The Blue Mountains · South Georgian Bay, Ontario
Commercial and tourism photography in The Blue Mountains
The economy of this municipality is tourism, which means almost every business up here is selling a visit to somebody who has not been yet.
The economy of this municipality is tourism. Blue Mountain Resort anchors it, the private Georgian Peaks, Osler Bluff, Craigleith and Alpine ski clubs sit along the escarpment nearby, and there are golf courses within walking distance of the resort village. Almost every business up here is selling a visit.
Visits are sold with pictures, and pictures go stale. An operator marketing this winter with images shot in a different winter is at a disadvantage against one that reshot in December, and the difference shows most in the exact places a visitor looks first.
The work divides four ways. Resort and village imagery kept current, so a marketing calendar has pictures of the season it is actually selling. Hole-by-hole aerial course layouts, flown at the light and altitude that make a routing legible from above. Clubhouse and lodge photography. Restaurant, patio and village retail work for the operators around the resort.
Commercial and tourism photography in The Blue Mountains sets out how each of those is scoped. The resort, clubs and courses named above are the market this page is written about.
Golf course work is the most specific brief in this vertical and the one most often got wrong. A hole photographed from the tee is a photograph of some grass; the same hole flown along its own axis shows the dogleg, the bunkering and where the trouble is, which is the thing a member recognises and a visitor is deciding on. Course photography is a routing exercise before it is a photography one, and it wants low sun and no wind, which is a narrow overlap.
Ski terrain is the mirror image of the same problem. Marketing a hill means showing pitch, and pitch is exactly what flattens out in a photograph taken square-on from the bottom. Getting a slope to look like a slope depends on shooting across it rather than up it, and on having something in frame — a lift line, a treeline, a skier — that gives the eye a scale to read the angle against.
There is also a plain rights question worth raising at the quote rather than after delivery. Resort and club imagery tends to get used across a website, a booking engine, print and paid social for several years, which is a different licence from a single seasonal campaign, and the two should not be priced as though they were the same job.
Nearly every tourism frame made up here is an argument about elevation — how high the hill is, how far the bay is, what the lift actually reaches — and an argument about elevation is difficult to win from the bottom of it. Drone and aerial photography in The Blue Mountains covers the flying that settles it, and the wind off the escarpment that decides when it happens.
The commercial and tourism photography page covers the same work across the whole of South Georgian Bay, Ontario, without the The Blue Mountains specifics above. Everything Pete shoots in The Blue Mountains lists the other one, along with his accreditations and the certificate he flies on.
Questions
Asked about this work in The Blue Mountains.
- How should a golf hole be photographed?
- Along its own axis, from the air. A hole shot from the tee is a photograph of grass: the dogleg disappears, the bunkering flattens and the green stops being anywhere in particular. Flown down the line of the hole, the routing, the hazards and the walk from tee to green all read at once, which is what a golfer is actually looking at.
- Why does ski terrain look flat in photographs?
- Because a slope shot square-on from the bottom has nothing to be steep against. Pitch reads when there is something in the frame that says which way is down, which usually means shooting across the fall line, using the lift towers and the treeline, and picking the hour when the light rakes across the snow instead of flattening it.
- Do resorts and clubs need different usage terms?
- They usually do, and it belongs in the quote rather than in an email after delivery. Resort imagery tends to run across a website, a booking engine, print and paid social for several years, which is a different thing from one campaign. Say where the images are going and for how long, and that is what gets priced.
The Blue Mountains
The other work in this town.
Each of these is quoted separately, and more than one often fits in a single visit to The Blue Mountains.
Commercial and tourism photography in The Blue Mountains?
Tell Pete what the images are for and which season they need to sell. Scope and a quote come back together.