Our New Manifesto
We’re putting the finishing touches on our new collection for Spring 2014 and as we look over all of the designs we wonder if we’re playing it too safe. Pretty always sells but unique gets you noticed. As entrepreneurs and business owners, we tend to second guess ourselves – after all, we have ten employees who depend on us for their paycheck. But sometimes, rolling the dice and taking a risk pays off. So we picked up Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite by Paul Arden and have been reading an anecdote a day to push us to think in a different way. Here’s an excerpt we thought you’d enjoy called Photographing Flowers:
Two Pink Peonies
“Firstly we will pick a perfect specimen, then we will arrange it carefully, light it beautifully, and spray on some dew. It will probably be beautiful, but only up to a point, because we have seen thousands of pretty flower pictures before. So how are we going to make our picture memorable?
Melancholic Tulip – 1939
In the 1930s André Kertész took a picture of a wilted tulip. Once you have seen it, it is impossible to forget [and the photograph sold at Christie’s for $6,875 in 2011.]
Picasso Vase
In a publicity shot for himself, photographer Adrian Flowers did it by showing a vase, not the flowers. [This is not the picture he took but we do love Frances Palmer pottery and you get the gist!]
Three Single Oriental Poppies – 1968
Irving Penn did it like this. Instead of shooting a perfect fresh flower, he photographed a dead flower perfectly [and it sold at Christie’s in 2010 for $52,500!]
Weeping Forsythia
Eighty years ago the scientific photographer Karl Blossfeldt took astounding pictures which were often unrecognizable. [The one shown here looks like the scrollwork on an iron fence.]
They are all the wrong way to answer the brief, and they are all a beautiful solution to the problem.”
So what are you going to do today to step outside the box? Here’s to taking some risks!