Photography in advertising

I was recently researching Annie Leibovitz, a contemporary photographer, for another class but found her work interesting. She always uses celebrities in her photos, starting off doing stuff for Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone. Later she started doing photography for ads, her main point of focus still being celebrities. She would never concentrate on the product in the photographs so these ads are photographed to look more like portraits rather than ads. Of course in class we also try to do this. We want our ads to be so interesting and eye catching that you forget it's an ad.

Here are some ads she photographed for Disney that I thought were absolutely beautiful:









Check out the rest from this campaign

Another campaign she photographed for was American Express. Using celebrites, she showed them in personal environments. There's a certain "story" behind each one, like much of her other work. Here are some examples:






I found all of her work to be amazing and the ads are all beautifully designed. It definitely inspires me to create better visuals for my ads and it opens my eyes to all the different possibilities in advertising. A professional photographer can be helpful in some cases depending on the ad. I encourage the class to take a look at her work for some inspiration!