Photographer Clint Davis was previously the Art Director at a national magazine, so he has first hand experience on the type of photographer promo that grabs the attention of clients. Recently he himself needed to do some self-promotion, so he decided to get creative and create promo mailers filled with awesomeness. He writes,
Most of the promo pieces [Davis used to receive] were 4×6″ postcards with a picture on one side, and printed addresses on the other side. Stale, non-personalized, and probably frayed at the edges, the postcards rarely made it from the mail room to my desk. But a box?!? A freakin’ box??? NOW you have my attention. Maybe it’s just me, but when I get a box in the mail with a hand-written address, a slow fuzzy feeling comes over me and my eyes open 43% more than usual. YOU good box are coming back to my desk for a thorough dissection.
Above all I wanted to make a self-promotion mailer that wouldn’t get tossed in the trash right away. Considering the caliber of ad agencies, magazine photography editors, athletic teams, and select others that will receive this mailer, that is a tall order to accomplish.
Back in May we featured an Olympus commercial that was shot entirely with the camera it was promoting (the Olympus PEN E-PL1), lending credence to the camera’s video capabilities.
Panasonic recently posted a behind-the-scenes video to its YouTube account showing how a new ad for their Lumix G2 camera was made. However, a close look at the video seems to reveal that most of the filming was actually done with Canon 5D Mark II cameras and a set of L lenses. Most of the comments on the video poke fun at this, with one commenter saying,
You shoot a commercial of an HD camera with another HD camera but post the footage in standard definition? Fail.
The takeaway for camera companies: eat your own dog food.
ViaU is a new photography service by Mariano Pastor, a 25-year veteran of the Madison Avenue photography industry whose clients include L’Oreal and Lancome.
What sets it apart from other services is the flat rate it charges for photography regardless of who the client is or what the photograph is used for. Clients simply create a layout for the photo via ViaU’s web interface and ship the product to the studio. The photographs are created within 24 hours, and the product is shipped back free of charge.
Now here’s the kicker: the photography is free, and you only pay the flat fee of $224 if you decide to buy unlimited rights to the photograph. On the website Pastor states,
The truth is that great photography doesn’t really have to cost that much. It’s a simple idea, but also a big idea.
Simple enough, that is, to create your layout online and escape all negotiations. You know what you’ll get before you start. Great original photography, to use as you wish, at an affordable price. After twenty-five years of shooting for Madison Ave. I believe Via U! is my most creative accomplishment.
Can’t say I’m complete surprised by this. I know product photography was one of the categories hit hard early on when companies started doing the shots internally so maybe this is just the natural progression of a photographer competing for the bottom dollar there, except something doesn’t feel right to me. Doing this kind of thing for small companies seems like a smart play, delivering the same price to billion dollar companies seems rotten.
What do you think about this business model for photography?
You’ve probably seen in-video advertising, but how about ads placed in images? A company called Image Space Media wants to make sure you do.
Established in 2008, they’re the first and leading provider of in-image advertising on the web. This means relevant advertisements are placed in an overlay that appears over a portion of an image or photograph, just like the advertisements YouTube places at the bottom of most videos.
While you might hate this idea as an internet user or photographer, this may be a glimpse of what’s to come in terms of online advertising.
Now here’s a question: If Flickr started running these in-image ads for non-pro accounts, would you still use the service?
There’s a new video on YouTube showing a gigantic shipping container camera promoting a Samsung camera. In the video, bystanders can actually use the “camera” by inserting some money into a coin slot, and then having someone jump onto the massive shutter button on top of the shipping container. The resulting photograph is then displayed on a gigantic screen atop a nearby building.
It looks like this whole thing is simply a viral video created by Samsung. Here are some indicators:
The video was posted by cr8yourworld, which looks like an account created specifically for this campaign by Samsung.
Can you imagine the lawsuits Samsung would face if this thing were actually real, and people started falling off the container while pressing the “shutter”?
There’s a square helicopter at the end
Anyhow, fake or not, it’s a pretty fun idea. If only they actually created something like this (albeit safer) in some big city.
We’re on a roll with controversial advertisements today. New York garment company Weatherproof has gotten the attention of the White House after illegally using a photograph of President Obama’s visit to the Great Wall of China on a billboard in New York City (41st St. and 7th Ave.)
While Weatherproof did pay the licensing fees to use the image from the The Associated Press, they didn’t ask for permission from the White House, which has a pretty strict policy of not allowing the President’s image to be used for commercial purposes.
It all started when the company’s president Freddie Stollmack recognized the coat in the photo, and had it confirmed by examining a high resolution version. After having an advertisement containing the image rejected by a few of NYC’s top newspapers, the company installed the billboard advertisement two days ago.
Since then, the White House has in fact contacted the company about the ad, and the company has agreed to take the ad down but — get this — in two weeks. In the end, Weatherproof is likely the big winner, having succeeded in generating a buzz with this publicity stunt.
Harry Potter actress Emma Watson recently appeared in a Burberry advertising campaign with her brother Alex, and one particular image in the series has created quite a hoopla. In the image above, it appears as through most of her right leg has been completely edited out of the photograph. When I first saw the image, I thought the leg was simply hidden behind her brother’s left leg, but the image continues to cause a stir around the web. Do you think this is an example of Photoshop taken too far?
Update: Matt Dixon left a comment that provides pretty convincing evidence that it’s not a Photoshop disaster after all. Here’s a behind-the-scenes video:
