The nightly rooftop party at Austin's Fogo de Chao, hosted by Laura Beck is a good place to start an evening of South by Southwest Interactive parties and events. You can always find local entrepreneurs mixing it up with tech and business leaders from out of town.
It's become a place, for me at least, to see a few friendly local faces before heading out into the unknown. On Friday night, the person I spoke to longest was Kurt Bradley, a former project manager I knew from Chaotic Moon Studios who for the last four years or so has transformed himself into a high-end photographer covering racing and extreme sports for clients such as Red Bull and the auto website Jalopnik.
The most interesting part of the conversation for me was learning how fiercely, and smartly, Bradley has been protecting his growing archive of photos. He doesn't license old images out to wire services (I was introduced the the snarky, but entirely understandable concept of "wire-quality"; it's not a compliment) and avoids working for services that demand certain exclusivity arrangements that he simply doesn't need to accept.
Bradley said he's part of a younger generation of photographers coming up who are less inclined to work for established media outlets and who are delivering enough high-quality photos and video to sustain business without agreeing to unfavorable licensing terms from outlets such as, say, Getty Images.
Bradley also popped up Saturday at the Fast Company Grill, where he enjoyed lunch while a roster of panels including stars such as Nick Kroll and Jenny Slate spoke.
You can check out some of his images on his photo website, kurtbradley.co.
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