Jody Dole:
A Master of Digital Photography
He’s gifted with a painter’s eye for colour and composition. But happenstance opened the first doors to Jody Dole’s career as a pro photographer. With a background in art and design but no formal photo training, he had worked as a gofer, location scout, and photographer’s assistant when he submitted the shot that won him the cover of the 1989 Graphis Photo Annual. “I was so thrilled,” says Dole. “That cover gave me the confidence to take my photos to McCann Erickson.”
Jody Dole’s winning photo on the cover of the 1989 Graphis Photo Annual.
His portfolio review at the mega-agency nearly tanked when the art buyer called in sick. Luckily, Dole was shuttled into what he laughingly calls “a closet” to show his work to a McCann Erickson creative director who “happened to be looking for a guy to shoot still lifes.” A week later, on the strength of his submissions, Dole was assigned a $90 million campaign for Smirnoff. The coup launched Dole to the front page of the Wall Street Journal, the covers of the photography trades, and the very top of his craft.
For the next 15 years his loft in Manhattan’s West Village served as the stage for Dole’s exploding career as a commercial photographer. He shot cosmetics, jewelry, liquor, and furniture — not to mention the occasional brain surgery. And from the outset Dole pioneered Mac-based digital technologies for photography.
Born Promoter
Dole’s studio houses 25 Macs, which have helped and continue to help bolster his photography career. Front and center are the dual-processor Power Mac G5s that now host Aperture and facilitate production for his workshop’s constant stream of projects.
“We don’t use film anymore,” says Dole. “My studio is all digital capture. And the Mac is what lets me manipulate, catalog, store, and archive my images.”
Perhaps most importantly amidst cutthroat competition, the Mac is Dole’s most powerful marketing tool. He’s keenly aware that no matter how many high-profile assignments he wins, clients are fickle — and new faces continually joust for their crack at the big time. “I’ve been a promoter since I was born,” says Dole unabashedly. “I talked my father into buying me a Nikon when I was 12, and I’ve always watched people to learn how to be disciplined about selling my own work.”
A Finicky Mistress
Dole adores new technologies and is quick to try any tool that offers a marketing edge. He’s come a long way since the 1980s, when traditional labs processed his prints. Soon he was lugging around carousel slide trays. When agencies requested bound portfolios, he learned to do dye transfer and C-print books. He invested freely to improve his presentations, even purchasing the first halftone algorithmic digital printer, a fancy device designed for billboards.
Around 1990 Dole dove into the rarefied world of Iris printers. “I think I was one of the first photographers to use an Iris to make portfolio prints and promotional cards,” he suggests. “I invested $200,000, and the quality was extraordinary. I swore I’d never change.” But the finicky Iris proved a demanding mistress. “They were notorious for being very involved to maintain,” sighs Dole. “If you don’t run them every couple of days, the nozzles clog up. I had to hire an intern to baby-sit the Iris when I went on vacation!”
The Iris printer successfully inked the short-run books through which Dole presented his latest work. The look was handsome and the approach effective, but the custom-made volumes were expensive and time-consuming. “I was having such good experiences with my Mac that I became curious about what I could do with it for promotion,” says Dole.
iPhoto Revelation
Dole began tinkering with iPhoto, and before long Iris was yesterday’s girlfriend. “I designed the pages in Photoshop and imported them to iPhoto,” he recalls. “I finalized the layout, clicked a button to pay, and a few days later my books were shipped to me.”
The effect of the small-format iPhoto books knocked him out. “It’s astonishing,” says Dole. “The colour is so accurate, the cost is so reasonable, and the turnaround is so fast. I’ve tried other companies that produce custom books, but the process was klunky or the colour was off. None of them has the finesse of iPhoto — it’s a real winner.”
Creating promotional pieces on the Mac keeps Dole’s freshest work in his clients’ view. “I’m captivated by the beauty of new things,” confesses Dole. “And on the Mac, I can design a book, get it printed in a couple of days, make a presentation — then change it in a heartbeat. It’s like a magic carpet.”
