I saw this poster at the train station near the Able & Baker office.
We're in a rather fashionable part of town. Lots of pubs, clubs and music venues.
The walls around the station are plastered with fantastic posters for festivals, DJs and semi-obscure touring bands. In some places, posters are placed over posters over posters. A dozen deep.
In amongst all this uber-hippery, in the last place you'd expect, there's this quaint, traditional and rather daggy poster for a wedding photographer.
In a wedding magazine, it'd be lost.
But amongst all the cutting edge graphics around it, it absolutely stands out.
In the 1800s, the American writer
Washington Irving stayed at the splendid
Alhambra Palace in Spain. Perched high on a hill, overlooking the town of Grenada, the Alhambra was circled by birds that had learned to drift above the range of hunters' guns on the plains below.
Irving observed boys from the town standing on the walls of the palace, throwing fishing nets and capturing the birds below from the unexpected angle.
In advertising, there is usually a 'right' way to do things.
A right way to photograph a car, make a burger look enticing, show a family moment.
Because it's the right way, everyone does it that way. And it instantly becomes invisible.
The wedding photographer is fishing for birds. It's not a bad theory, is it?
