Andrea Johnson Photography

 

The art of creating effective Wine Image Libraries

I’m regularly asked for tips by wineries, marketing folks, public relations firms, and wine associations how to create an effective image library.  Specific needs include utilizing photos on websites to inspire consumers to visit, in press releases to gain more editorial exposure & in advertising campaigns to increase awareness for the region.

In Cole Danehower’s presentation “Optimizing your Brand’s story”, he moderated a panel of journalists & PR agencies for winery specific marketing tips. Here’s a summary of quotes on the importance of photography: “Those with the best pictures win, if you’re only going to do one thing this year for your marketing, invest in photography & partner with a photographer that understands your brand and their style reflects your story” “Images are the new headline. 90% of info transmitted into our brain are visual, visuals transmit 60,000x faster than text, and photos are so easy to share.”

I’ve spent the past fifteen years creating over 100 image libraries for wineries & tourism associations, where my background as a photojournalist has helped me craft an impactful story through imagery. Magazine editors & designers have given me the following guidelines for many of my assignments, I’ve consolidated these tips to four main points:

#1 request – Sense of place photos. What does this mean? A photo of a vineyard can look like any other vineyard around the world unless care is taken to focus on the land’s unique aspects in the best light. It’s very challenging to tell a compelling, unique story in just one photo, but with reduced editorial space and attention spans this can be the critical deciding factor if you get coverage.

Mt. Hood is an iconic backdrop to many of Oregon’s wine regions, and with people in the landscape it helps the viewer visualize creating this experience for themselves.

This aerial photo of Penner-Ash winery & estate vineyard has been on two magazine covers, the opening spread in the Wine Spectator Oregon story, and countless other stories and marketing collateral:

Acura 2010_COVER WS Dec 07 feature #1examples of dramatic weather or lighting:

Aerial view over Soter Vineyards, Willamette Valley, Oregon

Aerial view over Soter Vineyards, Willamette Valley, Oregon

Early winter storm at Maryhill winery in the Columbia River Gorge, Washington

Early winter storm at Maryhill winery in the Columbia River Gorge, Washington

Harvest moon at Doubleback vineyard, Walla Walla, Washington

Harvest moon at Doubleback vineyard, Walla Walla, Washington

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IPAD tips – importing photos & videos

Photos and videos look fabulous on the ipad, but organizing them into tightly edited albums is the key to making your presentations powerful.  I love presenting photo essays on my ipad, and have received many requests on how to import, organize, and edit visuals for the strongest impact.   The wine industy has embraced this tool for presenations, both for consumer and trade – Jordan Winery recently purchased 97 ipads for their employees to best tell their brand story in an entertaining, engaging, and interactive manner.  I have additional specific tips for how to optimize the ipad for presentations using iTunes:

Below are the main steps you can follow:

1.  Save photos inside different folders on your computer, organized by subject.  The name you choose for the folders on your computer is how the album name will display on your ipad.

2. I suggest saving all these separate subject folders inside a master folder titled “ipad photos” or something easy to remember.  Make sure you keep the master and sub folders in the same location, since this is where you’ll synch photos to your ipad in the next step.  One suggestion for wineries may be to create a master folder with their winery name, then sub-folders with winery name – hospitality, winery name – winemaking, winery name – scenics, etc.  This will save you the embarassing situation of accidentally pulling up your personal photos vs winery photos at a presentation.

3.  Open iTunes, click on your ipad device, navigate to the photo tab, then from the  ‘sync photo’ option drop down menu select the ipad photos folder you’ve created and saved on your computer.   The sub folder titles you’ve created inside your master folder will stay intact during the transfer, so all your photos will be in these separate albums.

4.  If you want to change the photos, you’ll need to do this on your computer following the steps above, then re-synch the ipad, which will delete the old photos and add the new.  There’s other options to import photos via a special cable, but it’s more time consuming.   By detault, if you accidentally download a photo when using your ipad it’s automatically saved to ‘saved photos’ album, so you want to keep this separate.

5.  Uploading your own videos is even easier.  First compress the movie file as a .mov file format and save on your desktop, then simply drag and drop this icon into your movies tab in itunes.

After much research, I’ve found the best option for showing custom presentations is a company called Shows 4 Pros, an app which is customized for the iphone or ipad an allows you to customize order of photos, effects between photos (fade or dissolve time, or manaual advancement vs auto slideshow), and create multiple lists by category. They also have excellent customer support if you run into any technical difficulties.

http://www.Shows4Pros.com