justify hiring a photog and not stock
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- petechilton
Posting for a friend:
"Hi,
I am teaching a 3-hour workshop on why small business owners should hire professional photographers and not shoot locations, products and staff people themselves or buy cheap istock photos that are too generic and lots of other people are using... basically about being mindful about developing your identity with quality images.So I am looking for websites to show that utilize great photography and bad photography - best and worst - not just photo websites - but any other business - your own clients etc.
Any suggestions will be helpful! Thanks!"
Beth
Post responses and I will forward to her.
thanks everyone.
- bjladams0
it's always nice to see real people with local, familiar scenery- we try to shoot on location for most of our projects and always makes it more personal.
but, a lot of small business owners only have a budget for stock photography- and used correctly, there really is some good stuff out there.
and i dont mean to sound mean - but her site looks like it's made up of stock photos.
- All of the photography on her site is shot by her.petechilton
- evanburke0
Beautiful example of real photography (click play)
- Morning_star0
This is a difficult one.
From a purely budget perspective and in the current climate, small businesses can't justify the expense of a quality professional photographer. Whilst I agree that bespoke imagery impacts the bottom line and is a valuable resource for any business identity, it is a long way down the list of 'must haves' in lean times. If truth be known, Marketing as a whole is a long way down that list.
So, as a small business what do you do:
- You could spend £120 and have access to Shutterstock or similar for a month and create yourself a largely generic suite of imagery, but extensive and 'your choice' none the less - it does make some sense.
- You could spend £100 and get a friend, or relative, or son of the local shopkeeper to do it, because they've 'got a nice camera'. Which is unlikely to be as extensive as you'd like or not as high quality or blurred or the wrong people or scenery. Alternatively, you could have struck photographer gold and you may end up with something awesome - it's risky.
- You could spend £2,500 or £25,000 or £250,000 to hire a quality professional photographer (and the lights, studios, models, locations etc) to take the exact pics you need for your brand and have the most complete and best looking identity in your small business centre. My guess is that as a small business you won't be around for long as its a poor business decision, give the current climate.As i said, it's difficult. Photography and image making has, over the last decade, evolved into a very different animal. Access to technology, software and hardware, processing and production is easier and cheaper and this, I feel, has had a negative impact on those who make their living from photography - which is where I suspect this question is coming from.
Often photographers are small businesses too and I suspect most are finding times tough because of the economic downturn and the change in technology. Maybe instead of dwelling on 'the way it was', photographers as creative people ought to think about 'the way it could be'.
'Justifying' the spending of a relatively big piles of cash to small businesses for uncertain rewards is, at the moment, only good for the photographer. That said, I'd love to think differently but reality bites.
- randommail0
Some companies can afford to hire an architecture firm to design their offices and outfit it with nice quality furniture.
Some companies can only afford particle-board Ikea furniture that they have to put together themselves.
It's a waste of time to preach the virtues of being a company with deep pockets.
- Hombre_Lobo0
Heres a local restaurant i did food and internal photography for, my bro did the website and menu design.
http://www.pho68.co.uk/index.htm…
http://www.pho68.co.uk/gallery.h…The textures and colors inside the restaurant were reflected in the in-restaurant menus and website design to give a more consistent feeling of identity and personality.
i'd like to think that the photography enriches both the menu and the website, giving users a deeper look / better idea of the restaurant as well as making them hungry for some incredible food.
If they used istock, i dont think the outcome would be anywhere near as effective.
- i likey. in the case of a restaurant or a venue i think you need to do on-location photography
kopanda
- i likey. in the case of a restaurant or a venue i think you need to do on-location photography
- vaxorcist0
You can always show 2 ads for competing products that use the same stock photo....
Good Art Directors can work with a good photographer to get Professional photographs that can be used not as a "last part, drop-into layout" part of the production, but as something from the start, i.e. you have great photos, you generate a color scheme from these photos, you use the aesthetic from the photos for the branding, you float text and headlines in parts of the photos,etc...
- slappy0
http://www.maxchocolatier.com/
Check out the store...
- Hard_Man0
Small business owners should keep their mouths shut and stick to the bottom line. No getting tricky with photography. Radio advertising works, get the dummies in their cars and yell at 'em while they trudge back and forth from work. Dave and Jessica Shitstain from Purchase, NY, aren't going to buy jack-shit based on a photograph, whether it's ripped from Microsoft clip-art, or if Karl Lagerfeld swoops down on the back of a mythical flying Daddy Bear and snaps the frames with God's own Yashica point-and-shoot. MDE.tv.
- Their Brother-in-laws middle school kids can do some great web and print design too....vaxorcist