Doug Coulter recently shot the Home Depot Annual Report for the 4th year in a row. This year's annual report is especially cool because almost all of the images are Doug’s work. In the past there has had to be other photographs for different reasons in the Annual Report, but with the success of previous years, this concept was to use more photography and have some consistency throughout.
“Shooting the Annual Report for Home Depot is a bit different than shooting ads or in-store campaigns; Home Depot prefers to make the Annual Report more about the Associates rather than the products and it’s always important for them that it be real, not posed, using real employees.
It can be difficult walking into a Home Depot and expecting people to be excited about being photographed. For the most part, we don’t set anything up and capturing people in real situations is something that not only Home Depot values, but it’s also something I like to do.
Over the years I’ve developed a kind of...process, in which I go into stores very low key, with no equipment and casually notice what people are doing and what’s going on. I try to capture them in their environment as is. The challenge of shooting this loosely, with no equipment is getting real life images which speak to the actual culture of the company.
That being said however, it’s also easy to do with a company that has a strong “associate” culture like Home Depot.", comments Coulter.
