Commercial Photography 101: What Is It?

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Commercial and Fashion Photography Week

Welcome to Commercial and Fashion Photography Week's first article focusing on the Commercial side of things! Since fashion is an integral part of the bigger commercial photography picture, Queen-Kitty and I felt that our two little niches would mesh well into one big educational week. Hopefully I don't bore all the fashion-focused readers among you with my contributions. :pringles:


Our attitudes aren't that different, really.

So let's begin at the basics:


What is Commercial Photography?


If you've ever submitted a piece to the Commercial galleries you may have seen this description before:
Photographs taken to sell or promote a product or service, such as in advertisements, merchandising, and product placement.
I... should probably rewrite that someday, but that is how the Photography > Commercial gallery is defined in our structure on DeviantArt right now. It's pretty succinct, actually - Commercial is photography taken with the intent to sell something. It is photography, as relevant to businesses.


Eggplant emoji eggplant emoji Russian hat emoji

Any photographic material that gets used in advertising is commercial, by definition - even the more conceptual stuff that expresses an idea about the product or service without showing it directly. So is most fashion and body art photography, since it exists to showcase the skills of the people behind the contents of the shoot; in this case it's more of an indirect selling but it's still advertising something at the core. Easy enough, right?

There are some fairly common misconceptions about commercial and those need to be addressed before we start looking at the fun stuff. We're going to look at some specific examples of things I see in the commercial gallery often, or uses of the word "commercial" in relation to photography that I hear often, and then move onto more about what it is once you know what it isn't.


But you will know me soon :stare:


Commercial Photography Isn't Just Paid Photography Work


Okay, so this is the trickiest distinction: Most photography you get paid for can be commercial, if you're shooting it to advertise your skills as a photographer. If you're using it to showcase someone's adorable baby's adorable cheeks and they incidentally paid you five dollars and you have no intent of marketing yourself as a baby photographer?


This gif is easier than finding a thesaurus.

Weddings aren't commercial photography, unless you're taking the shots for a florist or dressmaker or aesthetician or wedding venue. If you're taking them for the bride's memory box or whatever, that's not commercial - it's just portraiture you're getting paid for. Same deal with pet portraits; if you're shooting them for a rescue or a pet breeder or a vet, then it might be commercial. If it's for someone who wants creepy boudoir shots of their yorkie to blackmail a Presbyterian minister with, maybe not. School portraits? Not commercial, unless the school's a front for a shady child slavery ring. Musical event photographs? Might be journalism if they're for editorial purposes, might be commercial if they're to promote a band or venue.

It also isn't commercial just because you sell prints of it as fine art photography, because fine art photography pretty much by definition is "photography that is taken for art reasons and not commercial reasons". If you sell prints of local scenes for a tourism department as postcards, that is commercial. If you sell prints of pretty flowers for people to hang over their couches, it isn't.

The key word in all of the above? Promotion. If it's paid work to promote something it's commercial. Otherwise it's professional income, sure, but not commercial. This leads us to:



Not all professional photography is commercial; not all commercial photography is professional.


The small business owner who manages a bitching instagram account of their handmade wares/cappuccinos/Brazilian wax jobs? They're engaging in commercial photography. They're doing it with a cell phone. They're not a pro photographer, they just need images to promote their stuff. And every shot on that instagram account is a functional example of commercial work - it serves one purpose, to bring attention to what they're offering.



They're actually getting one of the most complete-picture experiences of commercial photography, too, because commercial photography is a results-oriented field. Your client's happiness in commercial photography is directly related to how many sales your images make for the client. A business owner who's doing it solo is seeing direct impact from every image; so is your client when they use your photography.

This might be hard to believe if you've not been in a front-line position in a business with visual-heavy marketing media but speaking from experience, customers will come in and ask for "the thing you put a picture of on facebook this morning" - even ridiculously old customers who were probably your age when IBM sold coal for steam engines. So, yeah, it's easy to gauge the success of a product shot in the real world. The downside and upside of this is that within a day of its use, your client will know whether they're going to book you again. :pringles:


"I shot this in the commercial style"


What in the actual--


Preach it, Madea.

Protip: There is no commercial style. If you shot a still life of a bottle of perfume just for fun, call a spade a spade and claim it's a still life.

I have a friend who does in-house photography for a sports retailer. She's functionally a full-time commercial photographer, right? And she does the typical packshots on those nice glittery or all white backgrounds or whatever in the hell "commercial style" is supposed to mean. She also does shots with models, shots of the products in action, shots of staff groping the product photography mannequin, environmental portraits, and shots of the interior of the shop during normal business and during events. It's all commercial photography, and it isn't pigeonholed into one style.


Because he called his eighth grade school portrait "commercial style". 
Also because he dissed Biggie.

When I see "commercial style" in a write-up about something, half the time I just scratch out the whole statement mentally because it means nothing. Unless you mean loosely that it could be used to promote the item, in which case, sure - you shot it like it was a commercial shot. But that makes it practice for commercial work - not some elusive "style". It's still, in essence, a still life (or body art portrait or architectural shot or whatever). All commercial work is something else too - packshots are still life, fashion work is portraiture, weird ad concepts are conceptual photography. Calling it "commercial" doesn't make it sound inherently cooler. Commercial photography is a function of the medium, not a subject to be photographed or a style in which to photograph.


So... It's Packshots and Fashion?


Guys, I'm not pasting that shake-head gif again in this article.


I'll post this one instead.

The Professional Photographers of Canada has two "commercial"-type accreditations for photographers, based on peer review of portfolios and the industry standards of terms like "commercial". Here is what you need to submit for review to become accredited in commercial photography, which is also a catch-all for institutional photography in their structure:
Ten (10) images from at least five (5) of the following categories: advertising, aerial, architectural, editorial, illustration, business portrait, fashion, construction, public relations, scientific, animals, legal, annual report, on-site, in-plant and industrial. A general commercial photographer is required to be qualified in a wide variety of subject areas.
And here's what you need to become accredited in corporate photography:

Ten (10) different images of ten (10) different businesses, taken during ten (10) different sessions. Must include a variety of businesses ranging from those located in offices to those located in industrial sites, people in working environments, executive portraits, products, manufacturing processes, etc. Singles and groups (2 or more people) must be represented.
That's over a dozen different niches, all of which have primarily commercial applications - and only two of which were "products" and "fashion"!



Tomorrow we'll be looking over some of these niches in more depth. Until then, just keep repeating the words "promotion, business, sell, promotion, sell, business, cat portraits, promotion" to yourself and you've got this. :pringles:


Comments6
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LadyMalvoliosander's avatar
I loved your writing style on this article. Although commercial photography isn't an area of interest to me, this article kept me hooked. :)