marketing

Life in the Slow Lane

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Most photographers go through a slow period, or two, during the year. Perhaps it’s the time from Christmas to the end of January or maybe it’s during a summer month. It depends on what type of photography you do. So what should a photographer do during a slow period?

What not to do

• Don’t panic (too much).

• Don’t use a slow period to catch up on your TV viewing.

• Don’t buy new gear. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that if you buy a new camera or lens, you’ll get more business. New gear won’t help.

• Don’t have a fire sale. Unlike a retail store, photographers don’t have marked-up merchandise on their store shelves that can be discounted. You have only time on your “store shelf” and, unlike a tangible product, time can’t be restocked.

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Avoid fake news about your company

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Thanks to recent events in the USA, the phrase “fake news” has become popular. Fake news, the intentional publication of hoaxes and disinformation, has existed for many decades. For example: while standing in a supermarket checkout lane, you’ve probably noticed all those crazy headlines on tabloid magazine covers: cures for cancer, alien invasions, Bigfoot sightings, the end of the world, and so on.

Sometimes fake news is used to sway opinion but mostly it’s used to make money.

Fake news isn’t used just to influence elections. It’s routinely used online to garner web clicks which in turn helps generate money through advertising. Sometimes this is outright fake news and other times it’s clickbait headlines to trick readers. Unfortunately many legitimate news outlets shoot themselves in the foot when they do the same thing:
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Violins and marketing photography

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When you play a violin piece, you are a storyteller, and you’re telling a story.

– Joshua Bell

You can replace the violin in that statement with a camera and it would still hold true.

A decade ago, The Washington Post did an unscientific social experiment where Joshua Bell, a well-known classical violinist, dressed in jeans, t-shirt and ball cap, performed incognito in a subway station. The newspaper wanted to see how many morning rush-hour commuters would stop to hear classical music being perfectly played.

On the morning of Friday January 12, 2007, Bell set up inside a Washington DC subway station and placed an open violin case on the ground for donations. The unannounced event was recorded by a hidden camera.

The Post was worried about huge mobs gathering and the possibility of needing police for crowd control. You can probably guess what happened.
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What is corporate photography?

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“Corporate photography” is just a general name for photography used to help market a business. It isn’t just for big corporations. This type of photography can be used by any business, big or small, incorporated or not.

Corporate photography is not advertising photography. The latter type of photography is about selling a product or service. Corporate photography is for building and enhancing a company’s name or brand and it tends to be an editorial style of photography.

The most common type of corporate photography is business portraits and headshots. Photography of business conferences and events, office interiors and exteriors, and employees on the job are also common subject matter. Corporate photographers are also used to cover a company’s involvement with a community or charity event.
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Why your company needs a photojournalist

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The British Columbia Liberal Party recently hired a former photojournalist to photograph its leader, the current premier of that province. The party is heading towards a 2017 election.

The Wildrose Party of Alberta did the same thing a year ago by hiring (on a part-time basis) a freelance photojournalist.

Almost every photographer, hired by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to cover the Canadian Prime Minister, has been a working photojournalist.

In the first two cases, the photographers are paid by the provincial political party, not the taxpayers.

Political parties could save a lot of money by hiring the lowest-bidder-with-a-camera, by doing the photos themselves, or by not hiring a photographer at all. But these political parties know that they need authentic, story-telling photography to communicate their message. This is marketing 101.

(Added 2018: The Ontario Liberal party hired a freelance photojournalist to photograph the re-election campaign of the premier.)
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Driving Emotions

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How often do you see a photo credit on a company’s press release pictures? Have you ever seen a credit line on a product photo?

For example, when you see a photo of a new car, supplied by the car manufacturer, there’s either no credit line or it simply names the car manufacturer that supplied the photo.

A few weeks ago, Ford Motor Company launched its advertising campaign for the 2017 Lincoln Continental. Newspapers like The Globe and Mail did their usual car review and included handout photos of the new car. But this time, the handout photos had a credit line. The November 10th print version of The Globe and Mail used:

(Photo – Annie Leibovitz / Ford)

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Taking the long way

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Been sitting at your computer for a while? Need some exercise?

A long time ago, a Yellow Pages advertisement used the slogan “Let your fingers do the walking.” Now you can let your fingers do your exercising by scrolling for a mile. (That web page is a mile long: 6,082,560 pixels at 96 ppi (monitor resolution) = 5,280 feet = 1 mile).

Twenty years ago, web-page scrolling was considered bad design maybe because most folks used slow dial-up Internet and page content had to be kept minimal. As broadband Internet became the norm, longer pages, and scrolling, became popular. Five or six years ago, scrolling went out of fashion maybe because it took too much effort or because people were in too much of a hurry to go below the fold. Today, scrolling is trendy again probably because scrolling is easier and more preferred on mobile devices.

Both the photo pages and blog pages on my web site have several long pages with lots of text. Scrolling is often required on my site. This is intentional and the reasons are:
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