Branded pictures for your business
Whether you have an E-commerce site or you just need some staff photos done, getting professional pictures can be expensive.
Even though we would always recommend using a professional photographer for the best results, here are some tips to help you do it yourself.
Lighting
Arguably the most important thing in photography is light, without it a photograph cannot exist.
So that you don’t have to mess around with studio lighting, the easiest thing to do is use natural daylight. Ideally, go outside on an overcast day. This will give a nice diffused light, avoiding harsh shadows.
Background
A mistake repeatedly made is to find a cool background and then put the subject in front of it, hoping that it will make a good picture.
Often the light is terrible and the background is distracting. As we photograph products and people online, we would suggest using a plain background.
White or grey are the easiest to manipulate if you wish to cut out your subjects. A plain background will ensure that all the focus remains on the subject.
When taking pictures on a light background, one thing to note is that the camera will often underexpose the image. This is because the camera thinks the background should be equivalent to a mid-grey tone.
To compensate for this, you need to overexpose the picture a bit. How to do this will depend on the camera. Look in the instruction manual for the term bracketing; you want to increase the exposure by about +1.5.
Another thing to be aware of is the white balance (WB). Try a few different ones to see which gives you the best colours and tones, but you will probably find auto-white balance or the cloudy setting will work best.
Posing and placement
When photographing a person, don’t just stand them square before the camera. The more flattering thing to do is to have them turn their body at an angle and then turn their head towards the camera.
When working with inanimate objects, remember to photograph them from several different angles. Take close-ups of the important details.
Composition
There are lots of ideas and rules for composition, such as ‘rule of thirds’, ‘leading lines’ etc. However, for what we want to do, 90% of the time placing the subject in the centre is a winner.
Having said that, if you are photographing people, try and avoid having their heads in the centre of the picture.
Manipulation
Manipulation software can be expensive, but hopefully, by following the tips in this post, you will not need to manipulate your pictures. It may be necessary to resize your photos.
Web designers, like us, will be able to do this for you. If you use WordPress in your design, as long as the image file doesn’t exceed 2 MB, it will resize it.