


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.