From Art Director to Photographer: Grace Chon

Monday October 3rd, 2011

To round out our series of interviews with art buyers/art directors turned photographers, I caught up with our LA-based animal photographer, Grace Chon. Grace has followed a somewhat unique career path that has taken her from science, to art direction and finally to photography. She was kind enough to answer my questions and share some insight on the worlds of art directors and commercial photographers.

- Jess Dudley

Can you give us a brief background on yourself?
I’m a coffee guzzling, heirloom tomato growing, self proclaimed animal freak. I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia in a little town called Yardley and moved out on my own to California after graduating from Penn State with a degree in Biology. I’ve been obsessed with animals my entire life and thought I wanted to be a vet, hence the bio degree. My senior year of college I ended up cobbling together a design portfolio and was accepted into a creative advertising graduate program at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Thank God, because if I didn’t get in I might be playing with petri dishes right now instead of cameras.

Do you have any pets?
I have 2 dogs – one is a rescue from Mexico named Maeby Fünke and the other is a rescue from Taiwan named Zoey. I’m like the Angelina Jolie of the dog world.

Where has your career path led you so far?
Like I mentioned, I studied creative advertising at an art school. I ended up getting an internship at an ad agency and got to do work for clients like The San Francisco Giants, Panda Express, and Shutterfly. The internship turned into a full time gig and I spent my last year of school working full time as a full fledged junior art director.

What was your typical daily routine as an AD?
Doing lots of concepting with my partner, attending lots of boring meetings with account people, presenting ideas to my creative director, sifting through lots of photography promos, and spending a lot of time procrastinating online for the sake of “inspiration!”

What agencies have you worked with as an AD? Did you work on any pet product/animal oriented accounts?
I’ve worked at Swirl, Dentsu, and Deutsch. I never had the chance to work on any pet product accounts, but I did work on the California Milk Account, aka the Happy Cow campaign—the one with the talking happy California cows. I had a ton of fun shooting TV spots with the cows and even baby calfs. Haven’t had veal since!

Where did you look for inspiration as and AD?
I love the Communication Arts Ad Annual, as well as their Photography Annual. Luerzers Archive is a good source for really weird but visually cool international advertising. And all the ad websites like Creativity Online, Ad Rants and Ad Freak. Aside from stuff from the ad world, I love finding inspiration from movies, current events, and modern art museums.

How much influence did you have in selecting photographer for campaigns?
My recommendations were definitely a big part of the process and taken into consideration, but at the very end of the day, the budget dictated a lot of that too.

How did you keep track of photographers you liked?
I looked through every single one of my promos and kept the ones that I thought had really interesting photographs. At the last agency I worked at we regularly had reps bring work in and I came across a lot of amazing work that way too.

How many mailers did you typically receive each day? Can you recall any especially memorable promotions?
I received probably 20-30 mailers and emails a day. A photographer once sent me a really well packaged box with a bag of Fritos to announce the new campaign he had photographed for them. I personally hate Fritos but thought it was a neat promo. That said, I received a lot of really gimmicky promos and kind of hated those. I don’t think the execution of a promo should outshine the work. I also thought the more “handmade” looking promos were ineffective and made me wonder how experienced the photographer was.

What did you like the most about your job? What did you like the least?
I absolutely loved the creative process, from coming up with the ideas to executing them. There is something so cool about seeing a little idea you scribbled in a notebook turn into an effective piece of advertising out in the world.The least enjoyable thing was the creative process—the way ideas can go from awesome to crappy after it’s been reviewed by everyone from the account team to the creative directors and ultimately, the client. And how can I NOT mention the insane hours?

What has your experience taught you about pricing, licensing, negotiating and production?
I am sad to say that I wish I spent more time paying attention to pricing, licensing and negotiating while I was working as an AD! For the most part the art buyers did a lot of this. I’ve learned a lot more about this now that I’m a commercial photographer. Production is a huge part of the ad world, and I’m grateful to have had that experience as an AD because it has helped me a lot as a commercial photographer.

Did you have any pet peeves when it came to working with photographers?
I’ve been really lucky to have worked with some pretty awesome, professional people. They have all been extremely collaborative and creative. And it’s great when you meet someone who is really enthusiastic about executing your idea and can run with it. I guess my biggest pet peeve would have to be sloppiness. I once was on a shoot where the final image was a composite of around 5 images. We spent time on set selecting each shot for the comp. But when I was going through all the tiffs the next day, NONE of the selects were marked! I had to wade through hundreds of photos on the last night before Christmas break working late, trying to figure out which shots we were supposed to use.

What led you to pursue photography?
I had just finished a brand relaunch for a car company and was so burnt out and exhausted. I needed to find something to help me recharge my batteries so I bought my first DSLR. I started taking headshots of homeless dogs to help them get adopted and things kind of exploded from there. I started a weekend pet photography business but after 9 months I quit my AD job and went full time as a photographer. I spent the first few years focusing on consumer and editorial work before I really ventured into commercial photography.

What’s been the most difficult part about establishing yourself as a freelance photographer?
The hardest thing for me was deciding to focus on commercial work. I started out shooting only on consumer work, taking family photos for people who wanted their pets photographed. I never set out to shoot with ad agencies because coming from my background in the ad world, I knew just how high the bar is for photographers, not to mention the added stress of bigger budgets and bigger expectations. Overcoming all the fear and feeling confident in my work was a huge challenge. But after a few years of shooting consumer work and editorial assignments, I knew I had to take the plunge.

What one piece of advice would you offer to other photographers?
I wish I had something really wise to offer but all I can say is shoot what you love! We pour our heart and soul into our work, and to spend that energy on something we don’t truly connect with seems so inauthentic. I’ve tried to expand what I photograph but there’s just something about animals that I love so much. Now photographing  kids, that’s a different story.

What one piece of advice would you offer ADs working with photographers?
I would like to remind ADs that we are here to help you execute your amazing idea and have it live in the world exactly how you imagined it in your head, and hopefully even better! So please be a little bit more forgiving of us when we send you emails and promos hoping to work with you—we just want to get our work out there. There seems to be a little bit of photography promo hate out there in the world, but as an art director who received a ton of it, I can say that it’s more helpful than annoying. It takes 2 seconds to delete an email you don’t want or put some promos in a recycle bin.

You can check out more of Grace’s beautiful work on her website, www.gracechon.com.