Connotative technique with location photography

Clothing manufacturers have long known that their line of clothes can take on an entirely distinctive sense of style and an expectation of quality merely by associating the line with some well known sights and scenes. A Japanese company, for instance, selling its latest handbag, perhaps called Le Bag, may very well make the item from material from Japan, by Japanese workers, in Japanese factories, and yet, go the the trouble of hiring French models in Paris to hold Le Bag open beneath the some famous French sculpture in downtown Paris. This is associating all that Paris means to the consumer with something that has little if anything to do with the location. The manufacturer is creating a connotative association for the handbag using location photography.

Creating such an association for products is a well used technique through the advertising and marketing industry. The product may be something in a can, corn perhaps. The advertiser will tell you in the advertisement how fresh the corn is when picked, how careful it is cleaned and handled, how widespread the shipping, how the containers are designed to maintain maximum freshness, but these are all words. Have a truck full of freshly picked corn driving up to an outdoor market next to fields of swaying corn, golden shimmerings beneath a robust summer sun, a few birds happily gamboling overhead, and all that is fresh and wholesome in that scene immediately attaches to your can of corn. Location photography can say more about your product then all the words your best copy writers can imagine.

Location photography should always be considered the preferred venue when creating images that will represent your product to the world. Even if you think your product has nothing to be gained by associating a location with it, you might find that something about your product can be said of a location that you would not have normally thought to associate with the product. For instance, a manufacturer of sturdy dishes wanted to sell his potential customers on the strength of the dishes, but didn't think hammering them would make the best impression. Speaking to an adherent of location photography, he was convinced that his dishes would best be displayed atop a stony mountain. Viewers of the ad agreed, the solidness of the mountain stone somehow imbued the dishes and gave them confidence the dishes would last as long as the mountain itself, as if the dishes had been carved right out of the mountain itself.

Of course, location photography is essential when the product you're selling relates to a location. Polish Polka recordings will appear authentic in a cover with some scene from Poland, and a picture of the Vatican would certainly inspire someone buying Catholic hymns from the Vatican. Of course, getting to these locations may be expensive, but nobody said they have to be authentic locations. A set that appears like a field of corn, a mountain that may not be wholly stone, an American field where children are dressed in Polish traditional garb, and even a model Vatican can all suffice to give the impression the photograph was taken on location. After all, it's the meaning of the location you're attempting to appropriate, not the place itself. Think location next time you conceive your product's presentation in photography and video. Let the place say what you can't say in words.