Everyone is tired of that same old  phrase “you only get one chance to make a first impression”. It is repeated ad nauseum from business schools to beauty pageants and everywhere in between. As much as I would rather say to throw away the stuffy old phrases, parables and sayings, this is one that seems to grow more and more true every day. Especially in the music industry.

Of course it is important to make that strong initial impression, that is first and foremost. Second, having all the music, assisting materials, image, business elements and the presentation of these pieces in place is paramount and required. Third is knowing how to individually and specifically present to the person, company, or agency, and doing it the right way.

This last paragraph represents the gold standard that has been a requirement of the industry for years. The musicians that move forward are those that have all the elements in place. If they don’t, they might want to hold up on their forward motion and get those elements in order.

So why is it more important now?

The main reason the first impression is now more important than ever is because of the internet-based outlets like websites, social networks like Facebook, and online sales systems like CD Baby and iTunes, just to name a few.  Because of all of these resources, a new level of saturation has been reached. Years before every band had a website, a MySpace and other online perks, it was a smaller consolidated market, in which musicians had to work a hundred times harder to find a wider audience. Back then, we had mailing lists that we actually had to mail out. Yes, we spent hours putting stamps on postcards. Now the mailing list is actually an emailing list that can reach tens of thousands, and doesn’t really cost a dime.

The main point is that with the growth of the internet and the growth of the number of bands with such increased presence, combined with the decline of labels and deflation of the conventional music industry, it is definitely more important than ever to give off an impeccable impression. Industry professionals are seeing and being contacted by more musicians and groups than ever before, both amazing musicians and total hacks. The industry is being overwhelmed by “up and coming” artists, and many of these artists are doing more damage for the artists that are more prepared.

If it wasn’t hard enough, add in all those directories, lists and books that you can buy to get the phone, email, website and address contacts to thousands of industry contacts. The amount of music and promotion being sent both physically and digitally to people is at an all time high. Gone are the stories of Johnny Cash staking out the back door of a studio, to tens of thousands of artists mass emailing everyone they can with their music files and information. The staking out still occurs too and has in fact increased, thanks to all the contact lists that print addresses. You can find that “up and coming” artist with 15 cd’s on her waiting outside the building that she cant get in to, ready to hand off her disc In response, many companies now have altered their physical addresses to a post office or Mail Boxes Etc. box, just to avoid this onslaught of people.

Make an actual strong impression

Back to that first impression again. Frankly, it has to be incredible. You as an artist have to present yourself in a top-notch way that makes you stand out, while presenting materials that are also top-notch. The market is over-saturated with truckloads of artists, labels, managers and agents, and the bulk of them are unprofessional, arrogant, and unaware of what is required, as they base their presentation off the MTV dream.  The more unprofessional you appear, the faster you are going to be viewed as just another hack band. Even if the music is of the highest quality, and you have something that truly is marketable and industry-ready, you can easily blow your chances.  If you are the artist walking around with a boombox, thrusting it into peoples’ faces…stop. Whatever you do, you most likely are not going to be heard first. Your first impression is going to be basd on your ancillary materials. That strong first impression will be the critical step to get people to be motivated to listen to your music.

As much as you think everyone is going to listen to your music, many industry professionals will toss promo packages and discs before they listen to them, because the first impression is terrible. It’s not their job to listen, and with so many people sending so much music, there is no time to listen to it all.

Conclusion

So, what can you do to stand out? What can you do to deliver the best package that will make some one want to open it and listen to you in the sea of promo packages, discs and emails they have received in just that day? When you think in the mindset that every person or company you are sending anything to is probably receiving a thousand other packages, emails or discs that look just like yours, then you can step back, organize the right way, and regroup. Think how you can stand out in the crowd and present in a way that is going to bring attention in the best possible light. Think about everything from the cover letter to the envelope you are addressing. Think about your bio, your tagline, the content and information written about the band and the music. Make it right. Make it professional. Make it stand out. Make that first impression so much stronger than the bulk of others, so you can get them to listen to your music and get the second impression you really want them to have.

© 2009 Loren Weisman

Watch out for Loren Weisman’s “Realistic Music Careers 101 Seminar” coming to a city near you and Loren’s book “The Artist’s Guide to Success in the Music Business” coming in 2010.

For more information on Loren, bookings or press inquiries, please contact his publicist and agent, Jenée Arthur at Rellihan Satterlee. Email: jenart@relsat.com Phone: 206-588-1998

Today has been a really busy day here in the studio! It was our first ever Handmade Christmas Gift Workshop… and we had fabulous time.

And… since we spent all day making book cover/cases for young readers, that is exactly what gift idea#20 (of our Great Homemade Christmas Ideas list) is all about. Fun to make, and perfect encouragement for all those young readers on your list!! (after all, who wants to walk around with an ugly book in hand when they can be ’styling’?)

We started off with purple felt because the lucky recipients of these book cases love the colour purple. Then, because we love recycling where we can, we took some really neat appliques off old clothing and mixed them up with some new fabrics to make these cases personal for each girl receiving them. Finish that off with some seriously bright pink ribbon, and the project was done. (The inside of the case features a pen pocket and pouches to hold the cover of the book – just to keep it securely in the case.)

We actually ended up making 3 today (they make up fairly quickly when made out of felt – the real time spent here is making sure the case is decorated the way you want). One of them was for a 6 year old, another was for an 8 year old and then, just because we couldn’t believe they went so fast, we decided to do another one too – for a 10 year old (I think that was their ages, but don’t quote me on it…. I am sorry if I got the ages wrong.)

So, between the purple felt and all the pink ribbon, flowers,  and appliques, there was a lot of fun and girly creative inspiration in every corner of the studio. But best of all, the book covers turned out to be really cool – a good way for the young reader on your Christmas list to take their books with them everywhere. (But if I were doing this for boys, I would not use pink and purple or flowers – I am thinking blue and animals and trains.)

As I said earlier, the trickiest (and most fun) part of this whole project is embellishing and decorating the cases.  (The scrapbook-er I worked with on this also said the same thing.) So, if you want to give this a try, and want the pattern, we will have it posted on our brand new website very shortly, but until then, email me and I will send it to you right away as a .pdf file.

(And… if you want to make a book cover, but would rather crochet one, check out this pattern for a bible cover at CrochetnMore.com.)

D’autres images de la série ICI

So this is what the end of the week had in store for me. Above is a bit of the process for getting the beginnings of my new project going. The piece that comes from this process is a diptych, (Silkscreened / Mono print – Oil) entitled: My grandfather used to play in college. Oh really? my father did too. Images of the final pieces will be up tonight or tomorrow.

The Championship Match between Chris Cole vs Paul Rodriguez for the Battle of The Berrics 2 finally took place. Both internationally renowned skaters took on a gruesome game of SKATE, with Chris Cole coming out triumphant by a hair. Check it out!

CONGRATS TO CHRIS COLE FOR KILLIN 2009

© 2009 by jeroen peters

© 2009 by jeroen peters

Pour voir d’autres photos de cette série, cliquez ici…

Recently there has been a lot of Twittering and web noise about different ways of doing usability studies using mouse tracking (remotely or locally) and also virtual ‘tracking’ such as Feng-GUI. There are claims that these lower priced alternatives offer the same level of results, accuracy and customer insight as eye tracking. There are obvious reasons why trying to simulate human behaviour will never be as accurate as actual testing but for the first part of this post I have copied some text across from Tommy, who heads up the training department at Tobii as he had already compiled a nice post regarding the Feng-GUI product, so over to Tommy…..

(Taken from Tommy’s blog : http://eyetracking.me/)

On the Feng-GUI web site (http://www.feng-gui.com) you can upload images and have the website create an artificial heat map showing how people would look at your image. Feng-GUI says it can “effectively analyze Attention and Attraction in visuals” and that their “artificial intelligence service simulates human vision during the first 5 seconds of exposure to visuals”.  Supposedly their heat maps should be as accurate as eye tracking heat maps: “Feng-GUI attention map reaches over 75% of ROI similarities to Eye and Mouse Tracking.”

Well I just had to try it and compare their heat map to a real eye tracking heat map. I uploaded an image that I had already included in an earlier eye tracking project, this image was seen by 50 people. You can see the comparison below.

This is the Feng-GUI artificial heat map:

And now this is the actual heatmap generated by a sample of 50 people, created with a Tobii eye tracker and Tobii Studio software:

As you can see above, the heat maps are very very different, definetly not 75% alike. Well, what do we learn from this? It is very hard to try to model human behavior, if you want to find out how people really look at something you need to use real people, artificial intelligence will not give you the correct answer…

Thanks to Tommy for that – and I am sure you will agree that the differences are quite obvious. Read more of Tommy’s insights at  http://eyetracking.me/

The other system to touch on is mouse movement recording, this is seen in various guises from different companies and hs ben around for several years, with additional functionality and metrics being added. For the large number of people that support mouse tracking they will tell you that you look where your mouse cursor is, and why would the mouse pointer be there if you weren’t looking at that point. Recently a company made the claim that mouse tracking is eye tracking for everyone (although without actually using an eye tracker this is surely just ‘tracking’ for everyone!) and that mouse and eye movement are directly related and can be more accurate indeed than using an eye tracker. We see one inherent problem with tha of course, how can not physically tracking the eyes be more accurate than not tracking them at all and basing findings or assumptions on mouse movement… hmmmmm…..

With the advent of mice with scroll wheels we were no longer tied to going to the side of a window to move up and down a large page. In fact some people leave the mouse where it is and use page down / up buttons, or even the arrow keys. Indeed when shopping through a gallery style web site who actually moves the cursor over each item? Few, if any people to be honest…. look at this example below from SimpleUsability (www.simpleusability.com) on the Amazon website…

or this example from the John Lewis website….

As you can see from both of the videos, there are times when the mouse movements and eye gaze data do overlap – such as when menu’s are brought down, or a button is clicked – but this is what we would expect. Look at the times when the shopper is browsing the page, their eye movements scanning the items on the page, the menu navigation bar and so on. The user is manipulating the page using the scroll wheel in most cases and this sort of activity would be missed by mouse tracking – yes we would know the scroll bar moved, but why? Where was the user looking to initiate this? In which order did they look at the products on the page? Did they notice the price first or the picture of the item?

Look at the differences between the mouse and eye movements, the way the user scans the items and reads the page with their eyes. Now look at the mouse movements, or in many cases – lack of it. Would you be prepared to make a business decision based on mouse recording data alone? No? Me neither…

The differences between these three different ways of measuring user behaviour are obvious, only eye tracking gives you real human behaviour, with conscious and subconscious behaviour recording through their eye movement and the recording of mouse movements. All your mouse clicks and key presses are there, along with a user camera showing their visual responses (emotive response to the image / page) and an audio recording of any comments they make.
As always comments are welcomed : jon@acuity-ets.com.

De shoot met Patty stond al zooooo lang in de planning dat we er allemaal een hard hoofd in hadden dat het nog ging gebeuren. De ene keer was er iemand ziek, de andere keer ging er iemand op vakantie en zo nog een paar keer… maar het is eindelijk goed gekomen en we hebben een superleuke shoot gehad. Het thema was beauty (zie hieronder) en nagels en daarna hebben we nog zomaar wat gedaan als afsluiting. We hebben in ieder geval een erg gezellige dag gehad!

There is a new page on this site!
“In the Studio”
See pictures of Laine working, learn about her process and her ongoing study of chemistry in art.

So as the new week begins, I come back with exciting news. I have been asked to do the December store front display for Design Within Reach. It is apart of their current project of having artists and designers do a different theme each month. Its an awesome opportunity, and a great project on their part. A good friend of mine Alex Merto has already done (a beautiful) one.

The week ended in a hectic display of finishing work. In the studio, but off the blog, I found no time to post. Today though I am back to it, and calmly. After a much needed weekend away from the work and one too many a whiskey drink. (I will be posting some process shots of the project soon enough, and some photographs of the finished product, later.)

The latest Hidden Wisdom show was a success of sorts (personally). My work was not able to be hoisted up as I would of liked. Due to lack of funding at the time. It found itself on the ground. It came out, in line with out how I wanted it for the most part. Especially good, for a test run I’d say. In the show it definitely found itself lost in the sea of side steppers though. Next time I just need to use a pedistal or some barbed wire for people who still don’t know not to get too close the work yo! Everyone turned out great pieces. It was definitely, maybe the tightest one to date. Good job and a hat off to every one of the other contributing artists.

And really do check the Urs Fischer set up, even if you hate him. All the more reason.

Envie de vacances, de soleil et de mer ? Pourquoi ne pas louer une villa sur l’île Maurice et partir à la pêche au gros ?

PÊCHE AU GROS SUR L’ILE MAURICE

À l’Ile Maurice, la pêche au gros est une activité très prisée des touristes. Pour un pêcheur, en effet, quoi de plus captivant que de se battre pour ramener un marlin à bord. Si l’idée vous tente, réservez votre place en écrivant à soucen@orange.mu ou par téléphone au (230) 753 7254.

PROMENADE EN BATEAU

Excursion en bateau sur l’île Maurice avec barbecue, rhum, bière et autres boissons gazeuses, promenade pour aller voir les dauphins, petite balade le long de la côte de l’île Maurice ou admirer un coucher de soleil depuis un bateau, c’est ce qu’Angeliz United Ltd vous propose pour passer de superbes vacances sur l’île.

STUDIO TROPICAL ALBION ILE MAURICE

Le Studio Tropical se situé à Albion sur la côte Ouest de l’île Maurice non loin de la capitale, Port-Louis.

Le studio est équipé d’un lit double, d’un téléviseur, d’une cuisinière/four au gaz, d’un micro-ondes, d’une cafetière, d’un grille-pain, d’une bouilloire, d’un réfrigérateur, d’un ventilateur, d’une douche, d’un fer à repasser et de chaises et table de jardin.

Vous apprécierez la fraicheur et le calme environnant de cette location de vacances située à 2 ou 3 minutes à pied de la plage par un petit chemin verdoyant. Ensuite, des kilomètres de plage s’offrent à vous…

Bref, tout le confort pour un séjour réussi sur l’île Maurice et profiter de la mer, de soleil et de la plage.

Wuddup people, this is the first of many posts and I’m startin with this great feature any studios should have (guerilla studio owners i’m lookin at u…!) Isolate your mics from any booth leaks or simply make it a dry acoustic with this reflexion filter.

http://www.seelectronics.com/rf.html

I have finished these two tables.  Here are some pictures!

Thanks for stopping by!

Smile and Bless Someone Today!

Dell Studio 1555 Laptop Computer, 15.6-Inch High Definition (720p) LED Display with TrueLife, Chainlink Black – Windows 7 Home Premium, 2.1GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core T4300 (2.1GHz/800Mhz FSB/1MB cache), 6GB Memory, 500GB Hard Drive, Wireless, 8X Slot Load CD/DVD Burner Review

Check Price Now!

Dell Studio 1555 Laptop Computer, 15.6-Inch High Definition (720p) LED Display with TrueLife, Chainlink Black – Windows 7 Home Premium, 2.1GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core T4300 (2.1GHz/800Mhz FSB/1MB cache), 6GB Memory, 500GB Hard Drive, Wireless, 8X Slot Load CD/DVD Burner Feature

• Intel Pentium Dual Core T4300 (2.1GHz/800Mhz FSB/1MB cache)
• 6GB Memory with 800 MHz speed, Wi-Fi networking (802.11b/g), 6-cell battery
• 500GB Hard Drive, DVD±R/RW Optical Drive supports reading/writing of CDs and DVDs , 2.0 megapixel webcam`
• 15.6″ Display, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
• Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

Dell Studio 1555 Laptop Computer, 15.6-Inch High Definition (720p) LED Display with TrueLife, Chainlink Black – Windows 7 Home Premium, 2.1GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core T4300 (2.1GHz/800Mhz FSB/1MB cache), 6GB Memory, 500GB Hard Drive, Wireless, 8X Slot Load CD/DVD Burner Overview

Windows 7 Home Premium makes it easy to create a home network and share all of your favorite photos, videos, and music. And you can watch shows for free when and where you want with Internet TV on Windows Media Center. Get the best entertainment experience with Windows 7 Home Premium. 2.0 megapixel webcam, Built-in stereo speakers, Dimensions: 14.6 x 10 x 1.5 inches (WxDxH), Weight: 5.5 pounds, Warranty: One-year. Networking, Connectivity & ExpansionBe ready for the next platform in wireless connectivity with an integrated Draft-N Wi-Fi chip. Based on the draft 802.11n Wi-Fi specification, it offers up to five times the performance and twice the wireless range as existing 802.11g wireless. It’s also backward compatible with 802.11b/g networks (commonly found in home routers and Wi-Fi hotspots). It also includes a next-generation ExpressCard card slot (replacing the PCMCIA slot), which lets you take advantage of thinner, faster, and lighter expansion cards for even more advanced wireless, networking, storage, and security features. It comes with the following external connectors: * 3 USB 2.0 ports for connecting a wide range of peripherals–from digital cameras to MP3 players o Includes 1 eSATA/USB combo port * 1 HDMI output (for connecting to a compatible HDTV or home theater receiver for uncompressed digital audio and video via a single cable) * Analog video output: 1 VGA * 1 ExpressCard/34 slot * 8-in-1 memory card reader compatible with Secure Digital, Secure Digital High Capacity, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, and more * 1 headphone jack, 1 microphone jack * RJ-45 port for Ethernet

Dell Studio 1555 Laptop Computer, 15.6-Inch High Definition (720p) LED Display with TrueLife, Chainlink Black – Windows 7 Home Premium, 2.1GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core T4300 (2.1GHz/800Mhz FSB/1MB cache), 6GB Memory, 500GB Hard Drive, Wireless, 8X Slot Load CD/DVD Burner Specifications

*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Nov 23, 2009 07:45:04

Visit : portable dvd player for car

The burfly photography wordpress blog is now closed.

Continue to follow Burfly Photography over at our newly revamped website and direct at tumblr

you can also keep up to date with us on flickr, twitter, model mayhem and deviantart.

Thanks for your support

Alan

hey..
i ain’t no biggest blogger, as you may have noticed by now… but these are just too good to be missed.
go to YEAH-STUDIO.COM and check all them beautiful flyers from YEAH! STUDIO. brilliant!
oh and they are from Mexico. i love Mexican flyers! (check club Aura in my archives)

few of my favs:

go and check others yourselves.
boom!

Si chiama www.informagiovanionline.it, ed è il nuovo sistema informativo giovanile dell´Emilia-Romagna. Consente di trovare e condividere informazioni in rete, agevola la comunicazione tra giovani ed enti pubblici, dà stessa voce e stesse risorse informative a tutti i Comuni, InformaGiovani, Centri di aggregazione giovanile della regione, crea un sistema pubblico in grado di offrire un´informazione ufficiale e garantita, quindi affidabile, ed è economicamente sostenibile nel tempo.
Destinatari, giovani emiliano-romagnoli di fascia prevalente di età 12-35 anni, ma anche giovani di altre regioni o nazionalità che intendano relazionarsi con residenti o servizi della regione o che desiderino trasferirsi o trascorrervi un periodo.
Il portale, nato dalla collaborazione tra l’Assessorato alla cultura e progetto giovani e il Comune di Modena, è stato creato per dare risposte ai giovani in tutti gli ambiti di loro interesse e per garantire pari opportunità di accesso alle informazioni ad ogni utente, anche laddove non esista un punto informativo InformaGiovani in cui recarsi fisicamente.
Sul sito informazioni e servizi su studio e formazione, lavoro e imprenditoria, salute e diritti, mobilità internazionale ed Europa, volontariato e partecipazione, casa e famiglia.

Il progetto, presentato agli operatori del settore, rappresentanti degli Enti Locali, del privato sociale e operatori dei Servizi InformaGiovani, è inserito nell’Accordo triennale di programma quadro Geco (Giovani evoluti e consapevoli), firmato dalla Regione Emilia-Romagna, dal Ministero dello sviluppo economico e dal Ministero della gioventù nel 2007.

Il progetto ha sistematizzato diversi siti informativi per i giovani e ne ha sviluppato uno, con sistemi open source, in grado di fare navigare l’utente a diversi livelli, dal regionale al locale e viceversa, sempre nello stesso ambiente ed in maniera semplice e chiara.

This is the start of a series of blogs on the real cost of wedding photography, and to be honest, photography in general.

This first post is about the kit that is used.

I use Professional Canon cameras and have done for years and years and years – I am a member of the Canon Professional Network. I find them easy to use with a large range of lenses available to me as well as providing everything that I need in a camera.

The kit I use currently are two Canon EOS 5D MArk II. A fantastic piece of 21 megapixel camera equipment that gives me outstanding images every time. Why two bodies? Well, it saves changing lenses to often and I have found that changing lenses in dusty churches is a pain for getting dust on a sensor and the other reason is back-up. That is a word I will use a lot of in this series of postings. You can never have enough backup!!

Clients are paying me to photograph their wedding – so it is vital (I’ll say  that again VITAL!) that you have a back-up camera. If you find a wedding photographer relying on just one camera run a mile. What happens if that camera decides not to work? (And yes it does happen, even with Canon kit!!).

Cost of two Canon EOS 5D Mark II – £3600

Then we have the lenses. I use four main lenses:

Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS L USM – cost £1539.00

Canon 24-70mm f2.8 L USM – cost £999.00

Canon 17-40mm f4.0 L USM – cost £596.00

Canon 24-105mm f4.0 L IS USM – cost £928.00

I also use a 50mm f1.4 that is the cheapest lens I have – £99

S0 that little lost costs around £7700.00

How about flash units? I have two Canon 580 EX II Speedlights – cost £299.99 each.

So you can see that with the standard kit I use the total cost is knocking on around £8300.00

When you add filters to the lenses (for protection more than anything else) and the other little bits and bobs my whole camera set-up is close to £9000.00

… and you can see the difference in the quality of images I produce from you ‘Uncle Robert’s” consumer level DSLR with a standard kit lens – especially when you want an image enlarged!

I need to ensure that all my kit is serviceable, up to date, clean and will function when I need it to. That means replacing the kit everything three years, so every year I need to save about £3000 just to set aside for new kit.

More to follow ladies and gents…

Andrew Miller

www.andrew-miller.co.uk

www.rubusphotos.co.uk

Thanks to everyone who came out to the open house – it was so much fun that I have a feeling it will be the first of many. I can’t wait to do it again!! Special thanks to Emily from http://www.cheekadee.com and Natalie from http://www.hair-bynatalie.com for not only making me look fabulous for the event but also doing complimentary mini-makeovers for everyone that stopped by! The makeovers by these super talented ladies were a HUGE hit! And of course a very special thanks to Josh Lynn from http://njphotobooths.com/ for the super fun photobooth! Here are just a few of my faves from the night. Good times! So good to see everyone!