This guy sure is busy:
He buys his eyeglasses in eastern USA.
Photo Groupies
A group of Circassian men, circa 1880. (US Library of Congress)
A group of New York Rangers hockey players, 1999.
Most of us have the deep need to be part of a group. A sense of belonging is an emotional need that’s been with us for a very long time. Being part of a group is for more than survival and security.
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What Is Corporate Photography?
“Corporate photography” is just a general name for photography used to help market a business. It isn’t just for big corporations. This type of photography can be used by any business, big or small, incorporated or not.
Corporate photography is not advertising photography. The latter type of photography is about selling a product or service. Corporate photography is for building and enhancing a company’s name or brand and it tends to be editorial photography.
The most common type of corporate photography is business portraits. Photography of business conferences and events, office interiors and exteriors, and employees on the job, are also common subject matter. Corporate photographers are also used to cover a company’s involvement with a community or charity event.
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Breakfast of Champions
A box of breakfast cereal might cost $5 and it could contain about a dozen servings. A restaurant breakfast might cost $15 and it would deliver exactly one serving (unless it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet breakfast :-) ).
A box of cereal is fast and cheap. This is good when it’s just you or you’re in a hurry.
A restaurant breakfast costs more but you can have whatever you want and it’s made to order. This type of breakfast is perfect when you’re trying to impress someone.
Stock pictures are like a box of cereal. Custom photography is like a restaurant breakfast.
Stock photos are fast and cheap. This is okay if your web site, brochure or other usage is only for yourself. But this is not okay if you need to make a good impression on someone such as your customers.
You wouldn’t serve a box of cereal at a business breakfast, so why would you serve stock pictures on your business web site?
There’s a saying that you should write to express, not to impress. But if you do a good job of expressing then that can lead to impressing.
The same thing applies to the corporate photography on your company’s web site. The pictures must first express something positive and genuine about your business. Only then do you have a chance of making a good impression and looking like a champion.
The Photographer Kings
Two decades ago in a television documentary, legendary US photographer Richard Avedon said:
Images are fast replacing words as our primary language. They define our ideas of beauty, truth and history. In our age, the photographer, not the philosopher, is king.
Today the Internet is the dominant means of communication and images are the most effective, most powerful, most universal language. People don’t read, they look.
What does this mean for you and your business?
If you’re not using photography to market your business then you’re not worth looking at, you’re not part of the conversation, you’re pretty much invisible.
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Creating Memorable Photos For Marketing
Researchers at MIT recently published a study and online demo about trying to understand and predict image memorability. The study used 60,000 images and a few thousand participants.
A goal of this research was “[u]nderstanding why certain things are memorable…” so that it might someday be possible to create better images thereby “allowing people to consume information more efficiently.” (If you’re a photographer, please stop laughing.)
Researchers found that the most memorable pictures usually included – wait for it – faces or other human body parts. The least memorable pictures were those of generic scenes, especially landscapes and other types of nature. The researchers called their results a “trend.” Most photographers know that this “trend” has been around for 170 years.
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Optimism Bias
Almost everyone exhibits some degree of “optimism bias.” This means we tend to underestimate the time, cost and effort needed to complete a certain task and we overestimate our chances of success.
Optimism is great, it helps us move forward. But optimism doesn’t wait for all the facts to come in. So sometimes you need to be aware of possible optimism bias.
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