Kris D'Amico Photography

January 26th, 2010 by Kris

This month my focus has been on the power of the relationship. If you saw this month’s e-blast I mentioned a little about how we like to create, and the creator/producer and client relationship is where this whole thing starts. If you missed the eblast for January here’s a link to it and if you’d like to sign up for the mailing list here’s a link for that as well.

So, let’s talk about the partnership of the relationship. As I’m sure you saw, I used this image in the eblast:

I think it’s a nice photo, the primary purpose of this image is a web header so we left a little area for copy and most of that effect was done in camera, to try and keep it from looking too over processed. So let’s get to why I chose this image for a email and now blog post about relationships.

A few years ago Chad of Chadwick’s took off and started his own thing and took all of Chadwick’s marketing material with them. Well, they are building a new site (old site here, the new site’s not live yet) and needed fresh images that didn’t look like a gym. So, we had several conversations to figure out a look that he liked and a look that I felt would make the most impact on the general public. I could have very well walked in and said, “I’m the artist here! Get out of my way, I’ll take care of this!” So much for the collaboration then, right?

I make this point simply to ask, where is your relationship with your vendors? If you’re a shooter, are you slamming out work that’s either 100% your vision and not getting any return clients? Or are you shooting exactly what you clients are asking for and having nothing to drop in the folio? If you are an AD, CD, freelance web pro, and are hiring folks, just to hand them a tear sheet and say make it look like this, exactly like this? Or working with folks that slam you around and hand you something that you’ve got to jump thru hoops to make it work? I think that the key is to find those resources who respect what you do and want to collaborate with you. After all it is the creative process, I think we just all need a reminder that it’s a journey, not a destination, right?

I’m off my soap box now. So, do you have any success stories? Horror stories? Feel free to share ‘em! Till next time.