Marketing

I love to take photographs in my spare time – of the children, beautiful things around me and some of the things that inspire me. Now I am no professional, and I’d be a little loathe to photograph products for an ecommerce website, I certainly wouldn’t take important team headshots, nor would I take photos for a client website. BUT, I do love to share my photography on this blog, and I know a lot of you do on your blogs too. So I want to let you into a little secret.

There are things that Photoshop can do that will improve your photographs. And they really are quite clever!

You don’t need to buy a full copy of Photoshop – Photoshop Elements is about £50 and is fab – ideal for editing photos for your blog, and it really will improve the end result.

Let me show you a picture of part of our Royal Wedding street party tea…

This is quite subtle. The light is pretty good in this shot, so it was about subtle tweaks to make the image “pop”. I’m more than certain that if I was a professional photographer my post production work would be much more precise. See how I lose a bit of the definition in the teacup handle as I take the image brighter? You don’t tend to get this when you work with professionals because they take more than 5 minutes over this sort of stuff. But I hope that if you are blogging images that you can use these quick tricks to help you improve how your blog looks…

Step One: Fiddle with the curves

Go to Image> Adjustments> Curves

Matt Pereira showed me how to do this and got very technical, looking at the histogram and making adjustments until the image was just right. I just tend to drag up the middle and fiddle about until it looks nice and bright without losing definition.

Step Two: Brightness and Contrast

Image> Adjustments> Brightness Contrast

Again, it’s a case of fiddling about. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific than that

Step 3: Crop and adjust where necessary

I have a nasty habit of taking my photographs at a slight angle – so much so that you end up feeling a little seasick when you look at them. So I rotate my image until I get the lines straight.

I’m getting better at just shooting things in the right light in the first place, so I’m using less Photoshop trickery now than I was a couple of months ago, but I hope that the image below shows just what a difference 5 minutes of fiddling can make.

Enjoy!

Tagged as in Powerful Photography

I know that it’s tempting to think that the reason professional photographers are so good is because of the kit they use. Just like professional graphic designers are so good because they use an Apple Mac and InDesign (well, of course?). But I saw this post on Vicki Knight’s blog a few weeks back and was so blown away with how perfectly it illustrates the power of the photographer’s eye that I asked her if I might reproduce a version for you all on this blog, and joyfully she said yes! So I’m delighted to share Vicki’s second post of the week. Enjoy!

I am constantly asked by friends and clients what camera they should upgrade to, or what lens or bit of kit they should buy so they can take better photos. Many people assume that by spending money on better kit will somehow make them take better photographs. But they’ve never actually taken time to learn how to use the camera they already have! It’s like asking what car you should upgrade to when you haven’t even learnt to drive yet! Instead what people should be asking, is how to find the best light or what’s the best setting to have their camera on.

The truth is that you don’t need mega expensive equipment in order to take photos that you’ll be really proud of. You just need an entry level DSLR (which you can get for around £300) and then learn the essential things you need to know about taking great photographs and the best settings to use the camera on.

In preparation for the first of my photography workshop for parents which is this Saturday, I decided to try a little experiment. I wanted to see what a professional (me!) could do with an entry level camera and lens. My brother-in-law, Nathan, kindly took me up on my challenge and we took the kids for a walk down to the local corner shop near my parents house and took photos. I told him to use the camera how he normally does and shoot how he normally would. Here are the photos he took…

Non Professional Using Professional Camera

Then I took his camera, using the settings that I will be teaching in my workshops and these are the images that I captured. I need to just say here that these are straight out of the camera, which means I haven’t done anything to them in post processing. I would never normally show un-edited photos on my blog so I’m pretty nervous about this. It feels like going out for dinner without a scrap of make up on!

Professional Using Non Professional Camera

So this is at the same time, on the same day, same location, same camera and same kids. And I haven’t used any extra equipment. I really hope you can see quite a difference.

Now I’m not saying that professionals can set up a business using non-professional equipment and hardly any experience (please no!); there are a whole host of reasons why professional equipment (and a huge amount of experience) is necessary to become a pro which I’m not going to go into here. But I’m passionate about showing people that these entry-level DSLR cameras (which so many people own) are capable of fantastic results if you know how to use them. And hopefully this little experiment will also show you that you won’t become a better photographer just by splashing out money on better kit. Remember that old adage, it’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you do with it that counts!

Here are a couple of the images that I took to show you the difference once they have been edited (I couldn’t resist!)

I don’t teach post-production on my workshops as it’s far more important to learn how to get it right in camera. And you don’t want to spend hours in front of your computer editing all of your family snaps! I also wanted to show you these before and afters so you can see how I spend time editing each and every image for my clients until they are perfect. I certainly don’t do this with all of my family snaps.

I hope you liked my experiment and it’s made you see that it’s really not just the camera that takes the photo. A huge thank you to Nathan for letting me use his camera and his photos! If this post has made you realise that you really must get round to learning how to use your camera properly, you’re in luck as I’ve just announced some new dates for my workshops alongsideMakeMe workshops as the February & May dates sold out in days. The new dates are Friday 1st April and Saturday 9th July. Please just click here to book your place on the MakeMe Workshops website.

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I know I’ve been banging the “get a professional photographer in” drum throughout this series, but the fact is that taking your own photos is fun and cost effective (if you can get it right). What I hope I’ve helped you highlight is that ‘point and shoot’ just won’t cut it, but where do you go from here? Cue a guest blog from the fabulous Vicki Knights!

Image: Vicki Knights for Sprinkles and Swirls

As Fiona has explained during this blog series, if you really want professional looking photos on your website, you really do need to hire a pro.

However many business owners now have blogs and want to share photos on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. And it’s unlikely that you can justify hiring a professional photographer every single time you make something new or see something that inspires you. And you really don’t want to share awful photos of your products that just devalue your brand and your business. So it’s a great investment for your business to learn how to take great photos.

Image: Vicki Knights for Button and Bean

Getting started

You will ideally need a digital SLR camera (one with interchangeable lenses) and you will need to invest in some training to learn how to use it properly. Unless you are willing to spend hours reading the manual! Please don’t think that you can just buy an expensive camera, stick it on auto and start taking amazing photos. There is a lot more that goes into photography than just the kit! You would be much better sticking with a more basic camera but learning the fundamentals of photography and really learning how to use your camera.

If you want to start taking better photos right now before you attend a workshop or hire a professional, here are a few tips to get you started:

Turn off your flash. The pop-up flash that most cameras have, tend to wash out colours and makes everything in the image look a bit flat. Not really what you’re after when trying to sell your products!
Instead take what you want to photograph to the right light. Inside, look for a lovely big window. Window light is a fantastic light source. Ensure that you don’t have the direct sun shining on your product though.
When photographing outside, you need to get your product out of the direct sun. Midday on a sunny day is the worst time to shoot! An overcast day is great as the light is softer. If it is sunny, then take your product into the shade and shoot there.

Shoot your product from lots of different angles. Get up above it, down below it and walk around it to find the best angle. The beauty of digital is that you can shoot away without it costing you anything! Then you can choose the best shots when you look at them on your computer.
Don’t always put your product in the centre of the photo. Images tend to look more interesting and dynamic when the point of focus is over to one side and not always centred.
And lastly, try to include something else in your shot to add some context. The viewer won’t know the size of the product without something else in the photo to add some context.

I hope you’ve found these tips useful!

Vicki Knights runs Oh Snap! Photography workshops for Creative Business Owners with MakeMe Workshops in Cobham, Surrey. If you are interested in getting started with photography I highly recommend you check out her blog.

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