Making a photo: Knowing your audience
One of the most important aspects of planning a photographic project is knowing your audience. This happens in two parts: one is determining who your target audience will be, and the other is determining who you want them to be.
Today, I want to deal with the first part: Knowing who you expect to be viewing your photo(s). It’s good to ask yourself a few questions about your audience:
Who is your audience?
Do you expect them to be mostly women? Mostly men? Mostly children? Are they motorcycle enthusiasts? Boaters? Campers? Hunters? Dentists? Sports fans? Cat lovers?
Children don’t understand politics. Women don’t understand football. Men don’t understand women. You might get a teenager’s attention with photos of a band. You can usually get a woman’s attention with photos of shoes. You can always get a man’s attention with photos of women.
By what means will they encounter the photo?
Is this photo going to be published in a magazine? Will it be included in an article, or standing alone? Is it for an advertisement? A billboard? Is it going in a brochure? Is it an art piece, to be displayed in a gallery showing? Is it a product photo for eBay?
Yes, it’s safe to assume that a photo being printed in Cosmo is going to be viewed by women, whereas a photo printed in Sports Illustrated should target men. A product photo for Macy’s has a different audience than one for J C Penney, and neither is like Abercrombie.
What do you know about their personality?
Is the average viewer going to be someone who tends to be very conservative or liberal? Will they respond to religious imagery? Are they likely to be politically active? Romantic? Humanitarian? What social groups are they likely to relate to?
For some people a photo of a Bible evokes deep, personal meaning. Others just see a book. A humanitarian may view a photo of a homeless person completely differently from how a capitalist might see it.
What experiences do they bring with them?
Are they likely to have experienced a wedding? A funeral? A death in the family? Are they likely to have eaten a hotdog at a baseball stadium? Cotton candy at the fairground? Have they been in a car accident? Been in a submarine? A casino? A hospital? A snowstorm?
Some people love them, and some people hate them, but either way, most people have strong feelings about clowns. The same might be said about cats. Or priests. Or guns. Or naked women.
Sometimes, simply adding one of these themes will draw out strong, unpredictable emotional responses from your viewers. How can you use your photo to draw these memories and emotions out of the viewer?
Tags: photography
June 27th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
[…] your audience There are actually two parts to knowing your audience. The first is determining who your viewers will be. The reason for this is that you choose imagery to which your audience will relate. For instance, […]