Five fabulous things you can expect to happen when you book a commercial photographer

Actually, I’m going to start with what won’t happen.

• You won’t have to face sitting for hours trawling through image libraries
• You won’t finally select a stock image then discover it will cost you an arm and a leg in copyright charges
• You won’t fall in love with an image only to find it on a competitor’s website
• You won’t need to spend last month’s profit on new camera, lightbox and tripod, to use it once and realise that you don’t know your aperture from your DSLR
• You won’t spend hours judiciously taking pictures with your mobile phone, only to find it comes out too dark, your staff complain they look hideous, there’s a traffic cone in the background and it won’t reproduce at the right size.

Despite this list of headaches and hazards, many businesses will go down this road. Possibly it’s to save money (although commercial photography can be extremely cost effective). Possibly to save time (though most commercial photographers can meet very tight deadlines). Very possibly, it’s the fear of the unknown. Simply having no idea what the process involves, how to go about it and what to expect in the end.

Well allow me to enlighten you on the process and illuminate you on the benefits.

1. When you select your commercial photographer, take a look at their website and their portfolio, types of clients they’ve worked with, their blogs and their biography. If you like what you see and feel they may be a good fit for you, give them a call. You may wish to see two or three, or you may get a great sense and go with the first one you find. But the initial chat on the phone will enable us both to gather a bit of information, get a very approximate idea of costs, timescales and nature of the project and arrange a more detailed brief.

2. Next, comes the brief. Most commercial photographers will come to you. It’s in our interest to learn as much about you and your business as possible at the outset as well as getting a feel for atmosphere and lighting. So seeing you in your business environment will make you more comfortable, and us better informed.

In the brief we’ll ask questions like this;

• the purpose of the photography
• styles and looks that you like
• the brand and corporate guidelines
• what you want to achieve e.g. Increased sales? Changed behaviour? Awareness and information?
• who and what we’ll be shooting
• budgets
• timescales
• any other requirement key to the project.

3. Just in case you’re worried that the photographer may be looking to you to provide the creative inspiration, be assured this isn’t the case. Armed with a good understanding of your business and basic likes and dislikes, the next stage is research. Whilst I’m sure many of us are creative geniuses, any good commercial photographer needs to be up on the trends, abreast of new techniques and aware of what your industry and competitors are up to. That’s why with commercial photography you’ll never run the risk of looking the same as your competitor and you’ll get an entirely original set of images that’ll reflect magnificently on your business.

4. Armed with all the wonderful information from the brief and research, commercial photographers will then put together a ‘mood board’. This is the chance to see where we are heading with the photography style so there are no surprises on the day. The mood board may contain sample environments e.g. indoor/outdoor. It may contain sample styles e.g. saturating colours in order to bring out your corporate colour. It may contain themes and ambience such as contemporary/abstract/lighthearted/romantic/bold. This mood board is your chance to work with the photographer to get the final look just perfect for you, your brand and your business.

5. Before you know it, it will be THE DAY. Your photographer will have arranged the shoot entirely around you, your staff and your business. They’ll take full control from advising on outfits, to supplying models and props if needed, through to communicating on how long the post production and editing will take and when you’ll receive your suite of photos. We also work closely with graphic designers, web designers and printers so you don’t have to worry about project management and what needs to happen next.

Some samples from a commercial job for website photography .........

So there’s no need to worry. You’ll find the process stress free, and so much simpler and more effective than the alternatives.

If you’d like a no obligation chat about any aspect of commercial photography, please don’t hesitate to contact me.