Saturday, August 30, 2008

Purple Cow


So what is a Purple Cow? It is actually a book by Seth Godin about products and marketing. (Ok, I know that my picture is not really a "purple" cow, it is just a picture of a normal cow with the colors wacked out of shape to have a pink/purple haze to it - but it's close enough.)

What the book is about is being remarkable. The author was driving through France and saw a field with cows and thought how nice a sight it was - at first. But as he kept driving, he saw more and more fields with cows and they were not remarkable anymore, they were just boring. He asked himself, what would make a cow not boring now, maybe if it were purple it would be remarkable.

In today's world, people have learned to ignore the tsunami of information coming at them at all hours of the day from a gaggle of sources so that the real message rarely gets through our information overload defense shield.

So, the only way to get through, to stand out, is to truly be remarkable. That doesn't necessarily mean to just be weird only for the sake of being weird. But it does mean finding a niche that suits you and is not crowded and then be the best in that niche. That really resonated with me that I want my images to be remarkable, so I am on a quest as to how to do that. I know, you're saying "good luck with that!" But why shouldn't I go for it. Maybe my tombstone will read "Here lies a crappy to average photographer that had the temerity to think he could even approach the province of fine arts - but at least he went for it." So that is my quest, how to be remarkable in my own way.

3 comments:

hart said...

The tombstone will most likely mention something about a very adept photographer who never had a telephone pole sticking out of anyones head...

sunriser said...

Go for it indeed! And don't look back! I'm cheering for you as I dare to run my own race to be the best version of me.

Suzanne Ally said...

Well said, Ron. I love this concept. I love how you express the difference between being weird and being remarkable.