public relations

Reach for the Top

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A job search engine company published its annual list of top Canadian employers. A printed version was inserted in today’s The Globe and Mail newspaper.

Not all of the selected top employers were profiled in the (online and printed) magazine. But by some strange coincidence, every profiled company had an ad in the publication and, as of today’s date, 33 of the 38 profiled companies had employment ads listed on that job search engine.

If you flip through the magazine, you can tell which companies hired professional photographers and which decided to go with, uh, inexperienced photographers.

You will notice an awful lot of group pictures showing people doing nothing but standing or sitting around. There are also a number of photos that most professional photographers would’ve deleted. To be fair, there is one good group photo and several other acceptable images.
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Composition Wise and Whys

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There are many online photography tutorials offering technical tips and advice. Much of this information is simplistic and superficial.

For example, when doing a portrait, they’ll tell you not to have harsh shadows on the subject’s face. The problem with information like this is that it isn’t scalable. It’s more beneficial to have information that you can use in any type of photography no matter what your subject matter.

Why do people look at pictures and how do they look at pictures? If you can answer these two questions then you can scale this information across any type of photography.

This post is long but the concepts are simple. Spoiler alert: this isn’t really about photography but rather it’s about human nature and how we perceive things around us.
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Public Relations Photography

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This past weekend’s Globe and Mail newspaper, like many of its weekday editions, had several half-page and full-page advertisements that weren’t directly selling anything:

Who would spend up to $75,000 for a full-page ad (link to PDF) that’s not a hard-sell ad?

Universities, colleges and various non-profit organizations.

Why do they do this?
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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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Ministry of Photography

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cop21a

Opening day at the COP21 Summit in Paris, France, 29 November 2015.

These conference photos were shot by France’s Ministère de l’Environnement, de l’Energie et de la Mer (MEDDE) photographer. Unlike Canada, these French government photos were put into the public domain.

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) is being criticized for paying a photographer $6,662 to take pictures of its minister and her staff while they were in Paris for the COP21 climate summit late last year. [The French government’s COP21 site.]
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Working with news photographers at your event

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If you’re planning a corporate event or any other type of event that you hope will attract the news media, then you may need some tips on how to work with the news or press photographers who will attend.

While the six media relations tips provided in that linked article may sound obvious, many companies, both big and small, can get it very wrong. It was no secret that Canada’s previous federal Conservative government was horrendously bad at running press conferences and photo ops.

“Photojournalists are not there to make your client look bad or good. We are there to represent the truth to the best of our ability and strive to maintain objectivity at all costs,” advised [Amber] Bracken [President of the News Photographers Association of Canada]. “At the same time, we also strive to capture the world beautifully, your client included.”

You need non-partisan press photographers to cover your event or photo opportunity so your company might earn the media blessing. Editorial photography published by news outlets is the most credible type of information. People trust what they see in a newspaper or magazine.

Similarly, most public relations photography and press release photography should also be editorial in nature and contain human interest. The best way to achieve this is to hire a photographer who has a journalism background and who has worked for a news publication.

 

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