Guy venables - CREATIVE BUSINESS and FOLIO Consultant

Guy has been involved in the creative industry since leaving school going directly into Terence
Conran's Studio to work on Habitat Catalogues as a studio technician (a big title for a lad who builds and wallpapers sets, constructs kit furniture and puts props where art directors want them). During this time he worked with some of London's leading art directors and photographers of the day who inspired him to work in the creative industry.

In 1986 Guy moved to Australia and was working for a small advertising agency when he was
introduced to the Australian professional photography scene. There were no agents or production
facilities for photographers in the Asia Pac region, so in 1988, his first company, Folio, was born with no competition a couple of years later his second company, Look, was born as well.

Folio and Look started out working from same premises in Sydney then Folio opened a separate
warehouse office across town and Look opened in trendy Oxford Street as Look was more fashion
based with makeup artists and stylists as well as fashion photographers. In 1992 he started marketing photographers to Asia, which led to a pipeline of photo shoot production in to Sydney and Melbourne, this expanded to producing photo shoots locally in Asia. Folio and Look became well known to ad agencies in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taiwan and Tokyo. In 1997 Great Ocean Picture Production was founded in Sydney as a production service company for
overseas photographers wishing to shoot in Australia. In 1999 he opened an office in Hong Kong under the name ‘8 Door Pictures’ - repping an elite line up of Folio and Look photographers in the region.

In forming the first commercial production companies for advertising photographers he had
accidentally founded an industry that now exists across the region, and in doing so the art buyer
culture arrived in the region to defend creatives from the deluge of agents and photographers that was to come! In 2006 he was Inaugural Chairman of Judges at Adfest 06 – the Asia Pac regions leading ad festival and invited to be the architect of the regions first Print Craft Awards For the first time photographers, retouchers were recognized by a major ad festival.
2010 saw him invited to Busan Korea as President of Craft at ADSTARS, an international ad festival based in Korea, he will also sit on this jury for 2011.

Guy and his companies have exposed him to hundreds of creative briefs for photo shoots for the
advertising industry in Asia Pac and beyond. Over the last 22 years, his companies have seen
thousands of campaigns from brief through to final image, from creatives and ad agencies from most of the countries in the Asia Pac region as well as Europe and the USA. He has represented a who is who of Australia's / NZ's leading names in ad photography at one time or another, some of them many times over in his 23 years in the industry. His work and visits to many agencies from many countries has given him a broad cultural understanding and a varied international
production experience.

Guy loves the the craft of image creation and has recently formed Guy Venables Inc a broad based
visual creative solutions company consulting with and for hire by ad agencies, production companies, directors and photographers and anybody who needs to get things ‘done’ in the creative or production space.

In his childhood Guy would often talk to patients of the local psychiatric hospital who used to wander the village where he grew up, after 23 years working in the industry he says it is an experience that has definitely helped him.

www.hkphotographs.com