the local water sources. The program was (and is still is) called Outdoor Ed.
I came out of that Outdoor Ed experience awed, awakened to the interconnectedness of our world, and with the special “Salt of the Earth Award”. To this day, that award remains the one I hold most dear. I still remember the deep smile on my face as it passed to my hands, and the thrill in my chest when I was asked back as a high school mentor.
Thrive Images, the name of my company, holds a few meanings for me, not least of which resonates back to my roots, learning about environmentalism.
Whatever you can do to learn about, help and celebrate environmentalism here on our Earth please keep doing it. It will not only help you thrive, it will also help all the other pieces of the ecosystem that support you!
List of some of my favorite environmental causes:
NAAEE – North American Association for Environmental Education
1/8/2015
I’ve been saying it for a long time: copyright as a means to leverage income for one’s creative works is going to go away. It will. Not entirely, mind you. But the word will. It’s been so diluted in the last decade I’ve been wondering why it’s still on the books. So I’m reaching out to you: marketplace, and you: my fellow creatives to brainstorm with me here to come up with a new term we can all get behind. We’ve got to shore this term up before we lose its import altogether.
How about finquity? (You know, financial equity). Or, capain? (You know, capital gain). Or, sales (You know, sales!).
Don’t believe me about the term copyright’s demise? C’mon! Our click and purchase habits are dictating copyright change. Our couch-potato non-crediting of “regrams” dictates it. I mean #regram doesn’t note who created the image, only that it’s being reused. You can listen to any song on the web for free. Increasingly, these are daily habits for us.
I don’t have exact metrics on this, but surely you’ve experienced it. Daily, click and purchase habits are redefining the position creatives find themselves in when negotiating compensation for the work they put out. Not the work they do, mind you. The marketplace doesn’t dispute the time creatives spend to make whatever it is you are enjoying. What it continually disputes are the requests to pony up for the finished product.
Now, marketplace, I don’t want to alienate you. I like you. You like my stuff so how can I not like you? We can work together on this. I know we can.
How about rebranding copyright in 2015? Yes? No? Who’s with me? Not you? It’s because I said rebrand, right? I know. Sorry about that. (Rebrand is due for a rebrand). Anyway, how ‘bout rejuvenate copyright then? No? Too feely? Too affected? Listen, I said I’ll work with you and I will.
Certainly we can agree copyright needs a fresh coat of paint. It needs to be a term we can easily plug into our estimates; a term that will account, simply, for the materials and labor that creatives put forth; a term that will inspire both the marketplace and creatives to equally subscribe and engage in its use. And yeah, let’s be real, it’s gotta be short.
Simply understanding the definition of “copyright” has, by it’s own definition, always been a roadblock to the exchange and sale of creative property.
Sometimes copyright is a positive roadblock: for example, when a creator wants to protect her work from being reproduced by a business that doesn’t uphold her interests.
Oftentimes copyright is interpreted as a negative roadblock. Clients simply don’t want to talk copyright because they’re thinking “I thought she wanted me to use this material, but now she wants me to pay more? Didn’t I just agree to pay her for the time she put into creating it? Why do I have to pay for the product too?” To those of you asking this question, let me refer you back to the terms I brainstormed in paragraph two.
And to content users, well, we all just want to click and purchase. We’re thinking “you don’t have to remind me that you own it, just put a price tag on it already and let me get this thing.”
Not to worry, clients and content users, we creatives don’t want you to have to think about it any more either. We’re over-stimulated ourselves and, frankly, wonder about the poor souls who never cultivated skills to understand licensing agreements. So, let me as both a creative and a user in the marketplace offer the following: it’s a term that has cultural currency. It means currency. And, it’s short; @ML. That’s it.
@ML means “at materials and labor.” I’m going to start using @ML when I talk about copyright. You can also hashtag it of course for searches, just please know that the @ symbol is being used to reflect the soul of the matter. You know, the soul of any thing is where we creatives are @. It’s where we live. The rest of it is how we support that place.
If you want, you can also use @TML. That translates to “at time, materials, labor.” This will help you when you simply want to roll all your line items into one on your estimate sheet. Still, you’ll need to factor in the ML. Remember, that’s copyright.
What do you think? Are we good? Told you, I was willing to work with you. It’s just a matter of defining where we’re all @.
Talk about thriving! Elvis isn’t dead, he’s running the LA Marathon this year! (and drinking a Miller Lite while doing it).
In celebration of International Women’s Day I am posting a slideshow of the mentor/mentee portraits I took of an amazing group of women and girls who learn from each other via Step Up Women’s Network (suwn.org). I have been fortunate to be involved with the organization since 2006; they truly are helping young girls become the women they dream to be.
It was, as always, a whirlwind with only 2 hours of concentrated time to photograph on the red carpet for the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) – but what a beautiful whirlwind it was. The energy: electric, and the smiles: ecstatic, in the most genuine way, peers amongst passionate peers.
Amy Tierney / Thrive Images 