Julie Johnston Photography

Exciting Times

Time really does fly!
Seems it was just yesterday I posted. Since the last post I have a local flower and gift shop carrying my work. She has taken several framed prints as well as notecards. It is very exciting to walk into a retail establishment and see MY images hanging there for folks to buy.
Also, last week we had a photo emailed to us at the newspaper to be used as we could. It ran in yesterday's paper and gave me some free publicity. The photo was of a local man presenting the framed piece he commissioned me to do to the director of Cultural Affairs for Iowa. This will be hung in her office.
I have taken Alyson Stanfield's www.artbizcoach.com advice and done some shameless self promotion. However, these exciting events occurred because I took another piece of her advice, or was it 2? Anyway, I gave some of my notcards as gifts at Christmas which led to me getting in the store, and sent a thank you to the man who commissioned the piece he gave away. The thank you was not for the commission (I did that later), but for purchasing 25 of my cards which he used as thank you cards to donors. I believe taking the time to send the thank you to him led to the commission.
You just never know when it will pay to be nice.
This week my major assignment at work, other than the daily photos, is to take photos of springtime in Iowa, agriculturally speaking, although it isn't too springlike. We will be assembling and publishing a Spring Ag Report which will require several photos. If I can get a really good one it will become the cover. We are in an area where agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, so about 4 times a year we publish a tab directed toward Ag. This is in addition to the 2 (1 preview and one post-fair) we publish about the county fair, which is also primarily agriculture, 4-H and FFA.
As soon as the Ag one is done, we will publish a tab (a tab is a 13"x16" newspaper inserted in the regular daily) honoring 2 seniors from each of the 19 high schools in a 3 county area covered by our news service. Then, following that will be one directed toward good health.
One thing for sure about this job is that there is never a dull moment!

posted by Julie Johnston @ 5:02 PM