Inspiration Deli

Keith Loutit | Keith’s miniature world in a music video

mmaziarz — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:10:17 +0000

http://keithloutit.com/playvid.php?t=p&id=403.

Seth Simonds | How to get lucky

mmaziarz — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 20:03:56 +0000

Is it luck, or is it more controllable than luck? Seth Simonds has some valuable insights here.

Katherine Reutter | confidence and the Olympics

mmaziarz — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:38:31 +0000

Earlier last year, I photographed short track speedskater Katherine Reutter for her agent and sponsors. Just yesterday I heard on NPR a 5 minute story about her and her confidence. As I’ve mentioned before, confidence is everything and I find it fascinating to hear about confidence in elite level athletes like Katherine.

Here’s the link.

Seth Godin | he talks, we listen

mmaziarz — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:10:46 +0000

Seth Godin has released a free e-book titled “What Matters Now” here. This is not only an inspiration to running a great business, but it can be an inspiration to running a great life, too. If you’re a fan, you know you should get it and read it, if you’re not a fan (yet,) just give it a minute or 2 and you’ll get sucked in also.

Leslie Burns-Dell’Acqua | Confidence & faking it

mmaziarz — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:25:22 +0000

Leslie Burns-Dell’Acqua is a photographer’s marketing consultant. This is a blog entry of hers on the asmp.org (a photographer’s trade association) site about how the lack of self confidence could make your job as a photographer significantly more difficult.

Visual Thesaurus

mmaziarz — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:29:42 +0000

A great tool for the more visually minded among us, for when we’re trying to navigate the written word.

sfgirlbybay | finding blissful inspiration on flickr

mmaziarz — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 22:11:30 +0000

What a great and simple idea. Troll through flickr and pick photos that simply make you happy. Share them if you like. It’s revealing to see photos that make others happy and it’s refreshing to see what makes you happy. Here’s her blog post.

Lemonade the movie | Making lemonade out of lemons

mmaziarz — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 23:28:55 +0000

Great short film about getting laid off and what to do next. Site is here and see the film on hulu.com

2010 | Accentuate the positive.

mmaziarz — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:19:22 +0000

As 2009 ended and 2010 started, it honestly surprised me how many people considered the last decade to be their worst ever. I thought the decade as a whole wasn’t bad–sure we had some major problems, but it wasn’t that bad. But people’s acknowledgment of how bad the decade was did lead to a lot of excitement and optimism for 2010.

CBS Sunday Morning (which is a great show, but makes me feel old by watching it) had a nice piece on songwriter Johnny Mercer last weekend. I honestly hadn’t heard of Johnny Mercer until my wife, singer/songwriter and author, Mary Beth Maziarz went to a workshop presented by the Johnny Mercer Foundation a few years ago at Sundance. Everyone knows his work, so here are some lyrics to start the new year by:

You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between

You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith or pandemonium’s
Liable to walk upon the scene

Kevin Kelly | 1000 True Fans

mmaziarz — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:20:49 +0000

One of my pet peeves is artists who think it’s uncool ( or below them) to concern themselves with selling their work. As an economics major, maybe I’ve given too much thought to selling your work as an artist, but if you don’t have enough income to survive, you won’t be producing your work for very long.

It seems as if our world is changing exponentially. For the first 15 years of my career as a photographer, I was able to figure out a way to operate my business and that method worked well for 15 years. Then I had to adapt to a new way of running my business, and that time it lasted about 3 years. Then I realized I was modifing my business plan every 6 months or so. It’s hard for a person to keep up.

Kevin Kelly’s blog post is brilliant. Give yourself some time to get through the blog post, the links in the post and his 2 updates at the end. It’s one of the best business models for independent artists that I’ve ever read.