brand photograpy
an album of selects from my professional lens
the problem
The problem here wasn’t a business case, it was a professional one.
In all my years as a marketer, I’ve always worked with visual assets in one way or another - whether by adding mood boards to my creative briefs in my agency days or by managing entire asset libraries at Microsoft, my job has always involved making an impact on the visual work.
But until BBC moved me to LA from Vermont, I hadn’t had much professional experience actually creating the content I was strategizing for. Sure, I could take a decent photo and I thought I had a good eye, but that didn’t totally prepare me for the learning curve that was becoming my company’s go-to internal photographer.
But like most learning curves, I started at the beginning not knowing much and learned as I went. Over that span of time, I can’t possibly quantify the volume of stills produced - but I can qualify my experience and process as one guided by experimentation. I’ve shot cans in every conceivable lighting condition, scouted scores of locations across LA, and sliced approximately one metric fuck-ton of fruit, all in an effort to get that one shot.
One key lesson that hit home for me was tone. There’s so much talk about brand tone in marketing, usually in reference to copy, but I’m biased to believe that visual tone is equally, if not more, important. Everyone eats with their eyes first - our brains subconsciously register visual data within milliseconds, before our conscious minds can even begin to think about reading any messaging. Capturing the right tone in an image can either take a tremendous amount of effort to fabricate, or it can simply present itself to you - the latter happens far more often than you’d think, it just takes time to train your eye to notice those moments, they come and go so suddenly.
I had to learn how to listen with my eyes. It also helped to just listen in general - my creative skillset wouldn’t have developed the way it has without the support and collaboration from my creative directors, copywriters, marketing managers, brewers, chefs, interns, bartenders, and friends.
I’ve planned, tinkered, produced, published, failed and succeeded in all my efforts. This page is dedicated to some of my favorites.
In all my years as a marketer, I’ve always worked with visual assets in one way or another - whether by adding mood boards to my creative briefs in my agency days or by managing entire asset libraries at Microsoft, my job has always involved making an impact on the visual work.
But until BBC moved me to LA from Vermont, I hadn’t had much professional experience actually creating the content I was strategizing for. Sure, I could take a decent photo and I thought I had a good eye, but that didn’t totally prepare me for the learning curve that was becoming my company’s go-to internal photographer.
But like most learning curves, I started at the beginning not knowing much and learned as I went. Over that span of time, I can’t possibly quantify the volume of stills produced - but I can qualify my experience and process as one guided by experimentation. I’ve shot cans in every conceivable lighting condition, scouted scores of locations across LA, and sliced approximately one metric fuck-ton of fruit, all in an effort to get that one shot.
One key lesson that hit home for me was tone. There’s so much talk about brand tone in marketing, usually in reference to copy, but I’m biased to believe that visual tone is equally, if not more, important. Everyone eats with their eyes first - our brains subconsciously register visual data within milliseconds, before our conscious minds can even begin to think about reading any messaging. Capturing the right tone in an image can either take a tremendous amount of effort to fabricate, or it can simply present itself to you - the latter happens far more often than you’d think, it just takes time to train your eye to notice those moments, they come and go so suddenly.
I had to learn how to listen with my eyes. It also helped to just listen in general - my creative skillset wouldn’t have developed the way it has without the support and collaboration from my creative directors, copywriters, marketing managers, brewers, chefs, interns, bartenders, and friends.
I’ve planned, tinkered, produced, published, failed and succeeded in all my efforts. This page is dedicated to some of my favorites.