Illustrative or Advertising Photography
Selling or "telling the story" of a company's product for use in national advertisements, newspapers, magazines, and for some TV commercials is the job of the illustrative photographer. Going through the pages of almost any national magazine, you should be immediately aware of the high quality of the many ads. It is the photograph's purpose in such an ad to influence the consumer visually to purchase the item the success or failure of the ad is reflected in a company's sales figures. The advertiser usually spends an enormous sum of money for these ads, and illustrative photography is a very highly competitive field requiring the latest approaches and techniques in photography. Creativity, however, is the main ingredient needed by the photographer in order to build a business and reputation in this particular classification of photography. He or she will work with other talented individuals, such as artists, advertising managers, and art directors. Because they are creative thinkers, illustrative photographers will find working with people who are thinking up new ideas to be interesting and exciting.
The key to illustrative photography is creativity, so there is no single approach the photographer can take to ensure success. Very often the illustrative photographer will work from an artist's sketch of what is to be portrayed in a photograph. Or, he or she will be expected to interpret some idea or concept as an eye catching sales illustration. At other times, the ideas for photographs may have to be researched by reading and looking at illustrations in libraries, museums, or art galleries. An interior decorator, food economist, or other highly specialized person or technical advisor from another field may have to be consulted in completing the photography setup.
The illustrator often is paid to produce an illustration completely different from anything used before and that bears no resemblance to the competitor's sales presentation or advertisements. Often a particular type of model may play such an important part in the illustration that it could easily take several days looking for just the right subject that was originally conceived in the mind of the client or advertising sales executive. Going through modeling agency files can be quite time consuming because of the need to locate a fresh new face never seen before in other advertisements.
Getting the proper backgrounds and settings for certain products to be photographed can at times be difficult. The cost can be enormous, too. In some cases, the photo illustrator has been known to take props and a staff of assistants to an out of the way island or some other remote place to do exactly what the client ordered. The matter of a few hundred dollars expense one way or the other is not important to an agency that is seeking an eye catching ad to run in Time, Newsweek, National Geographic, Reader's Digest, The Smithsonian, or some other national publication. Such an ad can be a full page spread or a double page spread costing thousands of dollars to run in a single issue of the magazine.
Several photo illustrators also have had great success breaking into TV commercial production which can be an even more lucrative and fast paced field.
Meetings and Conventions
In convention cities and resort areas, a specialized field of photography has been developed by some studios. They photograph convention or meeting participants in small and large groups, in formal and informal "at work" situations. Now, with the decentralization of meeting facilities, nearly every hotel and motel can accommodate meetings of organizations and companies. In addition to group photographs, the enterprising photographer will take pictures of workshops in action, awards presentations, new officer installations, and trade show exhibition booths.
Another profitable business can be built upon the growing need for audiovisual presentations, from a simple slide show to a multimedia production. Many modern hotels and motels are designed with built in AV facilities, including arrangements for closed circuit television programming. Along with the growing need for audiovisual programming will develop a body of experienced AV producers, script writers, programmers, and technicians. The growing need for visual material on Internet "websites" holds similar potential. The young person considering audiovisual or web page production as a career should be prepared to meet talented competition.
Equipment
Equipment requirements for a commercial photographer can vary considerably from those of photographers engaged solely in portraiture. The commercial photographer will be required to photograph anything from a photo micro-graphic specimen to the biggest building in the city from a helicopter. Thus, the commercial photographer may need a much greater financial outlay to start his or her business than the portrait or industrial person.
To have a complete studio, a minimum of $50,000 to more than $100,000 would be needed. The industrial photographer working for a company would have equipment furnished and geared to specific fields of coverage. The commercial photographer would have to own a car or even a station wagon, van, or truck. In all likelihood, this vehicle would be loaded with a good deal of equipment.
The commercial photographer needs a varied selection of cameras and lenses ready to go at a moment's notice. Cameras in the 8 x 10, 4 x 5, 2lA x 2VA, and 35mm sizes all have uses on different jobs, along with an assortment of lenses suitable for each of them.
Commercial photographers rely on electronic flash for the variety of work they are expected to perform. Studio electronic flashes are not very portable; therefore, small portable electronic flashes are frequently used. Incandescent and quartz, as continuous light sources, also will be of great use for catalogs, magazines, and fashion publicity and advertising. Broad, even, diffused light from light banks and other soft light sources is popular today. You must educate yourself on unusual lighting sources so you will be prepared to handle any type of assignment.
A ground floor or downtown location for a commercial studio would not be as important to the commercial photographer as it might be to the portrait photographer, who caters to a certain number of walk in customers. However, the commercial photographer who has accounts with companies that manufacture large products, such as appliances, furniture, or automobiles, would need a large, ground floor location with high ceilings and a side entrance for moving in these large products for photographing.
