It’s always encouraging when our consulting services flow seamlessly from one to the next. Photographer Steve Boxall, who is based in Miami, Florida, first worked with my colleague Marianne Lee in our Marketing Partner program. After they focused on expanding his client reach, they felt it was a good time to refresh his presentation and I came on board as the photo editor.
Steve is an accomplished lifestyle, portrait, and hospitality photographer, who has recently done a lot of corporate projects. His clients include TransDev, Verizon, Solis Health, Viva Resorts, Kimpton Hotels, Adidas, Condé Nast Traveller, and Royal Caribbean. In addition, Steve has been taking photographs for the Zero Gravity Corporation since 2006. During that time, he’s flown on hundreds of parabolic “micro-gravity” flights and has over twenty-four hours of zero gravity, capturing content on each of the flights.
Our process for a web edit starts with a questionnaire and a conversation where we reconcile the photographer’s interests and skills with the opportunities in the marketplace. Steve’s responses help me to understand the current state of his photography business and marketing materials. It also allows us to consider his business goals. Lastly, we agree on the photographer’s elevator pitch that answers the questions, “what types of pictures do you make?” and “what types of clients do you make them for?” Once we have that, all the decisions we make about the edit will support that elevator pitch.
After we decide on the direction for the web edit, the photographer sends me about 500-1000 photos. I divide the pictures into categories and separate the “ins” from the “outs.” Then, I sequence each category and fine-tune the elements.
From the onset, Steve was looking to tighten up his current presentation. He wanted to organize his work in a more thoughtful way, and I noticed that his galleries felt somewhat disjointed. We both decided to implement navigation that makes it easier to view the images and establish cohesive image separation and gallery breakdown. Steve specifically wanted to find a meaningful way to display his workforce/corporate portraits, as well as tighten up his Zero-G gallery to feature the best and most varied images.
We bounced around with whether we wanted to separate the Workforce, Corporate, and Industrial-style work — since they appeal to a lot of the same client types — and decided to display these in a single gallery as the images feel targeted to those audiences and work together successfully. We also reorganized the “Editorial” section to present his Lifestyle and Leisure work, including resorts and vacation photos, along with a great selection of new work from Steve’s recent commercial assignments. Along the way, I decided to include a specific “Portraits” gallery as it felt like there was enough strong work here to justify its own section on Steve’s site. We also tightened up the Zero Gravity gallery to make it feel a bit less overwhelming and repetitive, curating the sequence to include only the strongest and most varied images from these many different flights.
After editing the other subcategories, we realized that his “Personal Work” section was already pretty successful as is, as each project was already organized and sequenced quite well and offered a nice additional selection of Steve’s experience. Steve and I both benefitted from our preliminary conversations, and I think we were able to get on the same page about our goals from the start, which helped shape this into a successful edit with very few issues, problems, or confusion.
The final product here feels much more concise and targeted. I enjoy the navigation between the various galleries and I think it’s a great representation of Steve’s capabilities as a photographer. It will definitely go hand in hand with Marianne’s marketing efforts as she builds the email campaigns inviting clients to check out Steve’s work, leading them to a new presentation on his website.
Check out our other Web Edit case studies here, or check out our other Photo Editing services. If you’re ready to discuss an edit of your own, email us!