What do I mean by Photographing for your brand?

Photographing for your brand is photographing with “intent.”

That means making images that have some reason, continuity and stylistic connection to the images that are already a part of your lexicon – that body of work that is becoming your iconic images.

Now, I am not talking about iconic images in the sense of the great images that are globally or even internationally known. Those may come around in a photographer’s so rarely that we cannot plan them. Avedon’s “Dovina with the Elephant”, Paul Fusco’s “Robert F. Kenneday Funeral Train”, Eddie Adam’s photograph of a Vietcong soldier being executed, Armstrong on the moon, Annie’s shot of John Lennon and Yoko Ono in bed for the cover of “Rolling Stone” magazine… these are images that are iconic of a time and place that can be shared throughout cultures and even generations.

They are rare. They are precious. They can be powerful. They can change a country’s attitude toward culture, fashion, and even war.

I am talking more about the iconic shots we do for ourselves. Those shots that help us define what we are about. Photographs that reveal our style better than others in our portfolio may show. Photographs with real or imagined intent – on display and hopefully remembered – help viewers understand more about what we are about.

Photograph with intent.

In the commercial world, images may have very easy to understand intents. We want the image to convey something about the product or service that it is helping to sell. If something is new or innovative, the photography may intend to show how it feel to the user, or how the user feels when they have one. In advertising, there is a demand to create in the viewer a decidedly positive relationship between the ownership and use of what is being advertised. The ‘intent as it is – the reason for the image – is to drive sales or interest through the image and the emotional response to the photograph.

Photographing for your brand is photographing with intent.

When you are shooting for your book, you are shooting for your brand. When you are testing, you are shooting for your brand. When you are shooting for fun or just because you want to see what stuff looks like when it is photographed, you are shooting for your brand.

Making the images that are as distinctly yours as possible means that everything you are working on is moving toward that body of work that is so important. Each and every image that gets recorded is part of your work experience. The rare great ones, the few good ones and the vast amount of ‘meh’ stuff we all do. And we ALL do a lot of ‘meh’ work to get those good and rare great images.

It’s called working. It’s the way we get to something good… we practice and practice.

“Practice makes perfect” they say.

And they are wrong.

Practicing “perfectly” makes perfect. If all that was required was practice, then perfection would be a mechanical and easily attainable goal. But there are additional

I am learning to play the saxophone. I practice (not a much as I need to, but I am not a sax player) with the goal of excellence in learning the saxophone. Scales, runs, blues scales, breath control, alternate fingerings… it is done with the tutorial of knowing what I am doing. I do it with the knowledge that I want to work within traditional music paradigms (rhythm, scales, modes of western music) If I simply bought a saxophone and started ‘practicing’ without knowing what I was doing, it may not be a recipe for success. The squawks and squeals and scary sounds that would result may be ‘playing the saxophone’ but not within the definitions that I have set for myself.

In photography it is no different. You know what you want to achieve, then you work toward achieving it. Having that goal in mind makes the work become intentional, and that helps with the execution. In advertising we have the brief, and an AD and team of folks that help guide the intent. In editorial, there will be a reason for the image to be made, and that reason is within the article it is made to illustrate.

Image of Nolan Ryan by Dan Winters:
Story at the New York Times.

This recent image by Dan Winters is one of my favorites. Nolan Ryan is a legendary pitcher who has been lionized and loved by baseball fans the world over. Now there is a question over whether he will be able to pull the new team he bought out of a terrible financial position. Winter’s photograph is both a loving portrait of a great baseball player, in the sun, in the place where his fame was achieved, and there is a shadow moving across him. The ‘shadow of failure’ perhaps? Is Ryan emerging or is the shadow beginning to cover him? I don’t know, but I know that there is a great deal of ‘intent’ in that image. That is one of the reasons Winters is such a fine photographer. It isn’t an image of a guy, it is an image of a guy who is in danger of being swallowed by terrible financial and other challenges… his ‘day in the sun’ being overshadowed by the complexity of the economics of baseball.

At least that is the way I see it, and reading the article leads me to believe I have read the image correctly. And that image is a wonderful representative of the ‘brand’ – Dan Winters.

Does that high level of ‘intent’ transfer over to every image we do? Probably not, sometimes we simply have to get a great shot of Mr. Smith, a real estate investor, that will be used on his brochure. Our intent may be simply to make Smith look good for his brochure.

Such is the nature of commercial photography.

And the ability to make those images are another part of your brand as a photographer. The pragmatic side that gets the shot that is needed, and with the intent of the user in mind.

When we are working on our own stuff, we may have to fabricate some intent. Make up the reason for the image… then shoot it with that intent in mind.

Our work must reflect our intentional choices for making the image. Everything we do is involved – the composition, lighting, styling, angle, gesture, expression, emotion, color, lens and camera… these are choices we make – with intent – as we are shooting. And when these choices begin to develop into a pattern, with results that are interesting and images that we like, we may be on to creating our style, our ‘brand’ of imagery.

There is a moment when you are shooting when you know you are doing something that is working for you. It may be while a shoot is in progress, and you start to see how the elements are coming to you without less interference as before. It may be when a shot pops into your head one morning, and you instinctively know how to make it. It may be when you are looking at a bunch of images in your ‘possibilities’ folder and a set of images begins to come together to form a cohesive set.

This work may start to represent your brand, your style. And it may form the basis of an ever-growing “body of work” that will become a stronger and more powerful portfolio.

That is a pretty cool moment, and one you may have several times in your career. We sit for a moment and reflect that we may have hit a nice place in our creative journey. Cool. Enjoy it while you can, more work follows as we begin new challenges.

I am writing this from a hotel in Houston the morning after the workshop. The hotel I am in has no way for me to reach the Internet, and I will have to post this from the airport when I arrive there this afternoon.

This weekend I watched a bunch of photographers that ranged from a full time pro to a gentleman who has only been shooting for a few months coalesce around creating light for images they were making. They were not wanting to ‘settle’ for simply lighting for exposure, they wanted to ‘say something’ with their light. It was cold and threatening rain, but this little band of intrepid shooters kept at it till the dark was calling for ISO 1200 and the speedlights were down to 1/64th power. Thanks, Houston attendees… that was a fantastic experience and I am simply thrilled to have been a part of it.

If you are thinking about a workshop in the coming year, check out the stuff at Learn to Light. If you are interested in the goings on of a photographer / designer, you can follow me at Twitter. See you next time.