About three seasons ago, this area employed a marketing director who immediately began to spew forth a steady stream of photographs relating to various activities at the area. Though his intentions were good, in all those years and through all those pictures, most editors have hardly been tempted to use a single photograph.
While this example is extreme, it is in no way isolated. It is typical of the ski area publicity picture wasteland.
Yet, there is nothing more eye-catching than a good photograph. It serves to attract attention to an accompanying article, or even tell a story by itself.
And, while there is nothing better than a good photo, there is nothing worse than a bad one. It represents not only a waste of money, but a waste of opportunity. Consistently burdening media people with poor quality pictures tends to create a negative impression which may be hard to erase. Bad pictures leading off a publicity packet can cause an impatient editor to toss the whole works in the basket.
Successful publicity pictures begin with the person making the photo assignment. The marketing or PR person should have a clear objective in mind and make certain that the photographer understands the message.
Sometimes this process fails right at the beginning in the hiring of a photographer. In an effort to cut costs, a ski area may employ an inexperienced person whose work reflects the lack of expertise. A good photographer need not be a former Life staffer, nor have a locker full of lenses, nor be a high priced specialist, but he needs to be technically knowledgable and able to comprehend the ski area’s objectives.
How do you judge a good photograph? Basic failures in pictures are legion: bad exposure, lack of contrast, poor focus, improper posing, poor composition. There are also subtle errors that are no less damaging—perhaps the worst is to purport to show something which isn’t really in the picture.
Which leads to captions on pictures. An imaginative caption can command almost as much importance as the photograph itself. Often editors will run very average photos because some clever publicity person wrote a catchy caption which brought the total package to life.
Photographs alone can’t make or break a ski area, but they can tip the balance in the amount of publicity the area gets. They can make the effort of taking the picture pay off.
