It’s been a little longer than planned getting a new post up, anyone who has visited the blog in the past will notice a little difference in the look of the blog site, and for all who visited a couple of days ago sorry for the mess! Maybe I can keep my mind made up for a while now. You know I kind of struggle or truth be known I’m somewhat anal when it comes to the looks of my online presence. I can tell some just get something up and going and must not care much on the general looks of things but when it comes to visual art what else is there but the look so it becomes a big deal to me. Yes I know content is king but if something looks shabby or cheap most people in my opinion notice and more importantly remember. Another issue I have is with uniqueness,  I have never been one to follow the crowd even as a kid I wanted my stuff to be different. This layout or more accurately “theme”  is not unique true, but with much time spent looking and experimenting with blog themes for some time now I came to a conclusion the out of the box looks from Elegant Themes just look better to me, with additional customization hopefully things will shape up nicely. The part that I was somewhat uncomfortable with is that the same theme for different sites have a tendency to look the same. Oh they all may look good but a lot alike. I had to get over that part and focus on what I wanted. So now it comes down to concentrating on the content. I’m not sure why I felt a need to share my strange way of thinking on this but there ya go I did, so nough said.

© Brad Mangas

The title of this post “New & Old” really has nothing to do with the blog even though it could, it has to do with customers and more specifically customers of my work. I was contacted a few weeks ago by the advertising agency Koch Creative Group of Wichita  inquiring  on image use of one of my flint hills shots. It’s always nice to get contacted by a prospective customer with a need rather than the other way around. After a talk on the phone and supplying them with a few selected images to show their customer an image and corresponding usage was agreed upon for an image to be used in The 2011 Flint Hills Cooperative Annual Report. What is of more important to me than the sale is a new potential repeat customer has been made and boy it can be hard to come up with those. Now it will be up to me to keep a prosperous relationship active for the both of us. So that’s the new part.

The old part still has to do with a customer and this one is a repeat that I have had work published in for a couple of years now and that is KANSAS! Magazine. I have to admit something here, I missed the deadline for the 2012 calendar submissions last month. I thought I was pretty busy last month but obviously not busy enough. Bummed me out when I realized it, the deadline for the summer issue was January 1, and the deadline for the fall issue is April 1 so I think I know what I have to do next week. I was pleased to get an email last Tuesday from the publisher wanting to use an image for the summer issue back cover. So now I can boast that I’ve had both ends of the magazine and inside!

Kansas Nature Photography

© Brad Mangas

I know this post sounds rather boastful and I really don’t want it to. The truth is that I would be neck deep into my photography even if I never sold an image, maybe on a different level but none the less it would be the creative aspect of my life. But when one can be lucky enough to be noticed by others it just makes it all that more fun. Thanks to my new and all my past customers for helping keep extra joy in what I chose to do.