— Photography

A picture speaks a thousand words.

Photographs have the ability to speak when there are no words. Good images can engage your audience; poor images can turn your audience away.

The chances are that nowadays there are more cameras at most events than there are people. Almost everybody has a camera phone in their pocket, with many other ‘better’ cameras also within arms-reach of most people. It’s estimated that over 650 billion photographs are taken each year – incredible!

With so many cameras on the go, and a ready ease of access to images, you’d think it should be easier to produce content than ever before. While it’s partly true, the volume of available content can now make the administrative process of managing resources and using them more effectively all the more difficult for many clients.

We work with clients to help them identify suitable content to shoot before photographs are taken, matching them with a photographer who can shoot to the style of their brand, while also advising on how best to manage your image archives.

Along with running Tentmaker Creative, our lead creative Roddy has 15 years’ experience as a professional photographer since graduating from Glasgow Metropolitan College. Over that time, he’s travelled to numerous countries in 5 continents building a collection of extensive travel images while also developing a deeper understanding of how clients are using photography to further their communications.

In the UK, Roddy also shoots a range of subjects focusing on relaxed and candid coverage, specialising in an editorial style of photography. He often shoots images for clients that we use in Tentmaker projects to help create new content, and has an extensive list of other photographers that we can call on when a project may require a different photographic skillset.

Quality Matters

Digital photography has had a profound impact on bringing the ability to capture images to a wider audience of people than ever before. As that has brought great benefits to many, the challenge of having multiple streams of images from varying sources also means that there is an inevitable variation in the quality of images that you may have access to.

While the freedom of digital photography has brought photography to the masses, the inevitable ‘just keep shooting until you get a good one’ is one of the worst aspects of such easy access to a camera. There is always a place for amatuer content; but it’s important to ensure that your main subject matter has the best available images to represent the most important parts and people of your story.

The quality of your photography says a lot to your audience, whether intentional or not. A poor quality of file becomes a reflection on your brand. Use your best images well!

Managing your photography archives

One of the biggest challenges with modern photography can be knowing how to manage your photographic archive. Having multiple contributors to your image archive can bring great benefit, but it can also add to your ongoing workload: having to ensure you have appropriate permissions to use images or attempting to manage a large number of images using different filenames, capture formats or file types.

We work through these issues on a regular basis, and are happy to help clients identify tools and processes that can help make your administrative process easier. We want to help you to realise more value from your individual assets.

More information

We have some additional, more in-depth articles that may be of interest to you. Our ‘Guide to Images’ details information on subjects such as file types, colour profiles and how to size images for different outputs. Our ‘Guide to How to Shoot Better Images’ will help when you’re trying to consider how to make the most of your image shoot before you get started. If you’d like to know more, send us an email and we’ll share a copy with you.