So, you’re plannning on using some of your own photos for your new website. Great! People buy people, so having high quality images of your offices, team and local area are a great way to connect with vendors, landlords and applicants. Get it wrong and your images will detract from your website. So it’s important to take high quality, professional standard images.

Your web designer will have access to hundreds of thousands of images from various stock photography websites. Stock photographs are a great way to add colour and vibrancy to your new website. But to really connect with your audience there is no substitute for including a selection of your own photos – provided they are to a high enough standard.

When it comes to taking your own photos you have a couple of options:

1. That you take them yourself
2. That you get a colleague or friend to take the photos
3. That you hire a professional photographer

If you are going to take the photos yourself, or you’re going to get a colleague or friend to take them, you need to take account of the following golden rules:

Professional Self-photography Golden Rules

1. Use the right equipment. A highend smart phone can take great pictures, but a professional standard camera, with great post production is better. Ideally your equipment should include a DSLR Camera, a wide angle lens, a tripod/monopod, a memory card and a spare battery

2. Setting the scene. If you’re’t necessarily  taking internal office shots of your office or team make sure there’s no clutter, that the furniture is positioned to give clean lines, that the backgrounds behind people provide adequate contrast and that you turn on all the lights.

3. Learn about composition.  Professional photographers don’t necessarily have the best equipment, but they have experience and artistic flair when it comes to composing their photos. Try taking your photos from different angles, by photographing from different heights and by aligning the corners of the room or by focussing or including interesting features. For external photos avoid the middle of the day  and pick overcast days which reduce shadows and can be easily edited post-shoot. 

4. Image basics. Make sure you take high resolution photos (2000 pixels wide / 12 megapixels or more), save images as jpegs, use low ISO, a wide aperture and a tripod. If photos are going to be used for banners make sure they are landscape in orientation. This will also work well for images used inline, in sliders, in blogs and more. As a general rule of thumb, the only portrait photos you should take are individual team photos. 

5. Post shoot editing. Even an average photo can be enhanced significantly using the right software. Use photoshop, apple software or online editors such as Pixlr.com which has a high quality free plan. 

“Professional photographers don’t necesarily have the best equipment. But they do have experience and artistic flair when it comes to composing their photos. “

Last but not least, keep things simple. Remove any distracting elements; anything that doesn’t add to the photo should be removed. When taking photos of your staff, make sure they’re taken against a blank wall, rather than complicated colors or patterns. The simpler your photo, the better it will work with your website design. Consider incuding accessories in the photo that match the colour of your brand!