Elliott Images - My ideas on creativity.

Group activity.

Most of us in the advertising industry like to think of ourselves as creative people, but in truth it takes many different types to create that great ad. The real creative types conceive something different and unusual to tell a particular story or sell a product's advantages. Usually, the simpler the message, the more effective the ad. To stop the message becoming a committee job encompassing too many ideas, the people working with the creative types, need to be professional technicians, who can work with the original idea, and give it substance, without layering on additional levels of interpretation over the initial creative idea. I like to think of myself and my photography in that light.
The images that appeal to me the most are those that were shot with some form of guiding light working with me, off whom I bounced ideas and checked that I was on the right track. In this game, it takes at least two to do a superb tango, and images from these co-operative efforts please me the most.

The more creative, the longer it takes.

Of course creativity can also be controlled by budget. The way I see it, the more time you can devote to a photograph, the more perfect it's going to be. There is that old saying in the ad industry "There's never enough time to do the job in the first place, but always enough time for a reshoot". So often, when working under tight deadlines, I've taken my hot-stuff photography down to show the client, and even while it is being looked at, and without any prompting from the client, I realise I could have improved it by doing this or that. Without being requested to do a reshoot, I have an overwhelming desire to do it again, regardless, eliminating the imperfections that in the greater scheme of things are probably very minor, and would go unnoticed by anybody but me.
As a professional, my costs and remuneration are considered against the number of hours available for work. You tell me the budget, and I'll figure out how many minutes I've got to do the job. If the time required is less than your budget, I can plan to reshoot. Do it once, spend some time living with it, and working out how to improve it, and then do it again with a better result. I subscribe to the idea that "Creativity is 5% Inspiration and 95% Perspiration". When I see a really outstanding photograph, I see exceptional manhours of labour, perfecting a good idea. But in the real world, nobody gets that amount of time to work it all out.

Images in the portfolio.

The images in this portfolio have all been done under "pressure" where the client has briefed me on what they wanted when I collected the items, and required the items and images back as soon as possible, and they did mean "yesterday". Most items have been shot the "normal way", a system of lighting set-ups and angles established after many years of shooting similar products for the same client. Even though we mixed old and new photography, and the items were shot at different times, they "hung together" well, and very few had to be reshot to fit the new layouts. There was a consistency in the design and layout that made the ads instantly recognisable.