Jody Dole:
A Master of Digital Photography
Art Directors Go Wild
Most importantly, his clients loved the little books. “I used to send out hundreds of promo cards and never get a single call,” he moans. “Then I sent three iPhoto books — and got three calls. Art directors asked me, ‘Where did you get this? Who printed it? Who did the binding? What kind of paper did you use?’ I got a better reaction from the iPhoto books that cost about $10 each than from the promo piece I spent $100,000 on.”
Dole has no question about the direction pro photo marketing is headed. “Last year I spent tens of thousands of dollars and months of time updating portfolios that became obsolete almost before we got them to clients,” he recounts. “Now I can make portfolios that have my latest work in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost. Soon everyone will be doing their promos on the Mac.”
Fabulous Aperture Output
When Aperture was introduced, Dole leaped at the chance to take his promotional book-making to the pro level. “The Aperture book feature is fabulous,” he says. “I love the layout — you have the control you’d get in Photoshop or Quark, with regard to position, scaling, and so on. You can bring in any size picture, scale it up or down, stretch it, crop it, position it, and build your pages any way you want.”
Those production features, says Dole, make Aperture unique. “Other photographic software doesn’t allow you to make books like Apple does.” But even the niftiest tool wouldn’t be worth beans to him if it meant sacrificing quality. “As far as making images,” he says frankly, “I was born at the top and will die at the top. I never compromise on quality. So if the output from Aperture wasn’t 1000 percent, I wouldn’t use it.”
Country Doctor
Aperture’s capabilities are vital to Dole as he transforms his life and business model. His family recently escaped the New York scene for a rural town in central Connecticut where they relish a gentler daily pace — and where Dole is focusing his lens on new subjects. “In the city, I had a very specialized, high-end tabletop studio,” says Dole. “Here, I’m more like a general practitioner. And I’m having the time of my life.”
Continues Dole, “Aperture lets me quickly and efficiently show my clients how my work has changed. The beauty of Aperture is that I can pick 40 new images and create 50 books showing my evolution from still life to other areas — like marine and aviation photography — I want to get involved in. Before, it was a long process to print expensive portfolio pieces or redo my website. Now I can make new books in less than an hour and get them to my rep in a week. My marketing is up to the minute.
“I’ll be using Aperture to catalog my hundreds of thousands of photos,” Dole predicts. “It has great organizational features, so it’ll be easy to identify each image in the database. Instead of scurrying to find a picture, I can just type in the job name or keyword; they stay transparent throughout the program.” Dole’s staff is developing a library of keywords so one click automatically stamps each new photo.
Looking for Beauty
Ultimately, the platform affords Dole an even more efficient way to promote his work. “What the Mac does,” he says, “is streamline the whole marketing thing. I can design my pieces the way I want, without some complicated learning curve. And I can do it all from one desk — design and print proofs, control quality, order books, and send them out — without having to run around.”
With his Mac tools, Dole gains freedom to seek images that capture his imagination. “I just want to do beautiful photography,” he says. “That’s what interests me — to do the best possible job. And I say, in this field if you’re not working with the digital workflow, you’re lost. My motto is: Never look back — always forward.”
Dole keeps his eyes wide open. “I just love photography,” he declares. “Anywhere you put me, I’ll find something to photograph. If I were a sculptor I’d use a hammer and chisel — for me, that’s the Mac. The most important thing about any technology is how you apply it, and I couldn’t do what I’m doing without the Mac.”
