PROFESSIONAL EDITORIAL AND PRESS  PHOTOGRAPHY IN BRISTOL

Editorial photography is defined as photography which accompanies a written piece in a magazine, or photography which itself tells a story, and does so through publication in a regular magazine or newspaper.

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The term editorial photography is supposed to distinguish between commercial photography (ie photography designed for advertising or sales and marketing) and non-commercial photography, or photography whose primary purpose is to tell a story rather than to sell stuff.

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We are commercial photographers, but we also do a lot of editorial photography. The distinction for us is that our editorial photography often has to accompany, and therefore cooperate with, copy... and our editorial photography will almost always be used as a series of photographs, across which there is a tangible narrative.

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Shooting photos to accompany copy is not always as easy as it sounds. Or rather, as with so much of photography, it is easy... to do badly... but very difficult to do well.

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The complexity of editorial photography lies in how the photographs interact with the copy. You want your photographs to illustrate elements of the copy, but you don't want them to just show you what you're reading. In other words, if your copy says "John often has writes his name on a piece of paper", the best photo to accompany that is not usually a photograph of John writing his name on a piece of paper. 

Your editorial photographs should further the story, and tell the reader a little more. They are an opportunity for the publication, or your press release, to break free of the word limit and tell more of a story than the words alone could ever hope to tell.

So the ideal photography to accompany that sentence suggested above might be a photo go John surrounded by pieces of paper, some empty, some full of repeated copies of his name, in a room with boxes of pens and stacks and stacks of paper. We learn more from this photo than we knew before - John seems obsessed, this is not just an occasional thing, he is compulsive.

A good set of editorial photographs will work with, and interact with, the copy.

Havelock are one of the leading editorial photography companies in Bristol. If you are planning a press release or writing an article, and need professional photography to accompany the publication, then don't hesitate to give us a call or drop us an email.

Get in touch, let's start a conversation.

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