Hi Tanja - it all sounds like a great idea and, while it's an ambitious project, I believe you might well succeed. Here's a thought: for starters, what about trying to get in touch with William McInnes? He's local, well-known, and I think he is the kind of man who would want to take your project forward. Another local is Veronica Neave: you may recall that she had both breasts removed after fearing that she would get cancer because of her family history(almost all female members suffered from it), and while I am not sure if she has children, I think her sister does, and there might be a tie-in there.
Good luck with it, you'll probably get more knock-backs than will be pleasant, but it's well worth trying! John -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tanya Love Sent: Monday, 26 April 2010 9:45 PM To: 'Pentax-Discuss Mail List' Subject: Any ideas on how to get Pentax's attention?? Hey guys and gals, Well, I have a few projects in the midst. I am writing a series of downloadable books aimed at the WAHM (Work At Home Mum) niche market of website and boutique brand owners. The books are designed to be "by a woman for women" and are jargon, and techie speak free how-to guides as follows: 1. Basic product photography - exposure, composition, lighting etc 2. Basic photoshop skills to enhance your product photography (deep etching, resizing, web optimizing etc) 3. How to shoot your kids (pun intended, it will be a tongue-in-cheek guide). Anyways, I have a ready made market with a women in business trade forum that I am a member of, and I am also the guest speaker at an event in July here in Brisbane which is a 3 day event that culminates with a black tie awards night bestowing honours to women in the business community. I will be running a workshop that covers briefly the content in my books 1 & 2 above. The event is hosted by the website Connect2Mums and is known as the annual Mumpreneur Conference. I will be using this event to launch my series of books and the organisers and myself will be offering a 3 for 1 offer to attendees to promote it. Next, I also have a long-term ambition of photographing a book that I will call "Great Expectations". It will (hopefully!) be a beautiful black and white fine art book featuring shots of, and quotes by high profile celebrities doing day to day activities with their kids. Things like cooking their dinner, running their bath, mowing the lawn, helping with homework and instrument lessons etc. I have given myself a 2 year goal to achieve this. There is A LOT of work here, I need to somehow work my way into the circles that agents frequent and become a) known and b) respected and trusted by them. I am aiming HIGH here, the likes of the Jolie-Pitts and Kidman-Urbans of the world. BUT, I also want to feature famous activists, politicians, artists and more. So, to cut to the chase, these are all projects that will showcase me and my photography (obviously), and the question will be raised (and answered!) about the equipment that I use! I foresee that Pentax could gain quite a bit of good publicity from it all, if I succeed in my goals, and I am not in a habit of NOT succeeding at stuff that I try! I was thinking of somehow approaching them for sponsorship at some level, and was wondering if any of you guys would know the best channels to take. The first thing that jumps out at me immediately is with Book #1 above, I have already begun to write about equipment to use, and as I am going to be aiming at a LESS than amateur audience, I am going to be keeping it at a level of point and shoot only. All of my instructions will assume that the user has a modern, p&s digital camera and I will be recommending that they buy one with a hot shoe. Remember that my "guide" will be designed not for people interested in photography but interested in improving the image of their brand and the shots of their products, and they will be busy women who really don't care about why or how things work just that they want to know that things DO work. So, my angle will be for them to skip over all of the jargon, and look for a camera with a hot shoe. It is a pretty safe bet that any digital camera on the market today that they can afford and that has a hot shoe on it, will do more than suffice for what they need. So, I was thinking that with this in mind, and knowing that Pentax has a great range of award-winning point and shoots (do any have hot shoes?!?), I was thinking that it would be great to convince them some how to send me a couple of cameras to play with so that I can recommend them in my workshops/books and when I am fielding questions from people. I also think it would be great to promote Pentax to show the public that the brand CAN be used to achieve Pro-level images, at a fraction of the cost of C & N equipment. Oh, one more thing - Mark, you might be able to help here - was thinking that with my workshop and book #2, I will probably use PS Elements rather than CS4 as it is cheaper and more likely to be used by those in my target audience. Does anyone know how I might approach Adobe about the possibility of offering it as an accompaniement to the books, or at the workshop itself? I expect that some attendees (there are already 100 confirmed bookings) will not have any kind of editing equipment/software and will leave the conference wanting to buy! What do you guys think? Would love to hear your feedback! Tan. :) -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
