Seven hours after Austin, I exited I-10 in west Texas. I would spend the night in Alpine and then check out the artsy town of Marfa the next day.
I fell in love with this road, this empty strip of asphalt heading toward the Davis Mountains. Big skies, a treeless expanse, the only other car a dot on the horizon. I took this photo during my road trip across the country – the sheer emptiness of this landscape made it one of the most memorable of the trip.
I have a new movie review for On Tap – Finding True Intimacy in The Sessions.
Starring John Hawkes, Helen Hunt and William H. Macy, The Sessions is about Mark O’Brien, a paralyzed writer determined to lose his virginity at the age of 38. Hunt plays his sex surrogate. It’s a different kind of Hollywood film, in that it explores intimacy in sex rather than titillation.
But after watching the movie, I was much more interested in Mark O’Brien. A polio victim, he was paralyzed from the neck down and spent most of his life in an iron lung. Despite this, he was determined to be as independent as possible and found success as a journalist and poet. The fascinating story of his life is told in the documentary Breathing Lessons, which is free online and inspired The Sessions.
This is a fascinating old lock that I encountered in Blagden Alley, a historic alley complex near the convention center in Washington, DC. Check out the rest of the pictures from this city photowalk with photogs from the InstantDC meetup group. They were a great group of fun and creative folks who made the most of this cool alley.
Around this time each year, you’ll see a news story about a farmer with a record-sized pumpkin, one much bigger than anything grown by his neighbors. How did he do it? How did he find success in the pumpkin patch?
He did it by nurturing his best pumpkin, a principle that can be applied to any small business. That’s the message of The Pumpkin Plan, a new book by Mike Michalowicz.
To make your business thrive, you must weed your garden, like a good farmer. This means removing the pumpkins that are too small or not worth your time, so as to focus on the one great gourd that can grow bigger than all the others.
In other words, the Pareto Principle. 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients. The key to growth is to focus on the most profitable activities of your business.
(I satirize this idea in my novel Don’t Mess Up My Block, where my narrator chooses to eliminate all distractions – even family – to concentrate on getting rich.)
The most interesting section of The Pumpkin Plan is where Michalowicz talks about failure. So many entrepreneurial titles gloss over the hard work of building a business – yet, this is the norm. Each year Americans start one million new businesses, nearly 80 percent of which fail within the first five years. Michalowicz frankly discusses how his company was eating him alive, consuming every waking hour and ruining his family life. Only by concentrating on what he did best was he able to escape this trap. He learned to weed out the activities that weren’t worth his time so as to focus on his best customers.
Michalowicz is a serial entrepreneur who started his first business at the age of 24, moving his young family to the only safe place he could afford – a retirement building. With limited resources and no experience, he systematically bootstrapped a multi-million dollar technology business, sleeping in conference rooms to avoid hotel costs. After selling his first company, Mike launched a new business the very next day, and in less than three years, sold it to a Fortune 500 company. In the Pumpkin Plan, he describes his life story as well as the stories of similar entrepreneurs.
This is not a book of theory. It’s chock-full of real-world examples from people who have had to sell products, make payroll and keep themselves sane. Chapters expand on the Pumpkin Plan concept, with checklists on how to discover what you do best and how to get back on track if you stray.
What’s your Great Pumpkin? This Halloween, find out with The Pumpkin Plan.
I have a photo in the Bicycling in Virginia Map, a publication by the Virginia Department of Transportation. The above shot is from the Mount Vernon Trail, just across the Potomac from the Jefferson Memorial. I took it on a beautiful spring morning, when the flowers along the bike path had just began to bloom.
You can order the map for free. It’s a handy guide to the state’s numerous bike trails and routes. From the monumental views of the Mount Vernon Trail to the fall foliage of the New River, the Old Dominion has some of the most scenic bike trails in the nation.
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After months of winter, that spring morning was so pretty that I waded into the daffodils to get the photo below. It’s a little Instagram picture but was published earlier this year in Momentum, a biking lifestyle mag.
“Being there” is 90% of photography. Within a few days, the daffodils were gone and the light wasn’t the same. I’m glad I got this picture when I did – it’s one of my favorites.
Do you dream of walking down the red carpet? Want to see your film on a big screen?
Then get Behind the Screens, the new book by Jon Gann that uncovers what film festival programmers really think. Gann, the founder of the DC Shorts Film Festival, has interviewed the directors of top festivals from around the country, including:
• Ashland Independent Film Festival
• Byron Bay International Film Festival
• CineSlam/Pride of the Ocean
• DC Shorts Film Festival
• LA Comedy Shorts Film Festival
• Napa Valley Film Festival
• New York Film Festival
• Prescott Film Festival
• Razor Reel Fantastic Film Festival
• Scottsdale Film Festival
• Seattle International Film Festival
• SILVERDOCS
• Sonoma International Film Festival
• Sundance Film Festival
• Tallgrass Film Festival
• Washington Jewish Film Festival
Every film festival is different. Rather than blindly submitting your film to every festival you’ve ever heard of (and paying hundreds in submission fees), spend $20 to get this book. Do some research and target the right festival for your film. Behind the Screens reveals what programmers are really looking for, in their own words.
Full disclosure – I’m a friend of Jon’s and have been a judge for DC Shorts for years. DC Shorts is unique in that anyone can volunteer to be a judge. The films selected reflect an urban sensibility and a preference for comedy. A lengthy documentary on deforestation wouldn’t be a good choice for DC Shorts while a “meet-cute” flick set in Dupont Circle would be ideal.
Other festivals have their own unique attributes, shaped by the festival director and the audience. They have their own culture. Which is why it makes sense to get a book like Behind the Screens, where you get narrative information beyond what you will find in a directory of film festivals.
No one can resist free pizza. That was the idea behind a novel recruitment effort by Vocus, a public relations software company out of Beltsville, MD. They sponsored a food truck on the streets of DC and gave out pizza in return for a resume or card.
Not only did I drop off a card, I got my name in a Washington Post article on the effort with a quote on how this tactic was good at reaching passive job seekers.
I’ve been quoted in articles before. My secret? Pithy ten-word statements of opinion that reporters can easily copy and paste into an article. Being a writer myself, I know what I like in a quote – something clear, direct and short – so I try to do the same when I’m asked for a comment. And bribing me with pizza doesn’t hurt ;)
A photographer friend of mine told me once that if you’re not dirty at the end of the day, then you’re doing it wrong. The secret with portraits is to get low, as this stylish young photog illustrates. It’s such an interesting photo, demonstrating how she interacts with her subject and the level of commitment required to get the shot. Lying on the floor of a parking garage in heels – that’s dedication.
I took this photo in an upright position at the Diamond Derby, a celebration of biking culture in Crystal City.
In the latest issue of On Tap, I have an article on V/H/S, a new horror anthology that opens this week. In this bloody collection of short films, a group of thieves come across a stack of mysterious videocassettes, each more disturbing than the last.
Lots o’ blood, gore, genital removal, sex, nudity, impaling, screaming, running and shakycam. But if you’re into that kind of thing, then this is the movie for you.
I screened the movie on a laptop and had the chance to interview Joe Swanberg, one of the directors of V/H/S. His short film is pretty interesting – it’s a horror flick told by Skype, where you watch a guy and his girlfriend chat online, as things steadily go wrong. Directing two actors who were both on the screen for the entire movie was a real challenge, according to Swanberg.
It’s always interesting talking to directors – Swanberg shared the thrill of seeing his flick on the screen at Sundance. When he heard the shocked gasps of 800 people in a theater, he knew he had succeeded.
Receiving an email survey from a company is not unusual in American life. Amazon, Caribou, Five Guys, Target – you’ve probably been been given the opportunity to rate the experience on a rigid five-point scale.
It’s unusual when you have the opportunity to provide feedback to an actual human, like I did with Instacanvas, the Instagram artist marketplace. Instacanvas turns your Instagram creations into beautiful canvas prints and gives you the opportunity to sell them online. It’s free to sign-up.
Instacanvas has reached out to actual users of the service and scheduled calls with them, to see what they could do better. I had the chance to talk with Todd Emaus, Co-Founder of Instacanvas. He asked about what I liked about Instacanvas, what I thought they could do better, ideas I might have for product enhancements.
In surveys from other companies, I’ve seen the question, “Do you think Company X cares about you as an individual?”, which I thought to be absurd. Starbucks does not care about me. I’m just a data point in the millions of transactions they conduct every day, to be crunched by soulless MBAs in Seattle.
But a company that assigns a person to call me personally – maybe they do care. Perhaps they do want me to be successful and design an “insanely great” product that meets my needs. It’s a thought, a tiny hopeful one in the spreadsheet world of American business.
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Rant over. What did the Instacanvas guy say? Todd said they’re planning on rolling out more contests and greater social media integration to promote the company.
I asked – what are successful Instacanvas artists doing? They are:
1. Tagging their photos so that they could be found easily. Using tags like #bike, #scenic, #landscape, #sexy and so on.
2. Promoting the hell out of their work. They Tweet, Facebook and email continuously, with news of their online store and new photos for sale.
Check out my gallery when you have a chance. It’s filled with photos of iconic sights from Washington, DC, plus pictures of city life beyond the monuments.