Photography is used extensively in advertising, fashion, music, and sports to promote products, artists, and events. In advertising, photographs aim to catch people's attention, often using unrealistic images, celebrities, or visual effects. In fashion, photographs in magazines showcase new clothing and styles on models to influence purchasing. In music, photographs in magazines provide exposure and recognition for artists, allowing fans to see them perform or learn about their lives. In sports, action photographs highlight athletes' skills and efforts to promote sports as appealing and fun. Across these domains, photography is a primary vehicle for recognition, promotion, and influence.
2. Photography is used in the advertising
industry to get peoples attention and to of
course advertise the produce the best way
they can. With this example image, it’s
unrealistic and obviously not real and that’s
what will catch peoples attention. There are
many factors involved when using images to
advertise something. You’ll find where
possible a well known/famous person is used
in the ad to catch people’s attention straight
away and if they think that person uses the
product being advertised, there’s more
chance the audience will go out and buy it.
For example the beauty appeal is used with
things like shampoos. Then like the example
used there’s visual effects used to make it
different. If a famous person is in the
advertisement, it’s obvious more people are
going to pay attention. A company that has
done just this recently is the Got Milk?
Campaign. They’ve used a series of
celebrities from actors to singers and bands.
This type of thing works really well as it
sticks in your mind. By using a variety of
famous people, the more fans they get, there
fore the more recognition the product will
get. They’re not just addressing a specific
type of audience. The more out there the
advert is, whether people think it’s bad or
over the top, they still will have caught their
attention and that is what matters.
3. Photography is used in fashion because that’s the main thing we see fashion through. For
example fashion is every where, fashion week, magazines on television. The only way to show
fashion is through images. Fashion images and photo-shoots mainly feature in magazines. As
you can see above the model Alexa Chung features in Elle magazine and you can see in the
corner that the clothes she’s wearing are advertised with where they’re from and the price. By
having Alexa Chung feature in the magazine, girls who like her will go out and buy what she’s
wearing. This is often what a lot of magazines do. Then they go on to normal models wearing
more clothes and have them feature in the magazine through a full length shot. It’s not just
clothes this happens with, the same concept is also used for hair styles, make – up and so on. It’s
all about making the product/clothes look good and desirable. Celebrities will always feature in
the magazines and what they were wearing and where. The audience likes this because they get
to know more about the celebrities in question and what everybody’s wearing at that specific
time. This also gives the designer/shop a reputation and recognition.
4. Photography is used in the music industry to
show the audience their favourite
bands/artists and them in action. For
example many images we see pictures in
music magazines of a particular band or
artist singing and then a story/interview
about that specific time in their lives. By
doing this the bands get more recognition
and the fans are more aware of what’s going
on with them. Andy Willsher is a very
famous music photographer who usually
takes images that feature in all the big music
magazines such as NME and Q. Music
images often have the ability to become iconic
very quickly. For example the image of Amy
Winehouse is now one of the most iconic of
her. He does portraits and image of the artist
in question performing. Fans like seeing
these kind of images as they want to be well
aware of what’s happening and if they’re
missing anything. Without photography in
music some people wouldn’t find it as
appealing. The singers wouldn’t be known by
face if no photography was involved. It’s a
big reason of them getting the fan base they
do. Because artists and bands aren’t pictured
as much as other industries are, when they
are it’s sometimes a big thing for the fans and
it gets them talking about the artist more
than usual for a time.
5. For this, I looked at Bob Martins images as I
like the techniques he uses. For example in
the picture of the cyclist, he’s accentuated
everything in the picture. He’s done this by
using a slow shutter speed. By doing so it’s
created a colour mix of the banners and
audience that were originally clear in the
picture. This means all the focus is on the
cyclist. The colours capture you for the right
reasons. After looking through a variety of
his images I can see he uses the same kind of
techniques. As you can see with the two
images below, by mixing colours and
different shades, he makes the images a lot
more interesting to look at. By darkening the
image of the swimmer and upping the
contrast, you pay attention to he swimmers
physique and the effort of the sport itself
and with sports photography, it’s to do just
that. It’s promoting it and making it look
appealing and quite fun.
6. A photo journalist is a photographer that
collects news and events by taking images
that will represent them. For example they’d
be the person that takes images of the
Olympics to accompany the news. They take
pictures of every day things. A photo
journalist is the same as a reporter how ever
you’ll find they have to make more on the
spot decisions and they often carry camera
equipment with them as once the
opportunity has passed, they can’t get it
back. They also have to be quite careful of
what images they capture as they have to
think of the audiences reaction and whether
it’s appropriate. In a news situation, if it was
a quite well covered area and there was a lot
of attention surrounding it, they would have
to extra careful not to cause offence to people
and so on. The photographer I’ve researched,
Dorothea Lange, was a documentary
photography as well as a photo journalist.
Her images were to get a reaction and she
photographed quite important and serious
things. The image what features the children
is them at a public school in San Francisco
prior to the internment of Japanese
Americans. In the end her images were so
critical that the army impounded them.
7. Fine art photography is photography that
has a meaning behind it, whether little or
small. They don’t feature in magazines, just
galleries and exhibitions to be sold. Fine art
photography stands to contrast photo
journalism. These sort of images are used
cards (birthday, Christmas), post cards and
calendars. They can be quite conventional or
as you can see below with the flag, quite
different. The style will change for the
different themes.