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The Annual Report Jeremy Webb The Commercial slot this month is given over to a commission I recently undertook to photograph an annual report for a Suffolk-based housing association. This was carried out over 2 months of good Summer weather and this was just as well, since most of the photography relied on bright, punchy outdoor light to strike a bright, positive chord with the organizations stakeholders - their tenants, prospective tenants, suppliers, funders, bankers, management board, and any one else who had a nodding acquaintance with this organization regionally or nationally. Background The agency was a small, close-knit team who operated from a very rural location near Beccles yet still managed to find some very lucrative and prestigious accounts away from the hustle and bustle of East Anglia's more prosperous towns and cities. Because the housing associations' properties were scattered over quite a wide area of Suffolk, they knew of the agency team who lived and worked in the area and had excellent local knowledge. I was called in to briefing meetings once their designer had planned and story-boarded every page of the report. The Brief There was to be a strong emphasis on People, rather than
on the bricks and mortar of houses. The housing association prided themselves
on their customer care and relations with their tenants. Awards had been
received and industry plaudits praised their Tenant Participation Programme,
their innovative approach to the provision of housing, and their acquisition
and development of new housing stock.
I used my Bronica 6cm x 4.5cm medium format camera for all the photography in this commission and was driven by the art director to each location as required. All adults used in the pictures are real tenants of the association, no models were used, and I will try to highlight any technical issues as I attempt to take you through the shoot in sequence, image by image. Photo 1. Chief Executives portrait I have a propensity for taking the familiar subject out of its familiar environment, and planting it in an unfamiliar one. Not so that the subject looks uncomfortable, or daft, or the image surreal, but to simply break from cliché and tradition and challenge the viewer to look twice, to do differently what is usually done the same way, time and time again. It is hardly ground-breaking stuff as far as portrait
photography goes, but for me, it is a successful image in that it takes
some of the stuffiness out of a stuffy situation and gives a more relaxed
and informal twist to a formal portrait opportunity without diminishing
the subjects status or standing. On an artistic level, I liked the way
the late afternoon sun cast shadows in the background which drew emphasis
to the subjects face.
Photo 2. Children building sandcastle Its a fairly simple-looking shot, but I can't begin to
tell you how many frames of film I had to shoot before we reached this
one which made it into the brochure. Main problems... sorry, 'challenges
to overcome' were: All the above however, paled into insignificance for the poor art director who was stuck with the logo flag which either sagged miserably or was whipped-up by the wind into a flapping frenzy of illegible white. In the end, paper photocopies were mounted onto card, and suddenly, miraculously, a cheeky grin broke out on the toddlers face, just before the whole shoot collapsed into a chaotic mess of sand and sobbing. In situations like this, there is only a certain amount of time available when things fall into place for a short time only, before collapsing - the window of opportunity slamming shut unless you are ready to catch that decisive moment.
There was little chance of the photographer 'taking charge' here in the conventional sense. I let it be known what was required, then had to step back - keeping my eye glued to the viewfinder and ensuring that the art director was at my shoulder so that he could hear my instructions and (having a louder voice than mine) bellow out instructions and encouragement along with the other adults present, which eventually cut through the fierce wind. Photo 3. Grandad & Grandson The logistics of this shoot proved a far more relaxed affair, with real tenant grandad and real grandson feeding ducks at the village pond. In order to retain the intimacy of the situation, I had to shoot from the opposite bank of the pond with a telephoto lens and film rated at ISO 800 to compensate for poor, very overcast daylight. The higher film speed rating also created a more grainy feel to the image which I feel adds a certain 'softness' to the overall style of the picture without having to resort to further 'cheesiness' by the use of soft focus filters or other such techniques. My only regret is that the chosen image did not actually feature any of the ducks themselves, or lumps of bread for that matter. Although the closeness of the boy and his grandad suggest a shared activity such as feeding time for a pet or animal of some kind, the ducks were too low, down the bottom of a steep bank, and to include them in the image would have meant that grandad and grandson would be much less prominent in the final image.
Photo 4. White picket Fence As a means of breaking-up the boring number information, its a deliciously simple device for killing 2 birds with the same stone - retaining a sense of positivity and safety (since the representation of a fence signifies security, and the boundary to ones property), it also acts as a simple graphic device conveying information yet still remaining a bright, summery photograph. Its not rocket science, and the photograph is nothing special, but as a piece of visual communication borne from the brain of an advertising executive, its simple and straightforward, and sometimes that's all you ever need - effective communication.
Photo 5. Tenants Meeting notice Conceived as an image to promote 'Accountability', this photo features a member of staff ferried by car to a suitably attractive location where a fake notice board was planted in the verge to display a small poster. Although the location was chosen for its attractive 'typical Suffolk village'-type appeal, we were unlucky with the weather on this occasion and had to press on with other shots at other locations. From a technical point of view, it was important here
to throw the background out of focus, but not too out of focus. This was
easily achieved with a wide aperture on standard lens which gave just
enough depth of field to keep the shoulder and notice board sharp, but
render anything beyond that nicely out of focus to give greater emphasis
to the foreground.
This image accompanied a page headed 'Professional' and deals with a section of the report discussing quality standards of excellence, in-house training and so on. Although I like the idea for the shot, I'm not sure that its execution does the idea justice. Here again, the photo features actual employees of the association in front of one of its latest building projects. As before, that east coast wind has whipped-up the hair, and the dust from a sandy building site, and the bright sun forced my amateur models eyes into squints which are only just conceivably the result of their wide smiles. Overall, I just feel it looks too contrived, too artificial to carry it off with credibility. One can almost see the telephone base unit dangling and spinning at her feet, and the lap top looks dated and awkwardly held.I could plead time pressure as my excuse for this one (the shot was done on a lunch break!) but I really should have taken more care of the basics like avoiding the strange floating slate tiles above the mans hard hat, bouncing some light back into his face, positioning the figures more carefully within the frame, and so on. Here again, the image was designed precisely so by the agency with very little room for manoeuvre.
Photo 7. Front Cover Breaking with traditional 'safe' notions of what an annual report should look like, the front cover was cut so that the family and house opened-out onto a landscape of rolling countryside and blue, cloudless Summer sky. The Landscape was straightforward enough. The scene itself is a stones throw from the agency headquarters and required a tripod in late afternoon sun with a blue grad filter to accentuate the sky. Only the family group shot remained, and once again the use of a real family (not models) proved essential to the ethics and consistency of the shoot. Here the shot worked more or less immediately. After the beach sandcastle shot, I was primed and ready to get the shot in the can within 30 seconds and mercifully, there were no twitchy, fidgety, bored kid here and the shoot was done......and finally... Overall, I feel the annual report was a success. I'm pleased with most of it, although there are areas I've already highlighted where I feel I could've done much better. Certainly, the housing association and the agency were pleased with a job well done and feedback from employees and tenants was also very positive, and in the end, it all rests on whether the agency and client were happy with the final product. It's a commission I chose to describe in detail for the commercial section this month because it unites in one job several issues which I've raised in recent months - the briefing process and background knowledge of your client, location portraits, factors which we can and cannot control, and so on. It's the type of commission which tested my resources, and in an age when the commissioning of bespoke photography within the business sector seems more and more bland in its conception ( certainly as far as regional commissioning goes), I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity for a bit of creative thinking from a local agency which underpinned this particular shoot.
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