The business of photography and retouching
Earlier this year, the director of communications of a Toronto corporation requested a photo quote for a dozen business portraits for its upcoming annual report. The organization needed a portrait of its CEO and each board member. I sent a quote for the photography but never got the job.
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Here’s the best way for a company to mess up its public relations, mangle what’s left of its brand value and kill off any future credibility. (I’ll give you a hint: cut corners and go cheap on photography.)
As everyone knows, BP is in the midst of the worst oil spill in US history. As part of its attempt at public relations, and to salvage its brand, BP is trying to keep the public informed of its ongoing cleanup operations. Note that BP doesn’t call it an “oil spill” but rather an “oil well incident”.
What did BP do? It released doctored photos to the public, pictures that have been amateurishly altered to show BP in a better light. BP’s very weak mea culpa here.
The joke was that “BP” stood for “Broken Pipe”. It nows appears that it stands for “Bad Photoshopping”.
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There are two ways to sell your products or services:
Option A: Make your customers smarter. Let them know how and why you do what you do. Educate them on what to look for and what to avoid. Help them know what’s possible, what questions to ask and what to expect. Smart customers are informed customers who, in turn, are good customers.
Option B: Make your customers dumber. Don’t let them know about your products or services. Don’t tell them about variables, options or warranties. Don’t give them choices. Dumb customers are helpless customers who, in turn, are good customers because they will always run to you for help.
Option B is the easiest and that’s why many businesses do it. You could choose this option and be successful, but only until a competitor decides to go with Option A. When this happens, Option B is no longer an option.
Everyone loves free because there’s no risk involved. If a free item is unsatisfactory, throwing it out can be done without hesitation or regret.
It’s free and priced to sell.
Free means you don’t have to make any judgments or decisions. When it comes to free or cheap photography, the low price becomes the most important feature. Good photography? Poor photography? Who cares because it’s free!
I wouldn’t buy anything that I have to pay for.
But viewers of photography don’t care what it cost. They care only about the quality of what they see. There’s a big disconnect between a business that tries to get free or cheap photography and its customers who want good photography.
I wouldn’t pay for anything unless it’s free.
People always assign a value to the things they buy. If something is received for free, they assign a value of $0. For example, if someone loses their $75 sunglasses, they’ll moan, “Oh no, I’ve lost my $75 sunglasses!” But if they lose a free or cheap pair of sunglasses, that person will say, “It doesn’t matter, I got them for free.” The cheap sunglasses are disposable and not worth any effort.
For the photographer who does cheap or free photography: is your work disposable and not worth the effort?
For the business that tries to get cheap or free pictures: is your business image disposable and not worth the effort?
A dozen art directors, creative directors and photo editors were commenting on what they want in a photographer’s web site. Here’s their agreed-upon list, *listed in order*, of the minimum requirements in a photographer’s web site:
1. No music.
2. No Flash.
3. Do not open any new browser windows. Do not resize any windows.
4. Quick to load.
5. Easy to navigate.
6. Easy-to-find contact information.
7. Great pictures.
Certainly everyone’s tastes and expectations are different. But note that most of the above points deal with technical aspects. Having the best pictures in the world means little if viewers have to struggle with your web site in order to see them.
Photographers, how does your web site measure up?
While looking through a number of media handout photos from a national grocery store chain or at least from its public relations agency, it’s obvious that all of the pictures fail to meet basic journalism standards.
Everyone in a photo must be identified. In a fully-controlled situation like a set-up publicity picture, this is easy to do. An improperly-captioned photo shows not only laziness and carelessness on the part of the photographer and the public relations agency, but also a lack of understanding of journalism and the needs of a newspaper.
Naming only one person in a group and then expecting viewers to figure out who’s who is a failure. A company may know its executives but the public does not. Why make readers guess?
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You get paid to do what others can’t or won’t do. Maybe they don’t have the time, maybe they don’t have the tools or maybe they don’t have the know-how. In any case, if someone can do what you do, they won’t pay you to do the same thing.
This means that a professional photographer should have better tools, better production values and better abilities and more creativity than their competition and even their customers. But this is not always the case.
An amateur photographer, and maybe even a customer, might own the same or better tools than a professional photographer. An amateur might have the same creativity and ability as a professional.
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