The published Honda projects show different forms of international company events. They include the European Skills Contest with both photography and film, the award show that followed, and a meeting of international leaders.
What stands out is what does not play the leading part in these pictures: the product. At the center are the people who work for the brand.
Skills Contest: expertise rather than cars
At the skills contest it was not the car but the ability of the competing technicians that stood at the center. Tight work stations, tools, diagnostic devices and concentrated faces set the visual language.
The tension came from time pressure, precise movements of the hand and the reactions during assessment. That is harder to photograph than a stage: the decisive moment is small, it happens at a workbench, and nobody can announce it.
The closing group picture brought the competitors from the different countries together. The series is in the project Honda European Skills Contest, the film under Skill Contest – trailer.
The award show: a more open way of telling it
The ceremony afterwards asked for a more open and more emotional way of telling it. The reception, the conversations, the trophies and small gestures formed the passages between the speeches and the awards.
Those passages are the part a stage report often leaves out, even though they hold the evening together. Without them all that is left is a row of people holding trophies, and the evening does not tell itself.
The film is in the project award show – trailer.
A group portrait is a job of its own
For the international leadership meeting a precisely organized group portrait was the decisive picture. With a frame like that the preparation decides everything: where to stand, how to build it, in what order, and how long a large group will stay together at all.
The photographic part takes a few minutes in the end. Everything before it is organization, and that is exactly where group pictures fail when they are meant to happen on the side.
It is in the project Honda Motor Company – World Leaders.
What the brand shows here
Together the productions document expertise, community and international cooperation. The brand appears through the people who represent it rather than through its products.
For internal communication that is often worth more than a product series: the people in the pictures recognize themselves and the work they do.
Related work is under event photography.
