Brand crafting, dyslexia and honing his photography style
A conversation with advertising and documentary photographer, Graeme MacDonald
A couple of years ago when I was toying with changing careers, I struck up a beautiful friendship with Kit and Tim, owners of The Bear’s Larder in Morningside, Edinburgh (which we paid homage to in a previous Substack piece as they very sadly closed their doors earlier this year). They stocked some incredible artisan produce, including Bad Gal Boocha which kickstarted a love affair with kombucha. From there, I went onto try Clever Kombucha (which have since rebranded to You + I) and I think this is where I first stumbled across the work of Graeme MacDonald who is a Scottish advertising and documentary photographer. He worked closely with the You + I team on the photography side of their rebrand and produced some striking stylised shots for their relaunch campaign. Since then, we’ve stayed in touch and we finally got around to chatting towards the end of last year.
From acting to photography
Graeme is a Scottish advertising and documentary photographer, who works in partnership with ethical, forward-thinking companies, using his skill as both an art director and photographer to visually bring brand stories and their communities to life.
From an early age Graeme had always been interested in creative endeavours, particularly acting and directing. After coming to the decision that acting wasn’t a viable career choice for him, he enrolled in Gray’s School of Art where he first got into photography.
He told me, ‘When I stopped acting, I thought I would be unable to find a career that I’d be as passionate about but then it kind of fell into place with photography.’
Reflectively, he drew parallels between directing and photography which for him, seems to go hand-in-hand. Fast-forward some years and Graeme is now a commercial photographer who also has an interest in photo journalism. In his commercial brand work, he aims to story-tell – conveying a brand’s story and purpose visually. Chatting about the different projects Graeme works on, he told me, ‘I do a lot of art direction with my work - it can be a real mix in terms of scale.’ He explained how there can be some jobs where clients are just after one image – the result is a very curated, carefully planned photograph. They might for instance, go up to the north of Scotland to capture one image. Other shoots might require 12 to 30 images. Graeme told me, ‘I find it fascinating how they are both trying to convey a message in different ways.’
Although Graeme has an interest in film photography, he shoots most of his work digitally. Now and again, he will offer film photography as an add on, but prefers the reliability of digital photography. With film, you can’t always foresee how an image will turn out and that therefore carries an element of risk. Graeme explained that his work-flow process also makes it easier to edit a digital image over a film image. He told me how he tries to ‘only tweak photos’ when he’s editing them. Usually he will take away a bit of contrast and add a bit of grain to his images – not to the point where it looks film like – but to help add texture on a page rather than sitting flat. He has also been directing and filming shorts documentaries and adverts for clients.
Refining a photography style and work-flow
From here, we spoke about finding a style. Graeme explained, ‘I came from a visual communication design background in a small city. Initially, that wasn’t the best for finding my style because I’d literally shoot any style to hit the client’s brief. I would just be looking for any kind of work.’ Nowadays, Graeme tries to find clients or brands that lean towards his style. The turning point was when he moved away from Aberdeen and moved to Glasgow/London, which really pushed him to find his own style and choose brands that his work could truly complement.
I asked Graeme is he could tell me a little about how he works with different clients and he told me, ‘It does really depend on the client’, explaining how sometimes he works directly with a client and at other times, it’s through an advertising agency or marketing company. If it’s the latter, they might have specific shots or a shot list in mind that they want Graeme to hit. Whereas, when Graeme works directly with a client, he will arrange a conversation beforehand to discuss what the purpose of the shoot is before looking at the practical side of things. He’ll then create a bespoke shot-list for the client - for example, an image for the website that they can overlay text on which would require ‘dead-space’ in the image. Smiling, Graeme told me, ‘I call that my safety list’. While on a location shoot, Graeme will stick closely to this list but will also explore the surroundings. He explained, ‘Sometimes on location you might discover things and think actually this would work better than what we’d planned.’ Continuing, he told me how he likes to have a degree of flexibility to be playful and make the most of the surroundings.
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