Being a stock photographer should theoretically work like a toll road. Build a highway once, put a gate in front of it, and then collect a toll for every use. But what do you do when the landscape shifts, when other roads are built around, or intersect with, your toll road? Rocked by new platforms and changing norms, stock photographers have had to adapt their businesses in the age of digital, crowdsourcing, and unlimited replication.
Every designer has a side project, but there’s a huge, yawning chasm between the vast empire of Swiss Miss and that Etsy shop you abandoned back in 2012. Meet a few designers turning their hobbies into full-blown businesses.
A big part of art appreciation is rubbing shoulders with other tourists in a gallery. But the art lovers who go the extra mile to visit artists’ house museums walk in the dining rooms, vegetable gardens, and footsteps of Renaissance greats, Impressionists, and Pre-Raphaelites.
As an expectant parent, Mike Sager was convinced that his career as a creativist was about to nose dive into a lumpy sea of malodorous baby poop. Then he welcomed a son into his life and everything changed.
Over the last 20 years, more and more Americans have surrendered their weekends to the workplace—and technology keeps making it easier to do. The surprising news? It’s not improving our work.
Mike Sager has spent the last 40 years plying his craft from his home office, working away on a 63-year-old desk that used to belong to his father. He reflects on what it's like to be responsible to, and responsible for, only himself in a place where the line between duty and pleasure is blurred.
These days it’s hard to avoid the admonishments of self-titled productivity gurus that we should take more control over our lives, calendars, and in-boxes. But there are countless examples of creative and entrepreneurial minds soaring to their greatest heights through the exact opposite approach.
