How Lifestyle Photography is Stealing My Soul - Part I
If you're in advertising (how to tell: you've ever uttered/heard "Our client-partner wants to leverage the synergies of this campaign in a targeted, opt-in e-blast" and only thrown up a little bit of your morning Frappaccino®), you know what lifestyle photography is. If not, here's a brief lesson:
How to identify lifestyle photography in two easy, yet redundant, steps:
1. Look at a print ad
2. Does the person in the ad make you think, "Why is that jackass smiling?"
If you answer "yes," then you're witnessing the unholy glory that is lifestyle photography. Formerly the purview of royalty-free stock photo houses and back-alley freelancers, lifestyle photography has now seeped into every corner of advertising and into all manner of brands. Almost every web banner ad you see has a lifestyle image, assuming it isn't trying to get you to shoot Osama. Why? I don't know. Maybe an attractive piece of talent is supposed to distract me from the heartbreak of psoriasis or the realization that my office cubicle is probably littered with X10 wireless surveillance cameras installed by my junior writers.
This blog makes her happy. Doesn't it make you happy, too?
Or maybe the people who demanded such me-too fare are just stupid or lazy or both. Here’s a hint: I know your product is supposed to make me happier. I don’t need Mindy from the local non-union agency flashing her bleached chompers at me to get the point.
Enough for now.
Fox
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