Technically, commercial photography encompasses any photograph taken for money. But really, in context, it means photographs taken for intentional business use. This might mean action shots of a trade, product photography for an online store or brochure, or location shots of your business premises. Showing off your people doing what they do best and making them look good doing it is massively important to enable your business to succeed. You cannot underestimate the power of promoting your team with great visuals. With a little planning, even a single half day shoot can give your business a pool of creative content to use for flyers, brochures, social media and of course your website. The single most important benefit of fully tailored photo and video is it represents what you do. It is not generic stock imagery. It sells “you”. That last bit is so often overlooked by business of all sizes but especially in the small to medium sector. Small and medium business too often assume that a professional photoshoot is out of budget but your customers do not want to see generic smiley stock images. In the internet age your customer base have become immune to lowest common denominator advertising tricks. Your customers become far more easily engaged seeing your real world team providing real word services.
MISHISHI Hair & Beauty in Spalding is a perfect example of a small business standing out in the crowd. It’s owner realised that stock and phone images did not do justice to the quality of output from the salon. Given the intrinsically tailored nature of the hair and beauty industry it makes perfect sense to present work to a standard that it deserves rather than trying to make do. MISHISHI also make the most any content created by using it not only on their own website but filtered through to Instagram, Facebook and printed promotional media in sync with their promotional calendar. By spreading a single shoot across four or five different promotional routes absolute return on investment is maximised.
We are definitely not suggesting banning the iPhone or say that anything shouldn’t be done in-house. Many small companies have somebody onboard who was or actively still is a keen photographer. They can be a highly valued asset especially if your business requires constant, frequent, decent images drip feeding into a news feed. It may not be cost or time practical to involve an outside photographer in those circumstances. A9K comes in is when that doesn’t quite hit the spot. You might need some high power lighting, a top class lens or other niche professional equipment to get the photo the business needs rather than the “that will do” photo you can try to create yourself.
If you can’t seem to get the DIY images right it might be time to put your cameraphone away – just for a little while. To discuss what fantastic photos we can create for your business please get in touch.