Our photo tips to present your business

Photography is much more than just a graphic element.
Whether it is on a website or on social networks, it has taken a considerable place in our everyday life. Indeed, it allows you to communicate your ideas, your emotions and involves the Internet user in the story you are telling.

So, if you are not an amateur or professional photographer, here are a few tips that will help you use this medium wisely.

What to take a picture of?

Your products

If you have a product, goodies, or design elements to highlight, go ahead and give them the importance they deserve. You have to sublimate them through beautiful photos.
Are you selling something? Showcase these elements and vary the shots to have content in reserve. This will allow you to feed your site and your publications later on.

Services

If what you offer is more like services you can show the result (as we have done through our portfolio for example). You can also highlight the creation process needed to get there.

Places

If, like our client Artblanc, your business is based on the presentation of places, then photography makes even more sense to highlight them!

You can also present your work environment

Your employees

They are an integral part of the company's image. Make portraits of your employees. Showing them helps to reinforce the human aspect of your business. Moreover, it will also allow your customers to put a name to a face and to know the role of each one.

Your clients

What better way to attract your target customers than to address them directly? Our client Tribu News regularly honours its clients who have received the newspaper of the month. It's terribly engaging!

4 methods for quality visuals

1 - A Professional Photographer

The ideal solution is to hire a professional photographer for a photo shoot. He or she will capture the atmosphere of your company in his or her own way, and you will be able to have a much more personalised experience with professional equipment (camera, lights, lenses, tripod, etc.).
To do this, the Utopix platform allows you to find a photographer based in Brussels.
Thus, our choice stopped on Maxime Dubus who was able to capture a few moments of a day at Cherry Pulp. (thanks again to him!)

2 - Image banks

Arf...unfortunately you don't have enough budget for a photographer? Or, simply no product or workshop to photograph yet?
Don't worry, there is still the solution of image banks. But I like to warn you, they can be your worst or your best allies depending on your use.

What do you have to watch out for?

When you upload a photo to an image bank, be careful to have natural poses and brightness, nothing "too much", nothing forced.

Here are a few examples not to use: fades of weird gradients between two photos, "Fake laughs" during a meeting, a collective High five (seriously, who does that?) or a handshake between two individuals with a big smile on their face while looking at the camera.
That's a no. (please.)

No no no and no !

You're not sure of your choice? All you have to do is ask yourself a simple question; "Does this picture look natural?"

This even more important on Instagram which is a network that focuses on photography, on which you will show moments of your life. But if your feed only comes from image banks, it will be insincere and it will end up looking like advertising. (It is better to avoid)

3 - Do It Yourself

Don't worry, even if you're not a professional photographer, you can still take the photos yourself, as long as they are of high quality.

Don't worry, we're not going to start talking to you about depth of field, exposure, shooting, framing, blur, shutter speed or any other technical word.

If you have a digital camera, a reflex camera or a good cell phone, it will do the trick to get quality photos for your publications. (Yes, yes, it's true!)

You will then be able to use these photos. But beware, if your photo is in large format on your site and it is of poor quality, it will not be optimal...

4 - Personalized hashtag

A new technique is slowly spreading on social networks: create a hashtag that your customers will use to share a photo of your business.
You may have already seen this hashtag ; whether it's in your clothing package with the sentence "Share your look of the day #...!" or on the corner of a restaurant menu.
The person will then take a picture, share it on his personal account and you will be able to share it again by identifying him to thank him. This gives you "free content" AND you put the customer in the spotlight. (Isn't that nice?)

To launch this movement use your own hashtag on your publications and invite your community to use it via a post or by informing them in a story for example.