Are Your Photographs letting your businesses down? In the modern world of instant communication the still image is still important. Still images are consumed at a rapid rate. Look how many photographs appear across the internet, not to mention in newspapers, magazines and on billboards, that’s before even considering all those pictures you don’t see. Photographs that are never published on social media and sit on computer hard drives and mobile devices, like prints used to sit in photograph albums, envelopes, draws and wallets.
Still images are still important.
If they weren’t people would not choose to take them, or store them, or post them online, and mobile phone manufacturers would likely drop the function from their devices. Almost everyone owns and carries a phone and therefore a camera every day and that simple fact makes many camera owners mistake themselves for photographers
Photographs are supposed to help.
The craft of constructing an image that is relevant, striking, tells the story and draws the reader into reading the text is too often missing from too many businesses photographs. Photographs are supposed to help businesses grab and hold the attention of their target audience and ensure the message is read and retained.
What can a professional photographer do for you.
Almost everyone is so used to taking and posting their own photographs they too often forget that there is a genuine value in hiring a professional photographer. A professional photographer can and will use experience and people skills to combine the essential visual elements in a variety of relevant compositions. Use a range of professional level photographic equipment to produce a number of images that effectively and coherently illustrate and re-enforce your story. Ensure the style of those photographs will work within the publication or publications you are aiming for be that local newspapers, your website, social media streams, trade or in house publications.
Irrelevant images can have a negative affect.
Researchers W. Howard Levie and Richard Lentz study the results of 55 studies to see if visuals associated with text helped get the message across and found that
“visuals that supported the text were beneficial in 98% of all of the studies”
They also found
“illustrations that are not relevant to the content in the text can have a negative effect”
That means that using that camera phone photo of “football team” style line up of disinterested looking VIPs or two grinning faces holding hands in wooden handshake may actually be adversely affecting your business.
