stock photography « Jurgen Doom

Corporate photography – or how to make photos to meet your clients needs

4 March 2011 om 14:47 door Jürgen geplaatst in de categorie advertising,Commercial,corporate photography,Flashlight,photographer,Photography

As a corporate photographer, specialising in business to business photography, you need to be able to produce photographs that meet your clients needs.

In this particular case, the people at bakker asked me to come up with a series of photos for their new website.  They had photographs on their old website, but those were stock images bought from an image bank.  They wanted the same look and feel of what they had on their old site, but instead of “generic” photos of models, they wanted to use their own people (in fact, the staff and partners).

So what the client basically wanted was to have images that were fairly evenly lit, with relatively clean backgrounds that breath professionalism.  All the shots were to be made at their offices in Antwerp.

I had Ans Brugmans with me as my make-up artist and Jasmijn assisted me with the photography and lighting.

During the course of the day, we did about 8 completely different setups, having to change the lighting each and every time. Within each setup there was often room to move around and play with different compositions.

I used my studio lighting (Elinchrom RX600) in conjunction with my small portable Nikon SB900 strobes in order to create the look we wanted.  All images are photographed on a Nikon D3s.  During the day I only used 2 prime lenses.  One was a Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens and the other was a Nikon 85mm f/1.4 lens).  I prefer to work with prime lenses over zoom lenses because it is sharper, has a higher contrast and is generally much lighter than have zooms.  On an assignement like this there is no need to work with zoom lenses as you have both your lighting and setup under control.  Framing the image is just a matter of moving forwards or backwards in order to compose your image.

Of course, all images were photographer in the RAW format and post processed through Adobe Lightroom.

The images are now used on their site, which looks like this (at www.bakker.be) and which looks stunning (see screenshots below).  Website made by Van Katoen (Damien Dubois).

Corporate photography for bakker.be

Corporate photography for bakker.be

Corporate photography for bakker.be

Corporate photography for bakker.be

Corporate photography for bakker.be

Corporate photography for bakker.be

Corporate photography for bakker.be

Corporate photography for bakker.be

Corporate photography for bakker.be

Corporate photography for bakker.be

Images that sell – stock photography.

6 May 2010 om 10:46 door Jürgen geplaatst in de categorie Commercial

As photographers we all want to photograph “images that sell”.

Most of the times, we are comissioned by advertising agencies, businesses and magazines to photograph – or to produce images – that help sell the magazines, the business, etc ….. We photograph what the client wants to see photographed, because it will promote “its cause”.

It’s a little different when you, as a photographer, decide to go out on your own, choose your own subjects and photograph without any limits our boundaries set by your clients.  These images are than aimed at photo libraries, who will try to sell your images.  They’ll typically take a comission in return of doing the marketing for you, as well as the following up, the admin, … in short, the whole works.

There are some big players like Corbis and Getty, but you can also find images at istock, microstock, etc ….

Problem is, you need to get your photographs in the library (they don’t always except just whatever you provide them with) and you’re “competing” with so many other photographers in all those libraries, making it uncertain whether your investment of time and effort in making the photographs will ever pay off.

I don’t often go out to photograph randomly, except for a few times where I will first talk to my clients (mainly in health care) to listen to what they need. That’s why I went in 2007 to spend 2 days in a hospital, photographing all sorts of situations and setups.  These images are now on the desks of a few picture editors, and whenever they need an image of a hospital, a doctor, a nurse, an empty hospital bed, an operation room, a scanner, etc …. they can turn to my images and use them.

Stock photography, image of an operation room in a hospital.

Stock photography, image of an operation room in a hospital.

I didn’t initially get paid for making those images, but every time an image gets publisched, I can invoice that image.  Time and time again.  In fact, I grant them the licence to publish the image.

So, after 3 years of having those images published in various magazines, it’s defenitaly “paying of” and it will continue to do so for as long as these images continue to sell ….

Image at an operation room in a hospital, stock photography.

Image at an operation room in a hospital, stock photography.

Foto’s die verkopen ….

Dromen we daar allemaal niet van?

De meeste fotografen werken in opdracht van een tijdschrift, een reclamebureau, een bedrijf …. De fotograaf wordt gevraagd om bepaalde beelden te maken die het bedrijf kunnen vooruit helpen.

Het tegenovergestelde daarvan is wat men “stock fotografie” noemt. Daar ga je als fotograaf zelf je onderwerpen bepalen om daar dan beelden van te maken. Die beelden bied je dan aan aan “fototheken”, bibliotheken als het ware die foto’s “uitlenen” tegen een vergoeding. Getty en Corbis, istock, microstock, etc … schieten me onmiddellijk te binnen, maar je hebt er veel meer.

Ik heb ooit nog mijn beelden in het nu ter ziele gegaan iAfrika photo library gestoken. Maar ik woonde toen in Zuid-Afrika, en het was gewoon een stuk eenvoudiger om via een Zuid-Afrikaanse photo library te werken.

Tegenwoordig maak ik nog maar uiterst weinig “stock” beelden. Heel af en toe, wanneer ik het eens goed plan en organiseer, maak ik nog eens wat beelden voor een aantal klanten, voornamelijk in de medische sektor.

Zo heb ik in 2007 eens 2 dagen in een ziekenhuis beelden gemaakt, die sindsdien op een drietal redacties zitten van tijdschriften in de medische sector. De beelden ben ik toen op mijn eigen “kosten” gaan maken, ik heb ze aangeboden aan de verschillende redacties (zonder vergoeding te krijgen), maar sindsdien worden er op regelmatige tijdstippen foto’s uit gebruikt en gepubliceerd die ik telkenmale weer kan faktureren.

Het is in zekere zin “gemakkelijk” geld, maar als je beseft hoeveel tijd je er initieel hebt in gestoken, welk werk, risico, planning en moeite er is in gekropen om die beelden te maken zonder de zekerheid om ooit 1 euro er uit te krijgen, dan valt het adjecteif “gemakkelijk” al snel weg.

Nu, zo’n drie jaar na het maken van die foto’s begin ik er geld aan te verdienen, en hopelijk worden ze nog een tijdje “gerecycleerd”. En al die tijd zijn het “foto’s die verkopen” ….