Dear Members, For the past five and half years, it has been a privilege to serve you as Executive Director of ASMP, a position I could never have envisioned having when I was initially accepted as a professional member in 1978. In many respects, it has enabled me to give back to the profession that has been my life’s work. While the bulk of my earlier career was spent inside mainstream media organizations of…
Over the past few weeks, ASMP, and other similarly situated organizations, have urged members of Congress to take steps to ensure that microbusinesses of 10 or less employees –a category that fits most ASMP members–are treated more fairly under the SBA’s PPP and EIDL programs. Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee gave such efforts a boost last week when he submitted a statement for the record to the Small Business…
As soon as the president signed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES), ASMP began to organize a series of webinars and town hall meetings to provide information that would enable our members to understand the provisions of the bill and how they may pursue benefits under the new law. For the foreseeable future, we will continue to hold webinars every Wednesday with experts discussing issues of importance to our members. Our past…
Given the dramatic increase in coronavirus cases in the United States in the past week, we are already hearing from event photographers and others in our ranks about significant rises in the cancellation of assignments or postponements by clients. To assist members during this time of uncertainty and some fear, ASMP is focused on publishing information about the coronavirus pandemic grounded in facts, while also upholding our responsibility to be a steadfast advocate for our…
ASMP Members, Colleagues, and the Entire Visual Creator Community, I joined ASMP 41 years ago in 1979 when I was early in my career, co-sponsored by two fellow Florida members who were my mentors at that time. Part of my decision to join was based on the way I saw ASMP support fellow photographers and enhance their careers. Fast forward to a point in late 2014, some 35 years later, and I was given the…
As we move into the period of another ending year, major holidays loom. One is Thanksgiving, a time when we gather with family and friends to share and give thanks for the abundance in our lives. While the origin of the holiday may belie the harsher realities present in the national experience from even before our nation’s formal founding, it also reflects some of our deepest aspirations for summoning up the “better angels of our…
In the past few months, our advocacy counsel Mike Klipper and I have been working to advance ASMP’s priorities for 2019, before Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office (USCO). We met in December with representatives of other groups championing the interests of visual artists to plan our strategy for 2019. For example, along with those visual artists groups, we met with Karyn Temple Claggett, the Acting Register of the U.S. Copyright Office, members of her…
Happy New Year to all of you and I hope you have enjoyed a restful, joyous holiday season. I start 2019 grateful for your support of ASMP and eager to continue to move forward together. The New Year’s period has always been for me a time for reflection and the setting of new compass points to guide my life journey. As 2018 makes way for this new year, I have been thinking about the impact…
Over the past week, our Copyright Counsel Mike Klipper and I have been busy in Washington D.C. laying the groundwork for our federal legislative agenda in 2019. This week’s activities followed closely on the heels of a very successful hearing on September 27, 2018, on the CASE Act before the House Judiciary Committee; the hearing described in Jenna Close’s recent article, Advocacy is a Verb: My Testimony on the Hill. At the hearing, Jenna joined…