


Clients often come to us looking for something very specific, and our sales team combs through the archive to put together a lightbox that fits the research request. Sometimes, however, a client is looking for something ultra specific OR they have a broader, conceptual feeling they want the image to invoke, that we can't currently match from the archive. At that point, we'll send out a brief to our extensive roster of photographers to try to bring in exactly what the client is looking for. The results are often incredible, and even if the images aren't purchased by that specific client, they get added to our archive for future requests. Here are some of the most interesting briefs we've received, and the amazing images that arrived as a result.
An electronics company was looking for "amazing action based images," of a person in a "go for it" moment. Think shots that illustrate motivation, anticipation or the start of an adventure, like a BASE jumper running towards the edge, or a snowboarder about to hit a jump.
Due to the lack of snow in the West for the past few years, many of our clients were hard pressed to find recent winter fun images at resorts. One ad agency was looking for a deep pull of images from Tahoe in the winter. The idea was to highlight all of the different things you can do in Tahoe, from skiing and snowboarding to building snowmen to hot tubs to landscapes to admiring the scenics to roasting marshmallows. Photographers were told to imagine it was a shoot they were doing for a resort when pulling photos to send.
A magazine / nature conservancy was looking for images of birds for an ongoing, extensive visual journalism project to show the relationship between birds and people worldwide.
An ad agency client wanted modern, candid photography of millennials, with REAL and RELATABLE being more important than the expected "hipster" or "cool/creative" crowd. As the brief we got was very broad and could cover a lot, we tried to narrow it down for our photographers. Style and age is more important than action, but some ideas to think about: adventurous travel, connections with people, glimpses into every day life, fitness outside of a gym, waiting in line at a food truck and talking, people at work, etc. You can also think about some potential archetypes, people of certain professions or hobbies like: beer brewer, carpenter, personal trainers, etc.
"I've skied Mt. Adams in Washington 50+ times, and there's always a risk, either from chance or the failure to recognize dangers. And on this day, I almost got wiped off the North Face by an avalanche. I had climbed the North face North West ridge and halfway up decided to turn around because it was getting too warm. Suddenly, a wet slide was triggered a few thousand feet above me (on a route we had just skied the day before) and came down, missing me by inches. It was only about 20 feet wide, but it was heavy snow and was going very, very fast on a very steep slope. It was a scary moment." - Jason Hummel
"Mont Blanc is the most famous peak to ascend in the Alps. For me, this image shows how the mountaineers put their lives in the service of the mountain." - David Santiago Garcia
"I've spent years photographing glaciers and ice on six continents, but this is one of my favorite images. It's shot from a small zodiac inflatable boat in Antarctica, and captures so much of the graceful lines and cold beauty of the massive icebergs there." - Paul Souders
"This unique frozen waterfall, in a remote area of Utah , rarely forms ice solid enough to climb. You have to hike in a ways to find the frozen falls, which keeps the crowds away. " - Whit Richardson
"The combination of people enjoying adventure sport in a spectacular landscape is what photography is all about for me." - Andrew Peacock
"I've been snowboarding most of my life and this image always reminds me of the freedom you feel when you launch into the air on a perfect powder day in the backcountry." - Rachid Dahnoun
"I went into Cradle Mountain National Park, in Tasmania, with this specific idea: to shoot a pandani plant lit with warm light against the blue cold snowy scene." - Heath Holden
"This picture taken in Mammoth Lakes, California, is of my brother from Texas, snowshoeing for the first time. It’s my favorite because it captures the wonder and majesty of being out in a snowstorm, when the snow muffles all sound except the crunch of your steps and the quiet patter of snowflakes on your jacket. ." - Dana Felthauser
"This image of the Tetons was a look at an old friend in a new way, a position a bit more north than I had seen before. The breaking storm gave the black and white image an even more commanding sense of the balance of the mountain." - Joel Addams
See more of our photographer's favorite winter images here: http://www.auroraphotos.com/index.php?module=result&webseries_id=17499