Notice I abbreviated Photo Showdown in the title? Pretty fancy, right? And, space saving. Anyway, this weeks photos are also fancy and we need you to vote on which one is your favorite. This weeks photographers are Nick Pipitone, Michael Prince, the returning champ—Danielle Fritz, and myself. These are our attempts at capturing “Motion”.

A. Blurry Runner

B. Defy

C. Joyful Fountain

D. Motion

It’s finally is starting to feel like summer again, and that’s why we chose the theme “Green” for this weeks contest. Also, this week it just so happens to be a battle between our male photographers; Michael Prince, Nick Pipitone, Ben Halpin, and myself. Only one of us will make to defend our win against the ladies next week, and here are our photos.

A. Always greener

B. CHARCHAR

C. Jon Lester, Yankee Stadium

D. This Is My Serious Face

Please share, and thanks for voting!

Strangers. They can be creepy, unusual, attractive, and at times enticing. They often go unnoticed and forgotten. They can be you or I to some. And, more often then not they can be remarkably interesting if only you watch. That is of course why they make the perfect subject for a great photograph.

This weeks players are Michael Prince, Nick Pipitone, Danielle Fritz, and our returning champ–Ben Halpin. There entries are below.

A.) A Stranger Approaching

B.) Lake Titicaca Gunman

C.) No Other Place

D.) Parking Garage Stranger

As always, please vote and share!

I’ve been lucky enough to be asked to talk to college students about advertising. It’s awesomely rewarding and great to see fresh faces who, while I’m talking, realize A) that advertising is their calling, or B) That advertising is something they don’t want to be within 2 feet of, or C) I’m crazy.

One of the things I pull from for inspiration and something I use in my presentation is pages from a book by Paul Arden called “It’s Not How Good You Are. It’s How Good You Want To Be.”

It is, in my opinion, the best book about advertising ever written (feel free to share your opinion in the comments).

One of the spreads in the book, pictured above, implores the reader to “get out of advertising.” This really hit home for me because in my early days of advertising we used to surround ourselves with One Show books and Communication Arts annuals and Archive Magazines, etc. looking at ads like fanatics. There is great learning there. But thanks to digital, the advertising landscape is much more complicated. And there is so much more in to learn from the world around us.

To come up with great ideas you must branch out. You must suck up every piece of pop culture that appeals to you. Build a library in your brain of words, images, movie sequences, pop songs, photos, ephemera, and stuff that sits at the top of garbage cans. You never know.

It also has a lot to do with blogging too, which is my real reason for bringing this up. I routinely see blank faces when the prospect of blogging even enters their sphere. “What should I write about?” they ask. “I don’t know what to write about.”

I ask those that don’t know what to write about to channel Paul Arden and look around. There are topics under your nose every minute of every day. It could come out of a conversation you had. A movie you saw. A song you heard. Find a way to apply those things to the main topic of your blog. Don’t worry about eloquence, just focus on being clear. And remember, for inspiration, whenever possible, get out of advertising.

Dear Photo Showdown Fans,

We have been thinking about what to do with our winning photos, so if you are new to our standard Monday routine you can catch-up somehow. I have been unsuccessful convincing either of the “Stevens” to print each winning photo out to be immaculately framed and then placed in front of a live feed webcam. Maybe that isn’t very practical, but we can all dream, right? It seems that the next best thing was to create a Flickr set to showcase not only the winning photos, but also all the other great submissions. Until I figure out the live feed situation and budget, this will have to do.

Winners

All Submissions

Yours Truly.