You’ve booked the photographer, you’ve made sure that everyone’s available and they’re giving you their precious work time. Now what? How do you make the most of that time? With many photographers charging by the hour, rather than by shot, you can get a lot of value if you are organised.
As Office Manager, I support our Web Designer here by organising the practical side of our photoshoots for our websites. Here are my top tips for making sure that your photo shoot day reaches its full potential.
- Know what pictures you need: Whether you’re working from scratch, or updating your existing website, you’ll need to go through each page methodically and decide what type of image will work best in each area. In Ascendancy’s case, our focus is our team, showcasing the people behind the role, so the type of photos we need are of our people. It may be that it’s your products, your services, your events, your office that you want to capture. Think about getting a variety of team members across the website, doing different things, according to their job roles. You might also need headshots – both indoor and outdoor backgrounds work well, giving you more options in future.
I found adding them to a table like the one set out below really helped.
| Page, location | What |
| Home page, first image | Group shot of some of the team, working x 2 with different combinations |
| Home page, second image | Group shot of all the team, in the garden |
| Meet the Team | Mugshots of everyone |
| Website MOT | Screwdriver next to laptop |
| Contact Page | Picture of the doorbell camera screen, someone at the door, someone else pressing the screen |
You can use this list to create your plan for the day.
2. Getting the team to join in: You might have a team of people really keen to get involved with the photoshoot, or you might have some who (like me) are reluctant to get in front of the camera – but if you can get your team in some pictures, it will really help to personalise your website. This is where being organised comes in, so you take up the minimum amount of time for everyone. If you can make it into more of an event, it can make it more appealing. Getting food in while the whole team is around and together always helps, along with making sure that everyone knows their effort is appreciated.
3. Future proof: Having said that it helps to have people in photos, it’s Murphy’s Law that as soon as you take a photo immortalising the team as it is, one of them will move to pastures new. So, when you’re planning out your various scenarios, it’s a good idea to switch up the people in the photo and take it again with a different group. Then, you’ll hopefully still be able to use at least one version of that photo, rather than having to find an alternative shot.
4. Creating your own cache of stock photos: Consider if you’ll eventually need any stock images, or if you could just use your own. Your phone; a cup of tea; a timer; notebook and pen; laptop; doorbell; plants; a screwdriver; your business logo – there are so many items in and around your workplace that you can just snap and you’ve got your own photo you can use, rather than trying to find the right one on stock photo websites.
5. Think about sizing and proportions: An obvious one, but still worth saying – make sure that your planned image will fit the image slot available. There’s no point doing lots of portrait photos if most of your website is set up for landscape or letterbox sizes. Importantly, make sure your photographer knows this too.
6. Have a plan on the day: Once you know what images you need, you can make a plan that you can share with everyone so that they know what they are doing and when. A plan will help you spot any duplications, missing team members, and will help you group together any shots which are in the same location, or of the same people.
| Where | Who | Doing what | Props? | Page Location |
| Main Office, taken from Emily’s desk | Emily, Mary, Jay, John | Mary and Emily looking at same screen, Jay and John working at own desks | None | Home page, first image |
| Main Office, taken from Emily’s desk | Emily, John, Madeline, Alice | John and Emily looking at same screen, Madeline and Alice working at own desks | None | First image |
| Outside, back garden | Whole team | Spread out, cups of tea | Cups , Ascendancy logo fleeces | Home page second image |
| Outside, back garden | Everyone, individually | Mugshots | None | Meet the Team Page |
| Alice’s desk | No one | Screwdriver next to laptop | Screwdriver | Website MOT |
Once you’ve got a list of all the different pictures you want, you can sort the list into locations, people – whatever order works best for you, your photographer and your team’s time. Being aware of any pre-booked meetings means that you’ll be able to arrange photos based on staff and room availability.
7. Share the plan: The plan isn’t a real plan if you don’t share it with your team before the photo shoot. Send it to them, ask them to familiarise themselves with what’s expected, ask them to bring props where needed, look out for any possible clashes and specify the dress code. The more prepared everyone is, the better the shoot will go – and the less amount of time (and money) spent.
I hope that these tips help you. If you’re thinking of updating your website and would like some shiny new coding to go with those images, get in touch, we’d love to help you with your project.
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