The business side of photography
Earlier today, I was looking at some media handout pictures from a movie distributor which is looking to get publicity for an upcoming release:
• The pictures had no captions, no names and no IPTC data. You have to guess who the people are and what/where/when is happening.
• Photos were overexposed by about two stops and had far too much contrast. (EXIF data showed that the pictures were shot on an amateur camera using an auto-exposure mode).
• Pictures were out-of-focus.
Here’s the best way for a company to mess up its public relations, mangle what’s left of its brand value and kill off any future credibility. (I’ll give you a hint: cut corners and go cheap on photography.)
As everyone knows, BP is in the midst of the worst oil spill in US history. As part of its attempt at public relations, and to salvage its brand, BP is trying to keep the public informed of its ongoing cleanup operations. Note that BP doesn’t call it an “oil spill” but rather an “oil well incident”.
What did BP do? It released doctored photos to the public, pictures that have been amateurishly altered to show BP in a better light. BP’s very weak mea culpa here.
The joke was that “BP” stood for “Broken Pipe”. It nows appears that it stands for “Bad Photoshopping”.
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While looking through a number of media handout photos from a national grocery store chain or at least from its public relations agency, it’s obvious that all of the pictures fail to meet basic journalism standards.
Everyone in a photo must be identified. In a fully-controlled situation like a set-up publicity picture, this is easy to do. An improperly-captioned photo shows not only laziness and carelessness on the part of the photographer and the public relations agency, but also a lack of understanding of journalism and the needs of a newspaper.
Naming only one person in a group and then expecting viewers to figure out who’s who is a failure. A company may know its executives but the public does not. Why make readers guess?
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It’s now three days into Queen Elizabeth’s tour of Canada and (as expected) the photos are quite boring and even non-existent. Political conventions and campaigns usually have better photo planning. I don’t know why the same effort isn’t put into a royal tour. I suspect it’s because a royal tour is basically run by the police rather than a creative director or a public relations agency.
The purpose of a photo op can be completely lost due to poor preplanning. For example, what’s the point of doing a statue unveiling when the statue isn’t in the photo? Why have the talent stroll through a garden when the garden isn’t visible?
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If your business is planning to hire a photographer to do some editorial or corporate photography, here’s a question for you: What do you expect that photographer to do?
The obvious answer might be that you want the photographer to do good pictures. Does the term “good” mean the pictures should look nice?
Perhaps a better answer is that the photographer should do effective pictures. The word “effective” means the photos should help accomplish your business goal.
What is your business goal?
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The press release was sent out last week, the big day has finally arrived and now photographers are showing up to cover your news event. Here are eight tips to help guarantee failure:
1) Hold the event in the darkest location possible. Why waste money on lighting? Photographers can always use a flash or they can do something with Photoshop.
Another money-saving tip: use the smallest room possible.
2) When photographers arrive at your event, make them wait awhile. Sure, the press release said that it would happen at 1:00 pm but we all know these things never start on time. Besides, photographers have nothing else to do except cover your event.
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It never ceases to amaze me how some companies, even very large corporations, can bungle a simple photo op and totally sabotage its media coverage. This always ends with a “what were they thinking?”
Yesterday, Husky Energy barred the media from its annual general meeting in Calgary (updated story here). This story was picked up around the world in both news and business publications. What should’ve been a routine business story with a routine photo of its CEO, turned into the loud negative headline: “Husky Energy bars reporters from annual meeting”.
Of course, there were photos of Husky personnel blocking the doorway to the meeting and security escorting photographers off the property. The security guard picture was also picked up around the world.
Great PR move, folks!
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