Doing Your Own Photography For Your Website

For many websites, adding your own photography can give a more authentic appearance which helps immediately build trust with website visitors and like the common phrase, a photograph is worth a thousand words. While professional photography will always give a professional and authentic feeling to your website, it can be very expensive.

Stock Photography isn’t for everyone

One option immediately is to opt for stock photography. Stock photography is using a library of images which photographers have already photographed previously and matching them as best as possible to match your requirements. While some stock photography is free, finding almost exactly the photographs you need can require spending a fair amount of money each.

Another aspect stock photography is that it can’t capture the uniqueness and authenticity of photographs of your employees, offices and other places. There can be a good balance between the use of stock photography and other photography, or even just using stock photography as a stock-gap until resources can be made available.

Do I have the right equipment?

Most people these days have a smartphone of some description, with only 8% reported to not have one. In addition to this, smartphone cameras have improved massively in recent years which has made it easier than ever before for everyone to take great photographs.

However this doesn’t mean that every smartphone has an excellent camera, with many budget models being a place where manufacturers can save a lot of money. It is possible to take good photos with budget phones, however more inexperienced people may find this more difficult to do. Although even with the latest iPhone, it is possible to take bad photographs without knowing it.

Get some balance with a tripod

Equipment-wise the best you can do to improve with what you already have is to buy a tripod. Poundland, along with other discount retails sell mobile tripods which will universally clip onto all smartphones, even with a chunky case on. Most of these mobile tripods also use the standard screw mount which can be used on the larger tripods for “proper” cameras.

Adding a tripod means you can take a level photo with many tripods having spirit levels on each angle. It also means you have more percise control over each angle rather than relying on your hand. You can also make very wide images using a panorama function which most smartphones have built-in these days.

Another use for a tripod is to increase consistency when taking photos such as staff profile photos. This means the camera will be in the same place each time so long as you lock each axis in place.

Taking the right photos

With decent equipment there is still a few things to keep in mind when taking photos in order to make sure they look great when adding to your website.

First of all, we can reconmend to plan in a decent amount of time to take a lot more photos than you need. It’s much better to take too many, and allow a web developer or designer sort through and pick the ones which work best with your website. Another thing to bear in mind, is while Photoshop can do a lot of things it’s always good to start with a good image. Photoshop takes a lot of time and skill in order to produce good results which for most people would be best for a fine tuning of an image.

Next is to be a little flexible with the date and time that you take the photos, especially if you are including outdoor shots. Taking photos of your building on a rainy or cloudy day won’t give the most professional first impressions. We would highly reconmend allowing a selection of different days to take photos.

Taking wider photos than you might expect would also improve the overall usage and look of photos when added to a website. Most web designs will crop your photo to fit into a designed area correctly, which if there’s an important element to your photo make sure there’s sufficient “safe space” between the edge of the photo and the element.

Finally, one of the most important things is to ensure you are as steady as possible when taking photos. This allows your camera or phone to capture as much as possible. While this is becoming less of an issue, having a steady balance will still help, particullarly indoors where there isn’t as much light.

Conclusion

Hopefully these tips will help you improve your website’s photography and consider investing in either taking photos for your website, or if this is too much work to look into getting a photographer. Need help with your website design, text or photography? Why not see what we can offer and get in touch.

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