United Kingdom-based photographer and filmmaker Dan Prince’s latest promo is a creative new take on marketing a personal project. His “Reflection” project features portraits of clergy members made during their own personal moments of reflection in church. Dan worked with a designer on the unique promo, which appropriately resembled a book that could be found in the back of any church pew. We caught up with Dan to learn more about the creative process:
Can you tell me a bit about “Reflection?” Was it a personal project or commissioned?
The project is a personal self-promotional project, but it was all inspired from a BBC1 commission, Great North Passion. I was photographing shipping art installation shipping containers and one was inside a church. I noticed people sitting on their own in a moment of reflection and I thought it would be a nice idea to capture members of the clergy in moments of reflection in their church environment.
What made you decide to do a promo specifically promoting this project?
Every year I try and photograph a self-promotion project and this seemed to be a strong idea. I thought about getting the quotes after I had shot the first few portraits, so I contacted the previous vicars to get their quote. This started the idea of the book and how the project would come together.
I’d love to hear how you came up with the idea. It’s very fitting for the subject matter, but how did you conceptualize it in the first place?
Originally I was going to only do it as an email campaign, as there were a lot of images in the series. I worked with Dean Pannifer, creative director at Bonnyday. We have collaborated for the past 5 years on my promotional mail outs and designs and have been successful — winning an award for “My day as a robot” project. We always bounce ideas around based on the actual photography and come up with design ideas for the projects. I usually have a good idea of how I want it to look but it’s great to collaborate and see the ideas evolve into the finished printed piece.
How many were sent out, and what types of clients did you send these to?
Reflection was the trickiest of all of the projects we have worked on, and Dean actually came up with the book design as he thought a limited printed piece would be worth while. It was a very costly thing, so we decided on a limited number of 50 and send to creatives, publishers and bloggers who would hopefully write about it in the UK, USA and in Europe. It’s also great to produce something that is original and will be remembered as well as very fitting for the project.
Dan sent out an email campaign in October and shipped the books just last month. He’s already received good feedback from creatives who liked the project and wanted to hear more about it.