Diana Farkhullina by Kevin Sinclair for L’Officiel July as Glossy Glam

I’ve watched with great interest the consistent, now snowballing rise of photographer Kevin Sinclair’s career. I came to know Kevin’s work through Vestal Magazine, the creative brainchild of his partner and the photographer.

My snap judgements about photographers and their relationship with women is just that — a 1-2 second impression. I rarely change my mind, although my opinion is never cast in stone. It’s true to say that Kevin Sinclair seduced me, not vice versa.

What I respect enormously about Kevin Sinclair is that he has taken responsibility for developing his own reputation as a photographer, including commiting to something as laborious as Vestal Magazine. Confident of both his creative and commercial skills, his work combines both — making him a true photographer of Smart Sensuality women.

Can We Talk?

Too many young photographers — and older ones, too — think that circulating unpublished editorials to blogs like ours implies a job well done. It doesn’t. For those of us who truly curate materials — including Joanna at Fashion Gone Rogue — the submissions can become a burden at the same time they are a joy.

I suspect many young photographers believe they are supplying free content, without considering the enormous time AND MONEY required to maintain websites like AOC or FGR. In Joanna’s case, her traffic is larger and she’s not on my publishing platform — which has allowed me to flourish writing endlessly each day and growing our traffic, without the burden of enormous traffic server costs.

Monitizing websites is very difficult, as we all know.

In my case, I believe that my new GlamTribale jewelry collection is the solve to leveraging my excellent web traffic — but there are no guarantees. Like Kevin Sinclair, I’m taking financial matters into my own hands — not believing that the creative world will recognize my worth, which is frankly well established.

I encourage more young photographers to follow in Kevin Sinclair’s footsteps, beliving in himself and his vision in a way that’s suddenly paying major dividends in his career development.

At the minimum, a creative photographer should have an inspiring blog statement of her or his own. Someone like myself favors other creatives who are already helping themselves, adding to the cultural dialogue around topics that matter, or even using artistic talent to benefit others through philanthropy. Bottom line, we all msut row our own boats in today’s world.

Support Fashion Gone Rogue on IndieGoGo

This trip to my soapbox comes for two reasons: 1) to celebrate the growing success of Kevin Sinclair — a photographer who advances the concept of Smart Sensuality women; and 2) to make a plea to my readers to support Fashion Gone Rogue, who is trying to raise money on Indie GoGo.

Frankly, Joanna is doing a piss-poor job of trying to raise money! Her IndieGoGo campaign should be all over her website, not an occasional hit and miss update or occasional banner. Yet, I know how she feels because I tried to raise money over a year ago and quickly understood how difficult it is to get the smallest amount of money out of people’s wallets.

One minute a blogger is on top of the world being everybody’s darling, as Fashion Gone Rogue is to many people. The next minute she acknowledging server costs of $1000 a month to feed all her hungry readers, downsizing her images to make room for more ads, and feeling naked before the world, as she struggles to raise money in a campaign that is lackluster so far.

Granted, Joanna is not doing a great job promoting her fundraising campaign, but I suspect now she’s ambivalent about really putting herself out there with such lack of support and response. Yes, it’s summer; yes, it’s Fourth of July week; yes, the economy is bad; yes, yes, yes.

No more excuses. I am astounded that the many young photographers that FGR has promoted, coupled with the engless blogs that just scoop up her editorials without any work on their own — literally they copy her every word as if they wrote it — don’t feel a responsibility to respond to FGR’s call for help.

This is a sad state of affairs and I urge all AOC fashion and style readers to consider giving FGR a hand. On a long-term basis, I’m not sure how FGR will develop a revenue stream that works. But what I do know is that if all her daily readers gave her $1, she would have plenty of time to come up with a solution.

Smart Sensuality people have hearts.

Use yours to support Fashion Gone Rogue on IndieGoGo or create your own path to success as Kevin Sinclair has done. Just don’t be a leech, sucking FGR dry until she collapses under the weight of paying for your free use of her website. That’s a crying shame!

I’m very discouraged by the lack of support this week for the fashion blog we’ve all used for our own purposes in one way or another. I can only imagine that Joanna is upset, too, which causes her to not fight publicly for her fundraising efforts because the results so far are damn depressing. Personally, I’d be drinking martinis pretty briskly.

Joanna and FGR deserve better from the international fashion, blogging and photographers community that has fawned over FGR for years. Let’s give it to her.

Otherwise, your lack of response sets the record straight about the appearances-only relationships among bloggers and readers — and especially models, photographers, agencies and creatives. ~ Anne

Support Fashion Gone Rogue on IndieGoGo