Meaford · South Georgian Bay, Ontario
Commercial and tourism photography in Meaford
Blossom is about two weeks and harvest is about two weeks, and neither of them moves to suit a marketing schedule.
The harbour and the marina, the arts and cultural venue downtown, the apple and cider producers inland and the agri-tourism operators working out of them. That is the commercial market in Meaford, and it is a larger one than the search results for it suggest.
The growers and operators in the apple country behind town need seasonal and agricultural imagery, shot when the orchard looks like the thing being advertised. Blossom and harvest are about two weeks each and neither of them moves for a schedule, which is the main reason this work gets booked ahead rather than arranged the week it is needed.
Downtown is a different job: storefronts, the harbour with boats in it, and event imagery for the venues that bring people into town for an evening.
An orchard is one of the few commercial subjects that genuinely needs the aircraft. At ground level a row of apple trees is a row of apple trees; from above, the rows, the blocks, the varieties planted in them and the way the land rolls underneath all become legible at once, and that is the picture that says a real operation rather than a few trees.
Cider and farm-gate operators have a specific difficulty worth naming: the product is made in one season and sold across the whole year, so the marketing needs images of a place that only exists for a fortnight. Shooting to a bank rather than to a campaign is the sensible approach here — cover the two weeks properly, once, and draw on it for the twelve months that follow.
Down at the water the subject is boats and the light on them, and the harbour is at its most photogenic exactly when it is busiest. Event work for the downtown venues has the same shape and the same constraint: an empty room photographs as an empty room, so the imagery that actually sells the next evening has to be made during one.
An orchard is a landscape before it is a product, and rows planted on a slope only read as rows from above — from the gate they are a wall of trees. Drone and aerial photography in Meaford covers what the aircraft is actually for out here, on parcels large enough that no other camera position works at all.
The commercial and tourism photography page covers the same work across the whole of South Georgian Bay, Ontario, without the Meaford specifics above. Everything Pete shoots in Meaford lists the other one, along with his accreditations and the certificate he flies on.
Questions
Asked about this work in Meaford.
- Why does an orchard need the aircraft?
- Because at ground level a row of apple trees is a row of apple trees. From above, the rows, the blocks, the varieties in them and the way the land falls away toward the bay all read at once, and that is the picture of the business rather than a picture of some fruit. It is one of the few subjects where the flight is not optional.
- How does a cider or farm-gate operator get a year of images?
- By shooting to a bank rather than to a deadline. The product is made in one short season and sold across the whole year, so the marketing needs images of a place that only exists for a fortnight. One visit in blossom and one at harvest, deliberately over-covered, is what fills the other ten months.
- Is the harbour worth shooting when it is busy?
- That is exactly when it is worth shooting. Boats in the water and people on the wall are what make the harbour look like the reason to come, and an empty November frame of the same view sells nothing. The same applies to event work downtown: an empty room photographs as an empty room.
Meaford
The other work in this town.
Each of these is quoted separately, and more than one often fits in a single visit to Meaford.
Commercial and tourism photography in Meaford?
Tell Pete what the images are for and which season they need to sell. Scope and a quote come back together.