Commercial photography

A modern designer came into being as an intermediary between industry and a consumer. His role is to adapt the products of industry to the mass market, to make them more useful and durable, perhaps, but at the same time to make them more appealing and commercially successful. Commercial success is the touchstone of achievement in design, although designers in different cultures have different views.

Commercial photographic images are a major ingredient of our visual life, assimilated from magazines, hoardings and such contexts as brochures, catalogues, calendars, packaging and point-of-sale promotional material. Commercial photography thrives as a means of creating highly polished images of a stylized, glamorized and idealized view of the world in order to sell a product or a service.

The major categories of commercial photography are advertising in countless guises, including product photography and photo-illustration, fashion and certain categories of photography which are neither reportage nor aspire to be fine art, yet which can be fascinating social documents of considerable aesthetic quality.

In the sixties the profession of commercial photography and, in particular, fashion photography became greatly glamorized: the successful young photographer became a popular folk hero, as if the camera was a passport to the illusory world. Today the reverse seems true, a character of many magazines is dictated by the market needs of advertisers and many photographers become the greater restrictions of these imposes. The seventies and eighties have, nonetheless, brought forth a new roll-call of a talent. Outstanding contemporary figures include Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin, who have dominated the field of fashion photography; Hans Feurer, Arthur Elgort, Denis Piel and others talented fashion photographers.

Commercial photographers play a great role in our consumer society, creating the images of a life-style to which we are constantly encouraged to aspire. They create glamorized images of women and give a heightened visual to the products which are economic mainstay of our society.

During the twentieth century, both fine art photography and documentary photography became accepted by the art world and the gallery system. At first, fine art photographers tried to imitate painting styles. This movement often uses soft focus for a dreamy and romantic look.

Pursuing the role of the picture maker as the "scout," riding out in front of the wagon train, making observations of unknown territory, and report­ing back the findings to the group, requires а mastering of the basic ingre­dients of аll image making. Understand­ing the basic design elements and how light affects objects is crucial in learning how to look at and make pictures.

Becoming visually literate is оnе small step а person can take in accepting

responsibility for affirming his оr hеr own values.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16