Why Excessive Consumption Limits your Creativity – The Mission – Medium

Excessive consumption and inflow inhibit creativity, negatively impacts our ability to do deep work and reduces our cumulative output. So let’s look at how and why this happens.

In between laptops

Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It.

In a capitalist economy, the market rewards things that are rare and valuable. Social media use is decidedly not rare or valuable. Any 16-year-old with a smartphone can invent a hashtag or repost a viral article. The idea that if you engage in enough of this low-value activity, it will somehow add up to something of high value in your career is the same dubious alchemy that forms the core of most snake oil and flimflam in business

Criticism’s Sting: The Author Curtis Sittenfeld on Book Reviews

I think of reviews being mapped on a graph with four quadrants, and I’ll read the ones that are smart and positive, smart and negative, or dumb and positive (hey, all our egos need a little sustenance!). But there’s no point in reading a dumb, negative review

Looking for Support for “Through Her Eyes” A gallery by Utah women photojournalists

In the gallery of images that make up “Through Her Eyes” you will find for the first time in Utah a collection of photographs produced by 19 female photojournalists while on assignment in the state.

The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t

In the digital economy, it was supposed to be impossible to make money by making art. Instead, creative careers are thriving — but in complicated and unexpected ways.

An Open Letter from Your Horrible Facebook Friends

We’re your Facebook friends. Those Facebook friends. You know the ones. The moms who have recently gotten into CrossFit. The club promoters you went to college with. The ex-boyfriend who is legally contesting his firing from Best Buy. Your great aunt in Arizona who signs her comments, “With all my love, Your Great Aunt Marjorie.” The girl who appears to have stayed perpetually pregnant since graduation.

Deep Fried Pizza, by Giulio Saggin

Steve Butcher is young, Australian and living in Scotland. He is a tabloid photographer. He is also disillusioned. His life isn’t one of Page 3 Girls and celebrities. Instead, his morals and ethics are compromised every day. Thankfully, his life also revolves around beer, football, cable TV and, occasionally, women. It is through these he maintains his sanity. However, by the time his fourth Scottish winter – a particularly fierce one – arrives, he is at his wits’ end…

Academy of Art Alumni Win Top Prizes in Editorial Photographers’ Education Grants Contest

With their powerful and unique images, two Academy of Art University alumni won top prizes in the Editorial Photographers’ Education Grants Contest. The contest, now in its third year, recognizes and supports emerging photographers. Sean DuFrene received the Grand Prize, and Unnikrishnan Raveendranathan was named Runner-up. Elliot Erwitt, a respected photographer who just won the international Center for Photography’s Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement, selected both prizes.

Distil Ennui Studio – works by photographer Alexander James

Here you will find some of the new additions to the Tokyo Taxi series, which is due to be published in a book by Merrell at the end of this year. Completing the series was no easy task despite the 58,000 registered taxi’s from 1024 companies on Tokyo’s roads. This is because over 95% are from six of the main companies operating in the city, meaning they all have the same signs on their roof. Tracking down some of the much rarer companies with as few as 4 cars on the streets bearing their unique illuminations proved a lengthy process.

Calls for Entry – Dreams – The Center for Fine Art Photography

Dreams are a creation of images, ideas, sensations and emotions that occur in our conscious and subconscious mind. They can be the manifestation of our aspirations, goals, andfears both realistic and fantastic.

 “Inconscience” (french for “Unconsciousness”) is a photographic project about sleepers in the world, that I started few years ago. I began to photograph sleepers that I came accross during my travels. I saw in them so much poetry, but also questions about the world and the derailment of society. I ‘m now launching a presale campaign, to be able to publish the book f these pictures myself. That would hopefully give me more freedom in my future work. I’ll need to sell 250 copies to start the publishing process.

A few weeks ago we announced bringing a video editor on board. This is our first effort with Tim on board. We shot, edited and did the motion graphics for this iPad App trailer. For you typography folks you are going to want this app. All the type in the video was created with the app. Check out the LetterMpress app trailer below.

Malcolm & Sophia Fraser founded Weekly Inspiration in late 2009. Combining a love for the arts and the wish to uplift and inspire, as artists, this website was created. The “Weekly” Inspiration part? We send a newsletter out weekly with our latest news, other artists, exhibits and anything else we want to share. We created an online gallery as a place to provide a platform for upcoming artists, designers and writers. To date we have 9 artists in the gallery and are still growing.

Chicago photographer Krista Wortendyke has brought her “Killing Season: Chicago 2010” project to Wicker Park. Mounted on the facade of The Violet Hour, the public art installation will be on display through early August. Wortendyke began the “Killing Season” project in response to the particularly hot and violent summer of 2010 during which the Supreme Court overturned Chicago’s strict 28-year-old handgun ban. Modified slightly to fit the front of The Violet Hour, this current piece represents the homicides that took place between July 1 and Labor Day, and shows 107 of the 173 killings that took place in the city last summer between Memorial Day and Labor Day 2010. Each column of the skyline-like chart represents a day and each image represents a person, and are individually meant to be reflections, meditations on the city and collectively, the images are a call to action and serve to raise awareness. Repeated images denote that there were multiple people killed in that location.

RAWIYA is a photography collective founded by five female photographers from across the Middle East. RAWIYA presents an insider’s view of a region in flux balancing its contradictions while reflecting on social and political issues and stereotypes. RAWIYA, meaning ‘she who tells a story’, brings together the experiences and photographic styles of Tamara Abdul Hadi, Laura Boushnak, Tanya Habjouqa, Dalia Khamissy and Newsha Tavakolian.

Born in 1969, Christophe Calais begins his career at the national newspaper France-Soir in 1990. In 1992, he becomes a staff photographer at VSD Magazine and covers international news for six years, with a particular interest in Rwanda, a country on which he still reports today. Rewarded by the Scoop d’Angers Festival in 1997, his work on Rwanda has led to the publication of a book Le cri des morts, le silence des vivants and to an exhibition at the 1998 Perpignan Festival of Photojournalism as well as a projection at that same Festival in 2002 and 2004. In 1998, Christophe decides to become a freelancer and his work is published by several international magazines. In 2002, he is the co-author of a documentary on Rwanda, based on his photographic work. His new book, Rwanda, le pays hanté is published in 2006 and exhibited at the group show “Pour une photographie engagée” at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. Six years ago, Christophe started to work on a long-term project about refugee resettlement in America. Part of this work was nominated for a Visa d’Or in 2003, exhibited at Honfleur Festival in 2004 and shown at the “Africa Fast forward” exhibition in Brussels in 2009.

Edition Size: 15 Price: $75 To Benefit: The Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to saving the lives of Philadelphia’s homeless, abandoned, and unwanted animals. PAWS is working toward making Philadelphia a city in which every healthy and treatable pet is guaranteed a home.

La Bella Italia is calling you for this magnificent photography experience through the gorgeous hillsides of Tuscany. This exciting documentary travel workshop will teach you how to take beautiful travel photographs in a stress-free environment. Private tours of family-run wineries, off-the-tourist-map villages with bustling street life and twilight dinners at historic villas will set the scene for your images to shine. Explore the sun drenched fields of Tuscany while our award winning staff help you perfect the fundamentals of quality travel photography. With nightly lectures and slideshows, we work with each student personally, no matter your skill level, to bring your photography skills to the next level of sophistication. With hands-on support from our guides and staff, you will have a team of professionals behind you every step of the way.