After two weeks chained to a cot in Mr. Domke’s root celler, the elaborate prank ended today. I’ll get you Henry!
Tag Archives: Henry Domke
How do you make money with your art?
My pal Henry Domke takes beautiful photographs and then sells them to hospitals and clinics (Photo above is the MRI Room at Northwestern Hospital in Chicago). And as I understand it, they don’t just buy one or two. They use his art throughout. (ch-CHING!).
Rain drops on palm fronds at Prairie Garden Trust
There is a gentle rain this morning at the beach on Sanibel. I ventured out onto our poarch the and the rain drops.
Blog. Book. Book Tour.
I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned that my friend Henry turned his blog (Health Care Fine Art) into a book. He didn’t try to sell the book but gave it to the best customers of his art. Some call it “vanity press,” Henry calls it marketing.
A year later… Henry has been invited to give a talk about his book in New York. Last week he did a series of presentations in Boston. In a couple of week he’ll be in San Francisco and next month, San Diego.
It’s a beautiful book and nobody know more about this kind of art than Henry.
Welcome to the new normal.
From blog to book
My friend Henry has self-published a book (Picture of Health, Handbook for Healthcare Art). The term usually applied to self-published books is “vanity press,” but there’s nothing vain about my friend Henry and the story behind the book is interesting.
With a little help and encouragement from me (and others, I’m sure), Henry started blogging a couple of years ago. He wrote about health care art (his specialty). He was a natural but a little more serious than your typical blogger. His posts were more like essays than blog posts and took more time to write. He clearly saw the blog as a complement to his art business.
Somewhere along the way, I told Henry about services that convert blogs to books. He was immediately interested and began researching the idea. The result is Picture of Health.
The book is beautiful. Henry spared no expense. Heavy paper, embossed cover. It felt like it weighed five pounds. God (and Henry) knows what it cost to print.
Now here’s the part I like: The book is not for sale. At least not on Amazon or at Barnes & Noble (I see that you can purchase a copy from his blog). Henry published the book to give it away. Of the thousands of names in his client database, Henry selected just over 18-hundred to receive a copy of the book. (Do the math)
Henry is using the book to build on his relationship with important clients. By keeping the book (relatively) rare, he hopes to increase its value. It’s an expensive gamble and he has promised to share the results.
The part that I found most interesting about this blog-to-book story is that the book is the ONLY book about health care art. I couldn’t believe that when Henry told me but he insists it’s true. Not one book about a multi-million dollar business. Somebody else is writing one but Picture of Health is one of a kind for now. This blows me away. I mean, how many topics don’t have at least ONE book about them?
Thanksgiving with Henry
DALLAS, TX: Becky is making her mother’s chestnut stuffing recipe. She had Chris scoring the chestnuts before roasting (actually baking). Chris cut his thumb (as it turns out not seriously). Then Becky over roasts the chestnuts so when she takes them out of the oven, one explodes into her eye while she’s holding the hot pan (no permanent damage to the eye). I tried to take the pan from her but the rag I have doesn’t completely cover the pan, so I burned my finger. My finger still hurts. This better be good dressing is all I can say. We miss you here. — Barb
Henry and Lorna invited me to join them and their family for dinner. All the TG basics, topped of with Lorna’s special pecan-with-just-a-little-rum pie. Yum. It was a very pro-Obama crowd so there were toasts to the new president. Sammy and Pete were clearly thankful to be part of the Domke family. Here’s Petey in post-dinner repose.
A Walk Around the Lake
The video above (4 min) is a walk around the lake at the Prairie Garden Trust with Pete, Sam and Boots.
Spring flowers
Barb’s really too busy with work to spend as much time with her yard as she’d like but she still manages to plant some flowers. This year she planted about 300 tulips but the deer got a bunch of them and the moles probably got their share. But the ones that survived were very fetching in the late afternoon sunlight.
I’m no kind of serious photographer (that’s my man, Henry). But I’m not bashful about taking photos and sharing them with the world. I know some very good amateur photographers that never put their work online because they don’t think it’s good enough. At least that’s the reason they give and I tend to believe them.
I snapped these photos with my little Casio and they came out "good enough." Think of all the beautiful flowers that were never shared because someone thought the photos were not "good enough."
MO Dept Conservation blogging
Lorna Domke is in charge of “Outreach and Education” for the Missouri Department of Conservation and she has added a blog to her communication tool kit.
“I get to learn a lot about what’s going on all over the state in forestry, fisheries, wildlife, resource science, protection and private lands services. We have lots of ways to get the word out including our regular website, the Missouri Conservationist magazine, and news releases. But on this blog, I’m going to share odds and ends of what I’m hearing from other divisions and what’s of seasonal interest.”
Lorna is the wife of my pal Henry, who blogs at HealthCareFineArt.com. Another TBF (Two Blog Family). If you know of others, leave a link in the comments.
Our short-list of state departments or agencies with blogs is growing: Attorney General (Consumer Protection); Missouri Gaming Commission; Children’s Trust Fund; KidsFirst; Dept. of Agriculture (Farmers’ Markets) Department of Mental Health; Lottery. I’m sure there are more that I haven’t discovered yet (Three of these are the work of former Learfielders).
It’s just a trickle now but as people discover how much more effective a blog is than the traditional website, this will become a flood.
New scanner
Dave Winer bought a new scanner recently. He didn’t say much about it… just that it had arrived. My scanner was two or three years old, so –with hardly a thought– I clicked the link (to Amazon) Dave provided and purchased the same scanner.
I had a high level of confidence that Dave knows more about scanners than I do and I couldn’t go wrong following his lead. And I was right.
The CanoScan is fast and produces sharp scans. My favorite feature, however, is the software that enables me to scan four or five photos at once and wind up with individual files. I hate to think of the hours I spent chopping out individual images in Photoshop. And I’m sure I’ll discover many more wonderful features.
I’m sure Canon spends millions in marketing and advertising. But none of those efforts could ever be as effective (for me) as knowing it’s the scanner Dave Winer is using. I have no way of knowing, but I’ll bet he didn’t get a nickel (or a free scanner) from Canon for mentioning their product on his blog. I guess my point has something to do with blogs and trust.
I’ve made a couple of imaging purchases in the last week or two. As I scan more (old) prints and take more digital photos, I need to be sure these images are as good as I can (practically) make them.
Let’s say I took 1,000 photos over the next two years and they weren’t quite as good as they might have been. There’s no way to fix that. I can’t re-take those photos.
At the same time, I’m willing to accept far less than "perfect" images. That’s where Henry works and lives. I make some practical trade-offs.
But the scanning is going much faster now and iPhoto makes it easier to tweak the images and get them on flickr.