The Official We Shoot Blog
Wednesday, June 10th, 2015
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Beverage shot done for restaurant chain by Seattle food photographer We Shoot.
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2015
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Beverage image created for restaurant chain by Seattle Food Photographer We Shoot.
Friday, May 22nd, 2015
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Fish Tacos image created for restaurant chain by Seattle food photographer, We Shoot.
Thursday, June 5th, 2014
The definition of “rebranding” from http://www.whatis.com is as follows:
“Rebranding is the creation of a new look and feel for an established product in order to differentiate the product from its competitors. Rebranding efforts may include a name change, new logo or packaging and updated marketing materials that includes the latest industry buzzwords. The goal of rebranding is to influence a customer’s perception about a product or service by revitalizing the brand and making it seem more modern and relevant to the customer’s needs.”
Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? But, really. Rebranding. I mean, please. Is anyone as tired of this word as I am? Every way I turn I see it. I even think about it when meeting other business people. As a professional photographer, what often comes to mind is, “you definitely need to upgrade your imagery and do some rebranding.” I mean some of them SCREAM for it in the way they present their business. It is definitely apparent in the photography of their product and service presented from their website and collateral material. But does this mean that everyone in business needs to rebrand?
Sure, we can all use an occasional evaluation of our business. Who is our clientele? What is our focus? When do we exercise a new strategy? Where are we going with this business? Why did we start it? Yup, somewhere in there is the good old “who, what, when, where, and why.” The nucleus of journalism may apply to a business as well.
But should we hire a rebranding specialist? How about just sitting down with ourselves on occasion – say every 3 months – to ask five questions like the ones above. Make it fun. Be your own journalist. Set up an appointment with yourself every 3 months to conduct an interview, or interview your business partner, upper management, middle management, or your administrative assistant. Oh, wait a minute. This sounds like an old tried-and-true marketing meeting. How ‘bout that? You may have been doing it all along. Rebranding. And it didn’t cost you a penny.
For those of you – like me – who don’t schedule a weekly marketing meeting or a quarterly meeting to evaluate your business, begin now. Consult with the people you work with, the people who want your business to succeed as much as you do. From top to bottom. Involve everyone you work with, and you’ll not only come up with improvements to your business, you’ll come up with improvements to the most important business relations of all. The people you work closely with every day.
And don’t forget the maintenance people – or anyone in the business of making something look its best. If this last suggestion sounds funny to you, then you’re missing out on one important factor to a successful business. Objectivity. And you don’t have to hire a professional. Maybe it could be someone you know in an entirely different business than yours. Get their objective input. Or anybody who isn’t as close as you are to the challenge you face. This is especially applicable for a really small business.
Now get away from that computer and ask this simple question of the next person you see. “What do you think?”
– Dione Benson
Thursday, May 17th, 2012
I received a call from a web designer the other day. He had looked at our website at http://weshoot.com and decided it was too “plain” and that it needed his touch to make it work. I responded that I am quite happy with our website, and that it does already work. It is easy to navigate, with no delays in loading. It doesn’t have much flash, so much of it is viewable on almost all mobile devices. Yeah, maybe it’s not as fancy as some other photographers’ websites, but you can view all of our sample images at your leisure without waiting for the slideshow to bring around the image you want to see. And above all, it is visible and we get calls and emails from all over the country inquiring about our photography services. Visibility matters. The best website ever made will not get many visitors if it is on page 65 of a Google search.
What makes it visible? It is called SEO or search engine optimization. You have all heard it before. If you have a business website on the web, you have undoubtedly received a multitude of emails and phone calls, all touting services that can get you to the top of the first page of Google and other search engines. It doesn’t matter to these people if you are already there. What it basically comes out to is that most people type in a three-word phrase to find what they are looking for. Something like “seattle product photography.” As you would see, we come up somewhere on page one.
It takes a lot of work to get there. I have a professional help make this a reality. I help with my knowledge of some website development and making sure to post to social sites to help boost our SEO. My SEO pro and I communicate often when changes to the website are needed and when they have been completed. Even having a blog helps SEO.
So, the bottom line is: If you need to budget for your website, go with a little less fanciness and spend instead on real SEO. Make sure you get a pro to do your SEO. If someone guarantees you that you will be at the top of page one, you’d better be in a business with no competition, because no great SEO pro will make that claim.
If you need a great SEO professional, drop me a line via our contact page on our website at http://weshoot.com.
– Gary Silverstein
Sunday, March 18th, 2012
I think that video and animation is something that stills photographers have to become more aware of in order to be competitive. One of the areas is simple animation of still photographs. Fortunately, Photoshop CS5 has an application within it to take your still photo and make a short animated video that can keep on running on your web page to attract attention. Older versions may have this capability also, but since I no longer have any of them available, I can only speak to what I have. (See the image below to get an idea of what can be done.) I have used the header image from our We Shoot Facebook page at http://on.fb.me/kH0Ozp to make a flashing “Eat at Joe’s” type of billboard for this purpose. There are three transitions: First, just as a collage; second, “Call Now” is added; and, third, our phone number is flashed over our name.
I won’t go into how to make such an animation except to say that you go into the menu at the top of Photoshop and pick Window>Animation. You can look up how to use this in the help menu, or go to Vimeo or Youtube to get step-by-step instructions on how to carry this out. If you already have a knowledge of timelines in slideshows or video editing programs, you are already on your way.
BTW, the file size can be made relatively small, and take almost no time to load. The animation will not work on some web pages, such as on Flickr, but will work elsewhere, and unless you have it blocked on your own website, it will probably work there. As you can see, it works on this blog.
Have fun.
-Gary Silverstein
We Shoot
Saturday, September 17th, 2011
Here’s one of our promo videos!
All professional photographers should strive to increase their capabilities. One of the ways is to embrace video. A lot of wedding photographers have done this as this gives them more ways of generating capital. Being versatile is very important. But there are costs for doing this. Let’s talk about video and where it figures in.
In the film days, a professional photographer could buy 2¼” medium-format cameras to do weddings and portraits, or a 4″X5″ (or bigger) large format camera to photograph architecture and products. This was a huge barrier to entry to amateurs, with the huge cost and learning how to work with what were mostly manual systems. Unless an amateur or student was particularly well-heeled, he couldn’t purchase this equipment. He would have to work with the less expensive smaller format 35mm cameras, that were also more expensive when moving up to the high end. A budding pro would have to work his way up, sometimes working as an assistant for an established pro.
In the past, architectural clients wouldn’t hire someone who couldn’t give them large-format transparencies or negatives. It shut out a good many photographers. It was a barrier to entry.
Then digital still photography became the norm and the cameras evolved into something very capable of producing a very large and sharp print. And the price started dropping. The barrier to entry was being lowered. And digital had another perk. Editing software came into its own. The one with the highest regard is Adobe Photoshop. It is not cheap for the current version. But there are some lower-cost alternatives that don’t do as much. A barrier just fell again. More amateurs call themselves pros. Now, the competition is very heavy. It is hard for the clients to tell who can do the work or not. The Internet is awash with images. Some may steal an image and say it is theirs. Others shoot all the standard stuff photographers take as a hobby. Flowers, landscapes, people, boats, cars, etc.
A commercial photographer does more with the images he creates. You wouldn’t hire someone to shoot your company’s expensive product to show it in its best light, if the photographer only showed you a portfolio of beautiful sunsets, would you?
You would want to know that the photographer could get great detail and sharp, clear, well-lit images of products as seen in his/her portfolio.
Since we already have extensive experience at commercial photography, we add video to the mix to increase our versatility and do more for our clients.
Video is a whole different animal than still photography. You have all the things that a still photographer has to think about, plus movement and sound to deal with. And editing videos is more complicated than it has ever been as there are more tools to work with. While a lot of video cameras will do a great job of recording what is in front of them with just the press of a button, editing them is way more than trimming a clip and placing it on the end of another clip. And, everyone watches TV. If you want to see what is possible, look at the intro to CSI Miami. It is a mixture of stills, video clips, and moving graphics. It probably took months to put together and it is over in less than a minute. HD video files are huge. A one-minute HD video in QuickTime format is around a gigabyte in size. You need a computer with some real horsepower to harness the expensive software that it takes to get something really professional. Rendering time can run many hours. Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop Extended, and a legion of other programs come into play. And the learning curve is steep. High costs, a lot to learn . . . Now, there is a barrier to entry.
If you haven’t already, take a look at our video at the top of this post. As you can see, it adds a dynamic dimension to our professional commercial portfolio. It is a great way to show off our portfolio and for a client company to promote itself, as well.
– Gary Silverstein
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011
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A little while back I noticed that there were these little mottled squares popping up all over the place, and didn’t know what they were. Some digging on the ‘net turned up that most of them are called “QR” codes (for Quick Response). I found out that Smart Phones can download an app (application) that allows the phone to read different bar codes, including QR codes. But what is in a QR code, and why would anyone want to read it? I found that you can put information into a QR code, like an instant link to a website, where the smart phone owner can point the phone’s camera at the code, and get the website up on their phone. Other info can be put into a code, like a phone number, and when read by the phone, will ask if that phone number should be put in the contact list. But I also found that the more info you put into the code, the more complex and sometimes bigger the code becomes. Since I believe that smaller mobile devices will be the communications of choice with our clientele, I have instituted QR codes on our website. If captured from a PC, it will allow those on the go to put our site on their smart phones and they can browse our site while standing in line somewhere during their busy day. I also have a code with our phone number on it, should they decide to reach us that way. I plan to institute these codes on our business cards so that no one with a smart phone has to manually input any of our info. Just another rather efficient way to connect.
I found a free application to make QR codes at http://mobilecodes.nokia.com/scan.htm
– Gary Silverstein
Monday, July 5th, 2010
My partner and I frequently hear, “Professional photography is not in the budget.” Or, “We have no budget for photography in our marketing.” But the issue that keeps cropping up for me is that I think these companies lose sight of what is really important.
First, if a company is marketing itself, how many of them think that prospective clients really have time to read a lot of text about their company? Since most marketers know that time is of the essence, photographs say a lot more than words do in a short period of time. If the company markets itself with substandard images, e.g. underexposed, blurry, or just plain amateurish shots, what does the prospective client think? The client subconsciously thinks that what this company does is shoddy work and it is mirrored in the substandard images! The real problem is that the selling company sees gre at photography in the light of what it costs as an expense instead of what it costs for the bottom line. Why do you think Target spends so much money and time on those TV ads? Great photography translates to a fatter bottom line for Target.
The other day, I received a brochure in the mail from a local hospital. It had a number of what I would say are stock shots: happy, smiling people dealing with the hospital as patients or employees. To the untrained eye, this was acceptable. However, the only image of the hospital exterior itself was taken by someone who could best be described as a novice amateur. While the image appeared sharp, it appeared severely underexposed under the awning in the area of the front door. It looked for all the world like someone ran outside with their point-and-shoot camera and got an image to be used in the brochure. It was free, a no-cost shot. But, was it really? The people who took this shot were either unwilling or unable to get something better. As a pro, I would have taken several exposures of the entrance, at different exposure settings. This would have allowed me to cut the contrast and make the entranceway almost as light as the building by combining the shots to make a good one, either by HDR or masking techniques. The resultant image would have made the doorway a much more inviting look. Do you want to walk into a doorway in darkness? Hospitals are scary enough, without making the image appear foreboding. How many patients won’t contact this hospital, just because this image puts them off psychologically? If they lose just one, it will cost them more than hiring a good pro photographer, considering what healthcare costs these days. And I’ll wager they’ ve lost more than one client.
So, the end result is that while the hospital saved on not hiring a pro photographer, it cost them much more out of their bottom line. All because they forgot one thing. Good marketing isn’t about how much you spend on it, it’s about how much you get back from its execution.
If you are going to spend money on any marketing pieces, make it count. Go for the best paper, printing, graphics, and text. But above all, don’t stint on the photography. It can make or break the rest of what you are trying to do.
-Gary Silverstein
Saturday, June 26th, 2010
As I sit here, an old friend comes to mind. A camera repairman in Los Angeles. Whenever I had any trouble with a camera, I’d go to Marvin. He may have been around fixing cameras for Ansel Adams back in the day, as far as I know. He knew everything – and I mean everything – about cameras and their operation. I often think of how great he was at his job in his off-the-beaten-path repair shop, and how so many people weren’t aware of his business, and didn’ t know of his talent.
I knew another talented professional – an auto repairman – who got lost in the shuffle because of his far-out location. His customers relied upon him every time they needed a repair. On occasion, they’d mention him to a friend, but in this busy world many of us neglect to talk of such things to others and, like so many professionals, this repairman had days when no business came in, as was the case with my camera repairman.
One day, I got a call from the auto repairman requesting I take a photograph of him to accompany a newspaper ad about his business. I suggested an image of him working over a car engine, and even though many newspaper ads don’t work, this one did. People shuffle through their paper and flip through their magazines. They barely take notice of their trade periodicals, oftentimes not even noticing the articles, let alone the ads. Why did this one work? I’d like to think it was because of this picture, and maybe it was. New customers responding to the ad would mention it when they called for an appointment or when they came in to see him. “What a cool picture!” And as they got to know him, they’d say, “watching you work on my car reminds me of that newspaper photograph.” Apparently the image seemed to say to them, “I care about what I’m doing. I care about doing a good job.”
In the case of this wonderful automotive technician, they were right. This mechanic cared, just like my camera mechanic cared. Did the photo say that to the people who responded to the ad? Apparently so. Looking at it from that viewpoint, it’s not necessarily advertising that brings in the work, but the kind of advertising. In this case, advertising with photography. (An interesting anecdote: no customer seemed to recall that the photograph was accompanied by an ad, even though it obviously was since it brought the new customer to his business, but the picture was what stood out.)
What made the image work? Was it the sparkle in his eye – made even more luminous by our professional strobes? Was it the highlight on his wrench – made even more powerful with my assistant’s precise positioning of the mechanic’s hand? Whatever it was, without the picture, the ad in this case may not have even been noticed.
There are many professionals like these two mechanics. Do you know of some? If so, reach out to them. Tell everyone about them. Hey, even better. Take his or her picture. A good one . . . shot with care.
– Dione Benson
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