What are the characteristics of advertising photography and how to understand the "image age"?

First, the definition of advertising photography

Advertising photography is photography with commodities as the main shooting object, which reflects the characteristics of commodity shape, structure, performance, color and use, thus arousing customers' desire to buy. Advertising photography is an important means to spread commodity information and promote commodity circulation. With the continuous development of commodity economy, advertising is no longer a simple business activity, it has become a mirror of real life and an important means and medium of advertising communication.

Second, the characteristics of advertising photography:

Advertising photography is a category of photography at first, but it is closely related to advertising. Many people regard advertising photography as pure artistic photography, which is actually a mistake. Although advertising photography and artistic photography are inextricably linked, they are actually different.

(1) Photography takes conveying information as its main function, so advertising photography belongs to the category of practical art ... From the perspective of modern communication function, advertising photography can also be called the art of information transmission. Advertising photography must aim at the actual communication effect, have a very clear market goal and propaganda purpose, require shooting and production for the target market and target users, and pay attention to practical results. Advertising photography must convey information clearly and accurately. Although its evaluation criteria also attach importance to ideology and artistry, it should also consider its commercial factors at more levels.

② Practicality of photography.

The power of advertising photography lies in attracting more people's attention and arousing people's desire to buy goods. Its practicability is obvious. The criteria for evaluating advertising photography are based on the results at the end of the whole advertising promotion activity, and the economic effect and social effect are the criteria for testing the advertising effect of advertising photography. In other words, the evaluation and prediction of advertising works is based on the role of advertising in commodity promotion, which is always market-based and consumer-centered, and cannot be based on personal feelings. Specifically, an advertising photo, no matter how exquisite it is in art, can cause enough aesthetic effect if it lacks the power of "selling", but it can't be regarded as a good advertising photo if it can't stimulate consumers' specific consumption desire and clear enthusiasm for participation. Moreover, the purchase purpose inspired by excellent works is very clear, that is, it is aimed at a certain type of goods designated by the merchants.

③ Advertising photography with greater constraint.

From the photographer's point of view, the conception and creativity of advertising photography are restricted by the advertising strategy of the advertised goods, which has great limitations. In particular, the conception and creation of advertising photography pay attention to positioning and orientation design, and the content performance is often very prescriptive around the purpose of advertising. But as the conception and creativity of artistic photography, there is no limit in this respect. Art photography can pursue originality and has a lot of free expression space. Therefore, advertising photography must strive to pay attention to the personality and style of goods, often hiding personal style behind it, and strive to obey the needs of goods, otherwise it will be difficult to achieve the predetermined goal.

Because advertising photography works must be published through specific media, its effect is restricted by specific media expressions. No matter what media the photo advertising works are finally released through, it is a comprehensive collective activity (including the process of advertising creativity, art design and manuscript writing), which is directly subordinate to the promotion activities and cannot exist alone. And from the audience's point of view, advertising photography should take into account the different consumption levels of goods, or create for different levels of consumers.

Advertising photography is different from news photography (conveying information in the simplest way) and artistic photography (making photos in a very casual way). Its ultimate goal is neither aesthetic priority nor reflecting the photographer's personal feelings and thoughts. Its ultimate goal is to spread commodity information and tell ideas as the main motivation, cater to consumers' interests and achieve the purpose of sales promotion, which is obviously utilitarian. Advertising is a prelude to commodity competition, therefore, the photographer's thinking and skills must be ahead of or synchronized with the changes of various commercial factors in order to innovate. In terms of expression, advertising photography needs more techniques and skills than ordinary art photography, and art photography is based on faithfully expressing the aesthetic feeling of goods, because the aesthetic feeling of goods directly comes from the function of goods themselves, which truthfully reflects the beauty of goods and also reflects the quality and function of goods to a certain extent. On the other hand, advertising photography needs the perfect application of technology and skills, because any slight negligence and mistake in the picture may remind customers of the quality of goods. Make customers have distrust of goods, thus affecting the sales of goods.

Second, the development of advertising photography

Before the birth of photography, or strictly speaking, before photography can be spread through excellent printing, the field of advertising communication has always been the competition between painting and words. The formation of advertising photography was mainly developed in the 20th century, and its form was constantly improved with the development of printing media plate-making technology. In the 50 years after the invention of photography, it is still difficult for photography to enter the advertising field, mainly because the reproduction technology of photography has not reached satisfactory quality, and the spread of photography can only be a simple reproduction technology, which is difficult to transmit image information in a wider space, and the cost is expensive, which ordinary advertisers cannot afford.