Monday, May 10, 2010

High-Impact Photography

WWF "Tarzan" 
This picture reflects a theme I talk about a lot, e.g. the power of photography to promote conservation.  In fact, I am scheduled to give a lecture on this subject next week at the Seattle Zoo and had been looking for images to make my point... That's how I stumbled onto this one.
Typically,  I talk about the use of beautiful images of landscapes and endangered wildlife to show what is at stake.  But the World Wildlife Fund often takes a quite different approach - commissioning commercial photographers to take (or make on the computer) images that tell a compelling story, or simply turn heads.  This image, for example, was produced by an ad agency in Denmark in 2007 to illustrate the loss of tropical forests - from a unique point of view.  Whimsical, even a little silly, but arresting and thought-provoking. And arguably more effective than a conventional shot of a rainforest tree, or a resting jaguar. The fact is that we are so inundated with images of pristine nature that their ability to startle us -- or change our minds -- is frankly limited. 
Credits for this ad are below - however, I don't see a photographer listed...?

Company: UNCLE GREY, DENMARK
Creative Director: Per Pedersen
Copywriter: Michael Paterson
Art Director: Jesper Hansen  

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