Photography: Encyclopedia II - Photography - Commercial photography

Photography - Commercial photography

The commercial photographic world is traditionally broken down to:

• Advertising photography: photographs made to illustrate a service or product. These images are generally done with an advertising agency, design firm or with an in-house corporate design team.
• Editorial photography: photographs made to illustrate a story or idea within the context of a magazine. These are usually assigned by the magazine.
• Photojournalism: this can be considered a subset of editorial photography. Photographs made in this context are accepted as a truthful documentation of a news story.
• Portrait and wedding photography: photographs made and sold directly to the end user of the images.
• Fine art photography: photographs made to fulfill a vision, and reproduced to be sold directly to the end user.

The market for photographic services demonstrates the aphorism "one picture is worth a thousand words," which has an interesting basis in the history of photography. Magazines and newspapers, companies putting up Web sites, advertising agencies and other groups pay for photography.

Many people take photographs for self-fulfillment or for commercial purposes. Organizations with a budget and a need for photography have several options: they can assign a member of the organization, hire someone, run a public competition, or obtain rights to stock photographs.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Commercial photography", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki