Circles of Change: Conversations with Dr. Zara Larsen
on Change Leadership and Career Fulfillment
July 20, 2008
“Opening Up: Inspiration in Retrospect and Devotion”
Guest: Victor Gagliardi
www.gagliardiphoto.com
Anchoring Points:
Nothing about human life is more precious than
that we can define our own purpose and shape our own destiny.
-- Norman Cousins
- Photography is my hobby. I was never trained in it, never took a course. After ten years in the music business while I loved music, I did not love the work. I was fed up and decided to focus on something I love to do.
- I moved from giving away my photographs as gifts to selling them, courtesy of a friend suggesting I go in that direction, plus coping with the rejection of people choosing to buy or not to buy. Don’t worry about the how, you’ll figure it out in the process of moving out.
- Getting through rejection has led to my standing up and moving forward. My first book, The Turning Point: Images to Words, was never intended for sale, but rather a collection of my photographs with personal favorite quotes and passages (formerly gift cards I would make) to gift to family and friends. I was turned down by 30 agents and publishers before going on my own. If you are not going to do it now, you may never. So, do it now!
- My career has involved countless accidents and “that’s amazing” coincidences – God speaking to me.
- Forgetting a copy of my book in the outer office of a prospective client after arriving too late for the meeting. Being called back and then landing the largest corporate assignment of my career, 240 photographs of Central Park on display at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.
- Listening to an inner voice that said “Go back to that closed bookstore even though they do not carry art books – and just leave a copy of the book”, now a solid distributor amidst the 1,600 independent stores in 29 states in the US and eight countries. My books have their own lives.
- I designed a display easel for The Turning Point while at a trade show, and upon leaving the hotel with the drawing in my hand, I came upon someone throwing the very same easel away. My Lucky Easel.
- I only photography what I love, using old, inexpensive, manual equipment similar to what I had in the late 70’s. I don’t use a flash, film is like gold, and I keep everything to a minimum.
- It’s important what YOU think about what you are doing, not what others think about it. Pursue it because you love it, not to do it for fame. I have looked at what I have done, THEN I got inspired!
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature,
nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
-- Helen Keller
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