As many of you know, I’m currently sitting in a hotel in London. I’m not here on vacation, nor am I traveling for fun. I am here for Blurb. Yesterday, another photographer reached out to ask about a few publishing items and casually said “You have the best job, just making pictures and making books and Blurb pays for it all.” This happens quite frequently. The other comment I routinely get is “You are so lucky you have your job at Blurb.” Let me be the first to tell you, luck had nothing to do with it.
I’m in London because my boss asked me to go to London.
My Spain workshop with Raw Society begins on the 18th. I explained to my boss that I was headed to Southern Europe to co-teach a weeklong book-specific workshop. My boss said, “You should to to Photo London the week before.” Done. That’s how it began. I suggested we tack on a photo walk and meetup, a roundtable dinner, a book lecture, and potentially add in several other London events because it had been years since Blurb had produced programming in the city. Ultimately, we weren’t able to pull off most of these events, but that’s life post-COVID. More expense, fewer options and less staff to handle the absolute mountain of logistics.
My boss then said, “If your workshop is in Menorca, you need to go to Barcelona.” In America, Spain is seen as the up and coming hub for young European creatives. In my thirteen year tenure at Blurb, we had never done anything in Spain, so we tacked on the Barcelona photo walk and meetup. Based on limited time and resources, this is what we could accomplish. And then I got a message from Eindhoven. Not the entire city, mind you, just a colleague I met at Paris Photo this past November. The message was a question. “Hey, if you are going to be in Barcelona, can you come to Eindhoven after and make a short film about book production?” Our European print partner is based in Eindhoven, and in thirteen years, I’d never been to the facility or met the crew. I was interested but needed permission. My boss said “Go.”
Seeing as Eindhoven is close to Amsterdam, a city Blurb has covered many times in the past, and the fact I was ending my Eindhoven duties on a Friday, meant I could add a two-day, weekend stop in Amsterdam. I was also flying out of Amsterdam on my return trip to America. No official Blurb duties, but mostly because marketing resources were taxed and it was me adding this on and not the entire marketing team asking me to add it on. I also felt if I told people I was going to be in Amsterdam for two days, folks would come to talk books and photography, and based on the response, this might prove true. (We’ll see.)I fly back to New Mexico, have three days at home then fly straight to Seattle for another week of events. (Photo walk, meetup x2, special project meeting with execs, roundtable dinner with key customers, photography opening, and meetings with several other industry folks.)
As you can see, not much about making pictures and making books and having Blurb pay for it all. In fact, these two items were never in my job description. Initially, I was hired to build a digital database. Yes, me, the luddite. Build a digital, key customer database, something I had done for Kodak Professional in the late 1990s. Making pictures, being a photographer, making books, public speaking, managing special projects, working with product, marketing, design, CS, etc. Nope. Nada. Nothing. All of this came later as my job morphed again and again. And when the founder of Blurb called me, which is how this entire game began, she didn’t call because of luck. She called because I was using the platform in new, strange ways. She called to figure out why. (I’m still using Blurb in strange ways.)
I’m here because of Blurb, and Blurb is here because we are simply entering into the conversation once again. For a decade, Blurb was an integral cog in the wheel of the professional creative world. Quite impressive brand recognition some would say. But over the past few years, due to a myriad of factors, we have fallen from the field. This trip, in great part, is about correcting this situation. This trip is about attending, showing up and saying without saying, “Hey, we are back in the game.” This trip is about collecting data to better serve the customer. Europe is a major piece of the Blurb pie, and it’s been far too long since we were able to collaborate with our European customers.
As you know, I do produce a decent amount of photography, writing, motion pieces, workshops and more, on my own. (Or in collaboration.)
My sites, my channels, my correspondence is all based on my initiatives. All of these things are in addition to my work at Blurb although most are connected to Blurb in some way. The projects I complete, the books I make, the films I cut, are mostly completed from the Dan side, and then and only then, are they integrated with the Blurb side. This is neither good nor bad, just the way it happens to go down. It works. For example, I am currently writing three Hit the Books emails for Blurb, and working on an eight-film series about Antarctica. The voyage to the ice came from my connections and my opportunity but ultimately was enticing to Blurb because my entire trip was based around something I was thinking about when the opportunity arose. “What will the book look like?” I’ve written the Hit the Books emails for years.
I am fortunate to have my job at Blurb. When I quit photography and took this job, many of my friends and colleagues responded with snide comments or off hand slights. As if photography had gotten the better of me and I was quitting. Quite the contrary. I was done with photography, and I could also see the writing on the wall. Many of these same people are gone now, obliterated by social media, short attention spans, lack of budgets and lack of original ideas, not to mention the crumbling of the traditional gatekeepers of the industry. (Editors, agents, art buyers, publishers, agencies, editorial outlets, commercial outlets, stock, annual reports, etc. The list goes on and on.) I’ve been on the outside looking in, but from a much higher altitude. I’m a better person now, more skilled, more open minded, and less concerned about myself. I’ll make what I make, and have fun doing so, but that’s not important. My job as a facilitator is what matters now, which is why I sit watching people eat strange things for breakfast. Come on England, what’s up with the pool of beans and sauce in the middle of the plate?
Comments 22
From my vantage point and how your content has positively effected me, you’re doing a great job as a Blurb brand ambassador. Your comment about the beans in the Full English Breakfast is hilarious!
Author
I saw a guy with a full plate of beans and then little islands of things floating in the middle. It was oddly not beautiful.
Author
And thank you…
I’m constantly being told I’m “lucky” to be doing what I’m doing. And in the back of my mind I’m thinking of all the time on the road in shitty hotels, 30-40 weeks/year on the road, waking up and not being able to remember what town I’m in. I want to tell people what a struggle that is, but just like every part of social media there is a romanticizing of other people’s lives while conveniently ignoring their struggles….not seeing or hugging loved ones enough being one of many. But I’m also complicit in their fantasies of what my life is like, because they just see the results. “Wouldn’t that be FUN”, they think, and yes it is fun and satisfying to have people pleased with your work. And I sometimes smugly think that if it was easy everyone would be doing it. But mostly I just do the hard parts for the parts that look easy. So I sell it to myself as well.
Author
That’s well said. I can relate to parts. Waking up and no knowing the place. Much of my travel for Blurb was prior to the world selling out to social, so I look back on almost all of it with fondness. I actually remember being on a trolly in Toronto with several team members when we realized social had ruined just about everything. I credit the people who wrote the code. They knew it and they did it anyway. That’s so boss.
Yeah, some people tell me how lucky I am to be retired and a full-time writer. What they forget is that I spent 26 years in law enforcement, worked my way up to police chief, managed a multi-million budget, hiring, firing, politics, etc. People see where you are now, Dan, and forget where you’ve been. But kudos to you for jumping to Blurb and reinventing yourself into the well traveled, inspiring dude you are now.
Author
Good point. The part about studying photography for four years. Not a lot of folks asking about that. Oops. That foundational part.
Looking not-too-closely at the hat, does that say Make America Great Again?
Oh, Blurb! Of course!
Author
It was on or the other.
Author
“Make Peru great again.”
People only ever see the storefront of our lives and nothing behind. Yet they feel entitled to judge. Yes, we need sheer luck too to succeed and we have to be grateful for that. What is unseen though is the lots of heding our bets. By having a vision. Putting the hard work in. Waking up at 2AM 2 times a week because of an important course happening on the other side of the globe. Not eating crap. Working out regularly. Prioritizing things and activities that are in alignment with our vision over those we just simply want to do. When I hear that I’m lucky, I don’t even try to argue or explain anymore. I just say “yeah, I know” and move on.
Author
It’s far easier to NOT do something than to do it. I’m sick at the moment, could have slept until noon…easily. But yet here I am. Plotting, planning at 6 AM. A curse I tell ya.
The “severe back and neck pains” are more probably derived from spending too much time in that aircraft, Mama Nature’s gentle chiding for the footprint across her face.
I last flew in 2004, and from being the validating process that it had once been, a marker for what I took to be some sort of minor career success, it had already become a real pain in the ass. If I never have to fly again that won’t be any loss. From the hassle with film security to the truly dreadful food, where a single good snack would have been far kinder an offering than a pretend three-courser, it turned into anything but pleasure. That was before one had to remove one’s shoes at security, in an ironic nod to religious terrorism. Nope, now, if I can’t drive there with perhaps a brief ferry hop or even, in extremis, take a train instead, I’d rather just stay home. Home is quite good, if nowhere as good as when my wife was still alive, bless her soul.
It’s a shame. Trips were often great fun; I used to think of them as commando raids, where we’d fly in, get our shots and get the hell out again before anyone knew what we had been doing. You see the madness, the magnification of adventure that the simplest of photography assignments can create in the idle head? The truth of the matter was more likely that we did what we had to do, got it out of the way, and then made the most of the rest of the gig with a little self-indulgence at whichever beach bar had taken our fancy. Either way, I now pay the price thanks to permanent actinic keratosis and visiting basal carcinomas. I sometimes wonder how those models fared – they got more sun in more places and more often than I did. How painful it must have been to have to admit defeat at the hands of gravity in one’s late twenties. They are probably grannies by now. Yikes! Ships that passed in the night.
Author
A necessary evil for me. Lots of time on birds. Sometimes, effortless. Others, or most often, issues with people, planes, weather, etc. I just create a bubble that nothing can penetrate. My own little world. It’s why people get so selfish in the air, and disgusting and clueless. Survival.
That cap. That hair. That Leica. That’s not Peru 2023.
Have fun in Barcelona. Watch for pickpockets.
Park Guell for photo shoot.
Author
Yes, they know how to pick a pocket for sure. I’ve not been in years. A week-long book class first, so lots on the table before BLona. And four more days in London with a long list of to do’s. I carry my same look from country to country but do travel with wigs and makeup in case I need a quick change to escape the authorities.
Yeah, since I don’t even own a laptop anymore, nor do I use adobe in any way, Blurb, as excellent a creative website as it is, doesn’t work for me, too cumbersome, when other easier to use platforms are out there.
Author
Thankfully, you are tiny minority when it comes to this. I love me an iPad and will purchase the new one when I return home, but I don’t know a single professional book person who works from an iPad. Yet.
The beans aren’t bad…It’s the un-rendered pork fat (maybe throw a blood sausage in the sauce pool). I still love London though.
Author
My stomach just turned…
If you could just go back to two film Leicas and two lens and a couple of pain patches. P3200 isn’t heavy.
Author
Probably not going to happen. It took 20 years but I now like digital.