Visit Marietta
TL;DR
Challenge: id8 was leading a full rebrand of Visit Marietta, the city's tourism and destination marketing organization, and the old photography was tired — it didn't match the energy of what the city actually offers. A tourism board is the face of its town on every platform it touches, so the rebrand needed a library of evergreen imagery that could carry it across channels and seasons.
Solution: Ten fully retouched images a month for ten months, treated like an ongoing editorial project instead of a contract gig — tracking what the library was missing, not just what the shot list asked for. Mostly solo work around Marietta Square and the city's seasonal calendar, with my camera along even when I was just running errands or grabbing lunch.
Result: A cohesive content library now running across Visit Marietta's website, social channels, print ads, and pamphlets. That's the goal with this kind of work — photography that keeps working long after the retainer ends.
Marietta branding agency id8 brought me on as part of a full rebrand of Visit Marietta, the city's tourism and destination marketing organization. The rebrand was already underway, and what it needed was photography to bring it to life. Their image library was outdated, and it didn't match the energy of what the city actually offers; a tourism board's whole job is to be the face of its town across every platform it touches. The stakes were real: bad photography would undercut everything else id8 was building.
That's a different kind of assignment than a traditional shoot. Instead of a defined scope and a hard out, I was delivering 10 fully retouched images per month for 10 months. The work had to have range — people and places, food and architecture, quiet street-level moments and full-crowd events — while holding together as one body of work. I approached it as an ongoing editorial project, thinking less about individual shots and more about what the library was missing, while making sure the must-have locations got covered.
Most of the time I worked solo, wandering Marietta Square, following farmers markets and seasonal events, and finding the moments most people walk right past. I also kept my camera with me whenever I was in Marietta anyway — running errands, grabbing lunch, just living in the city — and those unplanned candids ended up being some of the best material in the library. On a few shoots we brought in models for a more polished, commercial feel, keeping them grounded and natural.
It took more hours per month than a typical retainer would allow, and that's exactly why the work feels earned rather than rushed. The library now runs across Visit Marietta's website, social channels, print ads, and pamphlets, and they're still drawing from it. Photography that keeps working after the retainer ends is the whole point of an engagement like this.
