The Wonderful Machine team returned yet again this October to the Big Apple for a round of portfolio meetings. And for every month we return we find ourselves not only on an alternate route there (Why Staten Island, Google Maps?) but with a fresh perspective on the ever-changing needs of our clients. After our casual GPS tour of Staten Island, we weaved our way over to our first meeting in the Financial District with the creative team at The 88. Armed with breakfast snacks for the team, we spoke to them about their photography needs in a rapidly changing digital world.
You can tell it wasn’t exactly a picturesque route or day when we made our way into NYC.
In our meeting with The 88, Senior Social Creative Director Josh Helman expressed to us that they have a need for a lot of menswear photographers for brands, but their current struggle in this market is that they find the prevalent on-white shots aren’t exactly “sexy.” They’re looking for innovative ways to make their brands stand out, especially with their social media campaigns.
Some favorites among the selection of beauty, still life, fashion and food photographers we showed were Stephanie Diani and Alistair Tutton. For the creative team working primarily with the agency’s food & beverage clients, the thoughtfulness of Alistair’s print portfolio really stood out. For the other teams, Stephanie Diani’s celebrity portraiture portfolio was just in line with the style they look for in spokesperson photography. The icing on the cake was that Stephanie is local to New York, a great advantage for a team of creatives who regularly hires freelance photographers for their in-house production studio.
Erika stands with the selection of photographer portfolios we brought for our first meeting at The 88.
After saying goodbye to the creatives at The 88, Erika and I enjoyed a long lunch at local NY burger joint, Bareburger. Once we were sufficiently full on burgers and fries, we headed over to Hearst Towers for a meeting with our friends at Woman’s Day. Already familiar with WM, the Woman’s Day team was happy to report that our directory is a staple in the office when they’re looking for photographers around the country for their many shoots. Though the team was well familiar with our directory, they didn’t realize the extent of our stock requests, which they were excited to learn about.
Woman’s Day also let us know that they are often looking for photographers who shoot triumphant stories of women, and they are always looking for more people to cover their women spotlight stories. So we were happy to share the work of reportage photographer Allison Joyce and her work on women’s issues in India.
The final stop of the day was at Hudson Yards for our meeting with Maybelline. The creatives at Maybelline know exactly what they want from a photographer and photo shoot, and it was great to talk to them about their specific needs. They said that they like to hire seasoned photographers because they’ve found that sometimes people on set can become starstruck if they’re not familiar with the game. Unlike some of our other clients who look more for the cutting edge, Maybelline told us that they like to use photographers who already fit into the “girl next door” look that is so closely tied to the brand. They did tell us that they like to try out photographers they haven’t necessarily worked with before for some of their smaller social media campaigns.
The team here was especially taken with the work of Anyā (Likhitha Lirikrishna) and Monica Stevenson. And because Maybelline is looking to grow their market in Southeast Asia this coming year, they were especially happy to find that Anyā was based in Singapore. They also asked about how we could provide production support to them in Asia, so we told them all about the resources and production capabilities we have all over the globe.
After a successful round of meetings in the city that never sleeps, Erika and I scooted back to Philly so we could get some rest before work the next day.
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