RDVP Seminar: Karen Mullarkey (5/4/2005)

Karen Mullarkey of America 24/7 (the people who make the "Day in the Life..." coffee table photo books) came to speak about the power of photos and story telling. She started off with her own story, how she had graduated from college at a time when the only question a woman received in her job interview was "How many words a minute can you type, honey?" As she adapted to this environment and challenged it, after a brief detour through sales and market research departments, she ended up in the photo group, and continuously asked questions that were answered by the premier photographers and journalists.

She directed the photography departments at various publications (Rolling Stone Magazine, Sports Illustrated, and Newsweek) and then worked on the America 24/7 projects. She talked a bit about those projects, which are hugely expensive, and hard to make commercially successful. Rick Smolan transformed the business by lining up corporate sponsors to underwrite production costs. (For the 1995 "24 Hours in Cyberspace" project, Kodak, Adobe, Sun, Netscape, and AOL were sponsors.) For the recent 50 states project, some 1,000 photographers, plus stringers and amateurs submitted 250,000 photos.

After that she talked a bit more about how to use photos to tell the story of our projects. First of all, she encouraged us to use pictures (advice that didn't quite sink in for me if you look at my recent poster...) and choose pictures that "smack you in the face, are very beautiful or let you laugh a little bit" (they'll be more drawn to them). Start with a premise of what you want to show, and outline the story. She talked about self-publishing small books that can be distributed cheaply, as a way to make a project tangible for potential investors, etc.

She also finished off with a generous offer to share her expertise or contacts (photographers around the world to help record our projects), specifically mentioning CameraBits and ZoneZero.com.