Recently, the Dayton Creative Syndicate welcomed new member Jim Crotty to our group. Jim was gracious enough to allow us to raffle off one of his photography courses for free. The lucky winner (and birthday girl) Ami Parikh won the prize, and here's what she had to share about her experience:

I had the opportunity to attend Jim Crotty’s half-day advanced photography workshop at Cox Arboretum MetroPark where he discussed high dynamic range (HDR) photography as well as shared tips on marketing a nature photography business. The workshop was a great learning experience for me. I have wanted to explore HDR photography for a while now. Jim gave an on-the-field demonstration (both outdoors and indoors) of shooting in HDR. He then proceeded to give live demonstrations of the digital processing of HDR images using multiple software. There was plenty of opportunity to ask questions during the workshop. The section on marketing a photography business was very helpful as Jim shared various tips as well as pitfalls of different strategies and effectively deploying available resources to establish a successful nature photography business. I would recommend this workshop to anyone who has an interest in HDR and/or nature photography or wants to establish his/her photography business.

Stay tuned to the blog for more contests, details on upcoming speakers, educational programs, and more!

A couple of weeks ago, Libby Ballengee wrote about Pecha Kucha night for the Creative Crux. Last Friday, I attended the event and was blown away.

Here are a few of my takeaways.

10. Pecha Kucha’s 20 slides x 20 seconds format really works. It’s true: PowerPoint can be transformed from the world’s most boring medium into something engaging, exciting, and artistic.

9. Diving deep into a topic for 6 minutes is more fun than diving shallow for an hour.

8. You will learn something random and new if you come to Pecha Kucha. For example:

7. One in five people in the U.S. read at the fifth-grade level. Most job applications are written at the eighth-grade level. There are people in Dayton doing something about this (Project Read).

6. The Great Barrier Reef, stretching nearly 2,000 miles along the coast of Australia, is the largest living organism in the world (thank you Owner of the Dublin Pub, who traveled there).

5. The Shawrk is an imaginary creature that can attack underwater and in the sky.

4. Dayton’s Blue Sky Project has brought more than 66 artists from around the world to our hometown to collaborate with local artists. Kids and grownups participate.

3. You never know when someone will show up and start tap dancing (thank you, Sole Purpose and Dayton Tap Project).

2. “Now is the time to be alive in many Rust Belt cities.” — Aaron Renn, The Urbanophile

1. Pecha Kucha rocks. Be there for volume 6 on January 21.

Samantha Enslen runs Dragonfly Editorial and was really cold on top of the Firefly Building last Friday.

Design wunderkind Chuck Anderson dishes about his success
During a recent DCS speaking engagement, Chuck Anderson, of NoPattern fame, discussed some of the steps he took to get from post-secondary postponement to one of the industry's most sought-after design studs.

"Opportunity just happens, so you have to be prepared when it does," Anderson said. "I wish I could say may career was meticulously planned out, but it wasn't." While deliberating his options after graduating from high school with no real career ambitions outside of "I love to draw," Anderson worked for then-small-time T-shirt company Threadless. But shipping shirts wasn't enough for Anderson. "I remember the point at which I new I wanted more out of life," he recalled. "I was driving around this pink and black Geo Tracker, and I remember thinking 'I want something better than this. It doesn't have to be expensive, just not this Tracker!' And I knew I needed to do something to get me out of that Tracker."

Through his diligence at his job and his employers personal contacts, he landed his first design gig -- creating fliers for the chic Chicago club Smart Bar. The promotion was a hit, and Anderson knew he was on to something. "I hit the library, poured over books about design and tried to teach myself how to use software like (Adobe) Photoshop." What began as a lifelong love of drawing and amateur photography took on a new dimension with Photoshop. "My goal for drawing was always 'how can I weird out my parents?'" Anderson said. "With the software, I discovered a whole new kind of weird."

That brand of "weird" went on to help Anderson snag more freelance jobs he scored from cold calls and e-mails, like ESPN magazine. He worked those contacts to land more work, and suddenly, the kid with a fuzzy future was sitting on top of a design empire with high-profile clients like Atlantic Records, Reebok and Microsoft.

Anderson had tips for his audience with regard to breaking into the market. He encourages people to take risks and not be intimidated by making cold calls or sending e-mails. "The worst that can happen is they'll say no, and then you're no worse off than before you made the call. But if it works..." He also cautioned against being too picky about jobs. "One of the biggest mistakes an artist can make is to think they're too good for a job," he said, adding that even if you think a job might be "beneath you," you never know who's connected to whom and where one "insignificant" job might lead.

Getting specific direction from a client is another route Anderson suggested on the road to job satisfaction. "Getting bad direction -- especially from people I like -- is just hte worst," he lamented. "Make sure you get details -- what is this for? Do you have specific dimensions? What's your goal for this?"

His top three tips for the evening include:

Be assertive. You're your own marketing ambassador, so be confident in your work.
Have support. Whether it's a friend, family member or spouse who can be there for moral support, for inspiration, or just to act as a sounding board, surround yourself with good energy.
Keep the creative fires burning. Keep exploring and every now and then, create something or just goof around for fun. It's cathartic and can revive your love for design when you start to feel burned out. New ideas can happen at any time, so be prepared.

Through effort, ethic and taking chances, you, too, can find yourself at the design apex. "One of the best rewards is seeing your hard work out there in the real world," Anderson said. "Half my motivation for doing a job is to show people my work -- show them what goes on in my head!"