Unless you are a “named” photographer we use tags to describe how you shoot. Pick the tags below that best describe your photography to see how I refer to you.
- color
- black & white
- film
- digital
- available light
- lit
- heavily lit
- over lit
- large format
- medium format
- 35mm
- holga/junk
- shoots men
- shoots women
- shoots children
- studio
- location
- portrait
- photojournalist
- fashion
- beauty
- still life
- fine art
- advertising
- outdoor
- automotive
- food
- interior
- sports
- conceptual
- travel and leisure-e
- urban
- gritty
- nike
- high production value
- low production value
- slick
- raw
- grainy
- saturated
- captured moment
- americana
- weird
- stark
- quirky
- props
- lyrical
- painterly
- high contrast
- naked
- cool
- off moment
- awkward
- muted color
- crunchy (super sharp)
- great casting
- tight
- landscape
- action
- sets
- real people
- models
- trashy
- heroin
- vintage
- webberie
- annieish
- assisted for annie
- lachapelleish
- egglestonish
- dan winters on peyote
- meisel’s brother from another mother
I think there’s something insightful here like having a 2-4 word description is bad because there are so many people that have the same 2-4 words and over 12 is probably bad because then it gets hard to remember all the words.
You can tell me all the tags I forgot and I’ll add them in.
Comments 31
Your last section above is hilarious. I’d like to know which photographers are in your Rolodex under “Dan Winters on Peyote”?
I’ve long felt that, in order to really move toward the top, you’ve got to refine your look down to where it could be summed up in a few words, or one sentence. I think Alec Soth used to talk about that in his blog too — getting your work to the point where it could be summed up like: “_____ ______, he’s that guy that shoots _______”. There are simply so many photographers out there, that you’ve got to specialize in order to be remembered. At least at the higher echelons.
I’d like for you to go back thru all the photographers you’ve featured here — Kratochvil, Chessum, Reidel, Corbijn, etc — and tell us what labels you put on them. Just out of curiosity.
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 8:11 am ¶Ninja.
Ghost.
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 8:17 am ¶You forgot the obvious:
- gimmicky
- kitschy
- Lord-of-the-Rings-y (overly digitally processed so people look like video game characters)
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 8:23 am ¶Stupid does not seem to be on the list. Bummer.
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 8:39 am ¶How about Platonish, or Russ Meyerish, or Kubrickesque, or ManRayish, or Les Krimsesque…..
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 9:19 am ¶Well you may be disapointed to be the victim of bait and switch but I’m sure i would get your attention………
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 9:26 am ¶@5 scott: Yeah, the ish’s go on forever. I also like poor man’s annie or poor man’s lachapelle
@1 crunchy: I think all the “named” photographers have a tag nobody else has. Like antonin and his tilted frame and corbijn and his processing plus you can say the guy who shoots U2 and everyone knows who you’re talking about.
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 9:35 am ¶@3 a shorter way to say Lord-of-the-Ringsy might be Fiscus-y
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 9:58 am ¶I’d love to see a Family Tree of New York City photographers and assistants, and see who assisted who, and who then went on to be a quality photographer on their own. Would Annie be at the top of the tree? Avedon? Seliger? Who’s spawned the greatest number of good photographers? And inversely, who’s spawned the greatest number that are now either back working in their family’s business in DesMoines, or in therapy, to delete the memory of assisting for them?
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 10:19 am ¶I come from a food photography perspective so these are things I think when I looking to define a shooter’s tag profile
natural
fussy
unstyled
overstyled
spontaneous
sluggish
energetic
vibrant
clever
Maybe these are not “meta” enough and too fine-grained in detail for your purposes here!
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 10:23 am ¶I can’t wait to see Fiscusy go away. Fiscus has content under his process. The 10 million copycats do not.
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 10:31 am ¶Annie Von Pelle?
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 11:29 am ¶How about “cinematic”?
I’m always hearing that one used by PEs, ADs and CDs.
Or:
snapshotty (as opposed to snap-shoddy)
faux-testino
mini-terry
haute-shit
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 11:44 am ¶yeah, I get “film noir” a lot
lol@haute shit
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 12:01 pm ¶people say I am “square”
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 12:31 pm ¶I get “street” a lot. Not sure what it means.
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 12:35 pm ¶I’m not a pro and maybe I’m not supposed to be here to partecipate, but my tags are:
mauro
del romano
drmauro
me
myself
I
today if you have not a tag, you couldn’t be find from you, from agencies, from customers, even your own family looking for holidays pictures on flickr.
Maybe in a future more enlightened and clever age, personal ‘tags’ will be a visual way to reproduce the world and not only an etymological exercise, in which everyone lies about their own works…
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 12:45 pm ¶This is fun, but how is a photographer to label himself? Or maybe this is why you started photo rank. I guess the value here is that we can look at the list and pick things we want to be, then go become it. What a great career.
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 12:47 pm ¶I’m wondering if this has something to do with the article I submitted last night to the Photo Rank section. I wasn’t sure what was supposed to go in the “tags” blank, so I put in “photographer” and “fashion photographer.” If I’d seen this post first I probably would have been more descriptive.
( http://www.rank.aphotoeditor.com/story.php?title=Charles_Beckwith-1 )
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 12:49 pm ¶Photo editors and art directors have these weird conversations all the time where we discuss styles of photography and photographers using tags and then in conversations with creatives it gets really strange because they know what they want but don’t know anyone who shoots that way.
Poor man’s Annie, B/W, with low production value and quirky props.
Color, urban, snapshotty, cool, real people with muted color.
Doesn’t really have anything to do with Photo Rank alltho I would love a script where I could tick off what I want and photographers names would appear. May have to build that.
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 1:17 pm ¶Nike?
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 1:29 pm ¶@ Comment 20:
Ironically, I just had a long conversation with the Advertising director of Communication Arts last night, about this very thing. I just bought one of their “post card” packages, and with that, you get this listing on Creative Hotlist, (which I’d never even heard of).
http://creativehotlist.com/
To me, it’s gotten to the point with these databases, sort of like it got with the printed directories, where there are so damn many of them, that you run the risk of overtaxing any client, by forcing them to look thru too many of these photographers’ sources. There’s Workbook.com, and this CreativeHotlist, and PhotoServe, and any number of others. If I was a client, would I actually take the time to key in keywords in every one of those databases? Something like: “Lifestyle photographer, Los Angeles, Color, Location”? And really, when you see the checkbox choices of these databases, aren’t they so limiting? Within “LosAngeles Lifestyle Location Color”, that still leaves twelve thousand photographers in the running.
What I’d like to see is some way to link ALL of those databases, where a client, (like A.P.E.) would only have to input his data ONE TIME. Like I told that person last night, if anyone can/will do it, it’ll be Google.
But there also needs to be those quirky keywords like the original post referred to. And his list above is a pretty good start. I just wonder how many would show up under “Poor Man’s Annie”? Or “Fiscus WannaBee”?
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 1:36 pm ¶bad
awful
contrived
convinced
not convinced
lame
spiteful
crappy
man hands
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 3:23 pm ¶If photography is bad we don’t talk about it.
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 5:06 pm ¶I hate when I hear people say ‘ethnic.’ WTF is that? About as precise as ‘world music’ i guess.
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 7:03 pm ¶This is kind of like a del.ico.us tag cloud. I haven’t been real good about keeping up with my tags, but here are my photographer links
http://del.icio.us/idesofmay/Photographers
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Posted 07 Dec 2007 at 8:29 pm ¶brilliant post.
re: comment #9 a family tree that is very interesting. from a fashion standpoint i’d say nick knight has actually been a great ’spawner’ of talent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/style/tmagazine/15tquest.html?pagewanted=all
“Craig McDean was Knight’s assistant at this time. “I learnt more in my first month with Nick,” he says, “than in four years at college.” A succession of talented photographers have since assisted Knight, including Elaine Constantine, Sean Ellis and Solve Sundsbo. Juergen Teller asked to be taken on too, only to be told that his work was already so strong that Knight had nothing to teach him.”
and knight is only 48! amazing.
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Posted 08 Dec 2007 at 2:05 am ¶i wonder how many photogs fit into the tag of ‘can shoot anything’.
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Posted 08 Dec 2007 at 2:07 am ¶Quick question for ya : how does an up and coming photographer find out about bids for advertising campaigns? How does someone find out about them initially to be able to bid? Thanks for taking the time to read this, much appreciated!
Rocksteady,
Danno~
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Posted 09 Dec 2007 at 12:17 am ¶@29- They find you. That is after you done lot’s of marketing via the various ways to get your name out there.
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Posted 09 Dec 2007 at 10:43 pm ¶@ 30 : so until that time of them ‘finding you’ , what are you to do in the meantime? Any other way other than waiting for them to find you?
Rocksteady,
Danno~
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Posted 10 Dec 2007 at 4:50 pm ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 7
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