business photography

Business Attitudes Toward Photos

1.   We know our website photos are poor, but we don’t care.
 
These businesses view website photos as a necessary evil—simply filling empty space as cheaply as possible. Image quality doesn’t matter to them.

2.   We don’t know the photos are poor.
 
This happens with businesses that rely on images taken by employees or other amateurs. These businesses believe that all images are essentially the same. They don’t know how to use photography.

3.   The photos are technically perfect, but still fall short.
 
This is especially common with business headshots, where the lighting may be ideal, but the pose or facial expression doesn’t convey the right message. The reason is always that the company hired a low-priced photographer because cheaper is seen as better.

4.   We know when photos are weak and we make an effort to fix them.
 
These businesses recognize the importance of brand image and understand that photos are a key communication tool. They make an effort to reshoot or retouch images when necessary in order to enhance their reputation.

 

Which one best describes your business?

 

Business Photography of Yesteryear

The need for business photography, commercial photography and advertising photography has existed almost as long as photography itself.

 

An advertisement for the McLaughlin Carriage Company of Oshawa, Ontario, circa 1907. Early advertising used drawings, photo engravings or photo etchings. (Library and Archives Canada)

Early advertising illustrations for newspapers, billboards and posters were created from drawings, photo engravings or photo etchings. The first use of halftones to reproduce a continuous tone photograph was in 1869 in Canada but it took several decades before it became common practice.

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Keeping Up With The Times

September is the start of a new school year and every student will be getting new school portraits done. When is your company planning to get new pictures?

Every business needs to refresh the photos on their web site. Refreshing your web site shows that your company is still alive and it keeps customers interested. It also helps your site rank higher in web searches.

The second most popular search engine after Google is Google Images. This image search engine is used more than all other search engines combined excluding Google itself.

This means that people using Google Images are searching visually (because we process pictures much faster than text) and they will click on the best looking or most interesting pictures. Stock pictures are rarely interesting because stock pictures look like stock pictures. Of course, having no pictures means you’re invisible.
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Composition Wise and Whys

There are many online photography tutorials offering technical tips and advice. Much of this information is simplistic and superficial.

For example, when doing a portrait, they’ll tell you not to have harsh shadows on the subject’s face. The problem with information like this is that it isn’t scalable. It’s more beneficial to have information that you can use in any type of photography no matter what your subject matter.

Why do people look at pictures and how do they look at pictures? If you can answer these two questions then you can scale this information across any type of photography.

This post is long but the concepts are simple. Spoiler alert: this isn’t really about photography but rather it’s about human nature and how we perceive things around us.
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Working With A Photographer

US author Seth Godin recently wrote a post titled Working with a designer (four paths). Since my web site is about business photography, I will steal adapt Godin’s post:

 

Working with a photographer (four paths)

All of us want to look good online, need some web site photos and maybe even a portrait of ourselves. More and more individuals and companies are learning that they need to hire a professional photographer.

It comes down to doing your homework. Be clear with yourself before you spend a nickel or a minute with a photographer. This difficult internal conversation will save you endless frustration and heartache later.

Here are four postures to consider when working with a good photographer:
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