At this point I need to declare an interest. I’m an ex-snapper. I trained as a photographer, did three years at Art School, Diploma in Professional Photography, started off in business life as one…yadda, yadda, yadda. Then I switched to journalism, which is another story altogether. However, that training in the visual arts stood me in good stead as an editor when it came to how I thought a magazine should look. Whether it’s a hard-copy publication or a company website, you’ll always attract more readers and followers if you’ve got stunning/arresting/thought-provoking/quirky photography.
‘A picture is worth a 1,000 words’ might be a cliché, but it’s also true. How else to explain the proliferation of images on social media? Though of course that may be because the words on social media leave much to be desired… Nevertheless! Even the most mundane of press pronouncements stand a better chance of being noticed if they’re accompanied by an attractive high-res image. OK, so the story might not get used but the picture eventually may. A good image has the potential to stick around for far longer than the words that went with it and be used again and again. We’re talking of course about ‘stock’ pictures.
The problem with photography today is that thanks to the ubiquitous smartphone everyone thinks they can take a good photograph. Consequently, far-too many people in the Corporate Comms business believe you don’t need photographers anymore. Why pay money for an expert with an ‘eye’ when you can just point and click and voila! You have an image. But is it one that will get you noticed, rather than simply being a visual record of something or other? Naturally, as an ex-photographer I would say that. But if two stories have the same editorial merit, the one with the better picture is more likely to be used.
Of course, the real skill is creating a stunning image out of the mundane, the everyday. That’s when having an ‘eye’ matters. It’s also why picture libraries with imaginative stock images are so useful for the media. But could your own company provide stock, or more accurately, ‘generic’ images that just happen to feature your product or services, albeit subtly? The next time you commission a photographer to take some specific shots for you, ask them if they can also get some decent generic pictures that might be used, say, with the announcement of company quarterly results, or your annual report.
And here’s another left-field suggestion. Why not talk to the art editors on those specialist and business magazines that cover your industry and ask them: ‘What sort of stories do you struggle to illustrate?’ Then see if you can come up with suitable images of your own to support them, naturally referencing your company or business activities somewhere in the background and supply them FoC. As publishing budgets get ever-tighter your generic shots could prove attractive to a cash-strapped editor. So, the next time they run a broad-brush story about the state of the industry who knows, your business could be in the picture…literally.