How the Style Translates Commercially

The Wedding Photographer going Commercial

Who am I? Scott Jarvie the Wedding and Travel Photographer

That’s how I introduce myself.

Meaning: that’s what I tell people I do…. weddings and lots of travel photography. I don’t put a lot of the travel stuff on this blog anymore and leave it to the Envision The World Blog and even then I haven’t had a lot of time to get those pictures worked on and edited. So mainly we see a lot of wedding pictures and the corresponding sessions that come with that like engagements, bridals and formals.

Recent History

So recently I did a photoshoot for a hair and makeup studio out on the salt flats (See this post with their pictures included or this full gallery)… this is more of a commercial type shoot but it was still primarily dealing with people and that’s something I know how to do. They liked my style (from what they saw on the website) and they were very happy with the results. In fact not a day after I published their photoshoot one of their clients came asking about a similar photo shoot.

The Style

OK so I do mainly weddings and I would say that my style is as follows

Personable A pleasent interaction and real experience and an approachable feel to the pictures (Friendly)

Personality - Capturing the real aspect of the people and the overall feel of the event

Emotion - Doesn’t matter which kind just want to allow and document REAL stuff

“Ideas for my models”

I tell people that my pictures are what the person is + lighting … there aren’t models for my ideas these are ideas for my models, all with a Jarvie-esque look… which is bright, clean and dynamic

How I work

SOOOO… how would my style translate to commercial work. Specially in the case where it’s for a clothing company.

Would it translate? Well I think future clients should come to me with that knowledge… I’ll take their ideas and make great pictures out of them with my own concepts based off their ideas… I don’t do recreation of pictures in someone’s mind.

Sometimes I do photoshoots and the client might build new ideas and concepts just to incorporate pictures that happened. Like in weddings when bride and grooms find unique and creative ways to utilize several engagement pictures in announcements or redesign things to layout many of the bridal pictures at weddings.

So I guess I translate better to the client looking for lots of pictures and who is able to creatively utilize the great art that might happen beyond their original expectations.

The Editing End

OK so this is where commercial and jarvie aren’t on the same wave length…

I edit everything… by edit I don’t mean photoshop… I mean light and color. I do know commercial sometimes is photoshop heavy touching up pictures a lot, liquify, replace backgrounds, enhance bodies and just spruce things up hardcore… but that’s not really a problem because I know people that do it and I’ll let them all know I don’t do that stuff that’s for an editor (a photoshop pro) I just don’t have the zest for that stuff and I should stick with photography and let someone else spend their life becoming masters at that stuff.

But back to the issue… I do go through each picture and make sure things look good enough that if they took any one of these pictures and just ran with it without editing that I’d be happy to have my logo on it. That the models can go home and throw them all over facebook.

I have a hard time leaving a proof a proof… I want them to be awesome. Now I’m not crazy… I’m not going to spend forever on each picture… heck I won’t even spend more than 15 seconds on most picture. But remember how I said I take lots of pictures? Well even at 15 seconds it certainly takes a long time to work on 650 pictures… which is what this client had to choose from.

So right off the bat things are going to be a bit different for a typical commercial client, their experience though not terribly strange is not the most common. But it does mean I never get re-edit requests… I mean once in a blue moon and we’ll see what happens in the commercial world.

But usually pictures are all ready to be used and I suppose that’s a big unspoken benefit. (Unspoken except for the fact I just spoke it… haha)

A possible problem area in the translation

Since my photoshoots are longer and result in more pictures and because I spend a lot of time working on the pictures this would mean a higher starting price because of all that work… which price perhaps makes it perhaps un-approachable for some small businesses. And I’m in a state with lots of small businesses.

Models

I should have a few models and these commercial clients re-act

I don’t get my approachable and personable look to the pictures by staging every aspect of someone’s pose. I’ll get them in the right light in the right scene and from then I fall into a mode of taking what they do and making sure all is in place and nothing looks bad. I want them to trust that I’ll make sure nothing is bad and that they look good. But I won’t put my modeling moves on their model body. It’s them and their personality. So i guess if the client needs a certain mood and personality for their end product we best be getting models for whom that comes naturally.

We are all complex individuals capable of many aspects and many emotions… so it’s not a stretch for any person to look both super goofy happy in one picture and seriously sultry in another. It’s not like we can only have one look.

To me a model isn’t a manaquin that you move their body parts around. That’s just me and I know of other photographers who are looking for someone to simply complete their picture in their vision.

To me you give the model ideas and you work hard to create the environment for them to thrive in… one where the photographer can spend most of his effort doing their thing and the model can spend their efforts doing their thing.

Hey even the hair dresser (care of Enizio) got in on some of the action

Now there’s of course a billion more pictures from this photoshoot… but that’s what I got for you today.

Tell me what you want to know and perhaps I’ll chat about some of the other pictures.