Toronto corporate photographer

More memorable corporate photography

January 5, 2014 No Comments

Everyone wants to save money. Presumably that’s why some companies use cheap stock pictures on their web sites. But using such pictures is counter-productive. Cheap stock pictures actually push customers away.

By design, cheap stock pictures target the lowest common denominator. This means the pictures are bland, generic and very simple to understand, just like the pictures in a children’s book.

A 1988 University of Texas study, “Effects of Color and Complexity in Still Photographs on Mental Effort and Memory”, showed that: (i) viewers pay more attention to complex photos; (ii) complex images are processed by the viewer just as easily as simple ones; and (iii) viewers remember complex pictures more than simple pictures.

This means that using cheap stock pictures serves no purpose other than to save money. But spending any money for something that delivers nothing is actually a waste of money.
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When to pay less for corporate photography

December 28, 2013 No Comments

All companies need some type of corporate photography to help market their business. And of course when hiring a photographer, every company is looking for a deal, a bargain, a discount.

Professional photography isn’t like selling widgets or any low marginal-cost item. When a photographer has a very low price, it means something is off, something is missing. But is this always a bad thing?

It’s okay to go with cheap photography when:

• You want less.

• You’re happy with good enough.

• You don’t mind working with a less-experienced photographer.

• You like to cut corners.

• The pictures aren’t really important.

• Your business marketing doesn’t have to be effective.

• You don’t need to make a good impression.

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Memorable (part 2)

December 16, 2013 No Comments

In his 2011 book, Moonwalking with Einstein, science writer Joshua Foer describes how someone can increase their memory. He learned of a technique while covering a national memory competition. The following year, Foer won that same competition using this very technique.

To improve one’s memory, Foer learned that one has to associate an image with the information that needs to be remembered. The more memorable that image, the better the chance of remembering. It’s possible that Allan Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory (visual explanation here ;-) ) might help explain this.

Alexandra Horowitz, a PhD in cognitive science who teaches psychology at Barnard College in the US, wrote, “… a simple fact of human cognition: we naturally remember visual images. … The less banal, the better. Quotidian scenes are forgettable. What snags the cells of our brains are disgusting, bizarre and novel images.”
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Memorable (part 1)

December 14, 2013 No Comments

A university study recently published in Psychological Science concluded that taking pictures may impede one’s memory. The press release is here.

A brief summary of this study: one group of people were asked to take some general pictures during an art museum tour. The next day, these people had difficulty remembering exactly what they had seen. But a second group, who were asked to zoom in and photograph specific details of what they saw and to pay more attention to their photography, had better memory of what they had seen during their tour.

Sadly, the study uses the silly phrase “photo-taking impairment effect”. The researcher wrote, “In order to remember, we have to access and interact with the photos, rather than just amass them.”
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Marginally cheaper by the dozen

December 13, 2013 No Comments

You can tell that it’s getting close to the end of the year as companies rush to get work done or hurry to spend any remaining budget. In the past two weeks, I received nine inquiries for business portraits and each job had to be delivered and invoiced before December 31. The requests ranged from two to thirty business headshots.

One potential customer asked why I don’t offer a bigger volume discount for multiple business portraits. They wondered why the cost to shoot 30 business headshots didn’t drop to under $50 each.

Here’s why:
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Stop Time

November 8, 2013 No Comments

When considering a potential purchase, a customer will, where possible, compare the price of the product or service to other similar products or services. But when a customer has no reference points to help determine the worth of a purchase, they will usually fall back on two old standbys: price per weight and price per hour.

For example, a customer will often assume that a 5-lb. box of Product A should be cheaper than a 10-lb. box of Product B and that a two-hour service should cost less than a four-hour service.

Many companies don’t have a lot of experience hiring a corporate photographer. This means they may have difficulty determining an acceptable price for professional photography. Is a particular photo commission worth $500 or $5,000?

To gauge a photographer’s price, a customer will often resort to hourly wages. For example, if a photographer charges $1,000 to shoot some business portraits over the course of two hours, the customer might think, “That’s $500/hour! That’s much too expensive!”

The cost of photography should not depend on time spent but rather on value gained. Pricing photography by the hour is like pricing books by the number of pages or pricing paintings by the square inches of canvas.

When assessing a photographer’s price, instead of reducing it to dollars per hour, ask how important that photography is to your company’s marketing plans. If the marketing value can’t be expressed in dollars per hour then neither should the photography.

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