Happy Birthday Icon!

By Matt Gore owner and founder iconphotomedia

There we were 10 years ago in The Tramshead pub just outside Saltaire (the Victorian model village near Bradford http://www.saltairevillage.info/), Guzelian photographers Matt Gore and Robin Hammond were hatching a plan to launch a photographer's agency that was to become iconphotomedia.

If memory serves me rightly (we were in the pub) some of the company names being banded around included:

Photo Republic
Untitled (we just got a kick out of visualising this in print as a byline)
M6 Pictures
Magenta 

Eventually, we agreed on iconphotomedia and have been lucky to be so well supported by a core of great clients for the last decade.

Our very first job - by Matt Gore for the Times Educational Supplement, who went on to become one of our biggest clients - was shot in Harrogate as Matt packed up his rental flat to move to London to start icon with Robin.

Picture by Matt Gore/iconphotomedia 

Graham Hoyle, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) published in the Times Educational Supplement

Even on the drive down to London, Matt stopped off in Leeds to shoot a commission for Leeds Metropolitan University..

Picture by Matt Gore/iconphotomedia
University students dress up WW2 style to entertain a local school visiting for a history lesson

Of course, we had no idea then that icon would go on to become such an outstanding success. In the early years we applied a very simple principle - to provide eye catching broadsheet style photography for a wide range of editorial and commercial clients. 

Here are some interesting numbers....

Heartfelt thanks to everyone who has helped icon survive and thrive over the past decade; our lovely clients and suppliers, a lot of which have become good friends, and also to our friends and family who have put up with the sometimes crazy lifestyle choice that is Professional Photography. 

Matt Gore

The Currency of Ideas

Our 2013 website revamp has just gone live...
by Matt Gore/iconphotomedia

Light It, Shoot It, Retouch It! Learn Photography and Photoshop Online with Scott Kelby!



www.iconphotomedia.com

Yep, I have been busying myself with editing, image selection, photoshop, html code and various vectors, buttons, textures and backgrounds. With a little help from a template and lots of midnight oil we have finished the revamp of our main website as part of our ongoing 2013 strategy. 

I'll post lots more visuals with a step by step on how I produced the website and created the visuals at a later date.
It's all part of our idea to evolve iconphotomedia and what we offer our clients in light of new technology and the changes in Visual Communications. Photography has changed along with the huge improvements in  communications. As a result Advertising has been flipped on it's head so traditional media outlets are rapidly changing to keep up. Rather than see all this as a negative (fitting pun) we Photographers should embrace the new opportunities. Ideas are our commodity - creativity is the currency of ideas and we are all wonderfully placed to realise this and use technology to expand those ideas. Think big as the World has just got a little smaller...

Here's a taster of some of the new look....









Hope you all like it...

www.iconphotomedia.com