There are pumpkins, and then there are 'pumpkins', and while you may think yours are winners, if you cannot show them in a good light, then you might as well just eat them.
A good photograph can make or break your pumpkin pics, in the same way it can boost your business.
So how do you differentiate your pumpkin from another, or your paving and plant layout from another?
Stephen Studd won first and third prize in the 'Grow your own' category of the RHS Photography competition 2011 for his pumpkin composition and the translucent feel to his lettuce seedling.
As you can see, the light and reflections of his pumpkin composition are phenomenal.
Even though there is no short cut to bringing the same picture quality to your own photographs, Stephen offers advice on using your mobile phone camera correctly and managing the settings, and here he offers tips on strategies for your website:
Winter is a great time to update your website or online marketing as most people are too busy from Spring until Autumn. Take time to look at your website to see what can be changed, to make it more visually interesting and user friendly. See if you can update photos, return-visitors like to see new content, and it's good to have photos of your work, I think a picture does say a thousand words.
If you don`t have a blog consider getting one, this can increase traffic to your website and also lets people know what you are up to. A blog is also a good way of announcing any awards you might have achieved or news about new products and services.
Try to break up a long page of text with images, this keeps the reader interested. The blog can also be linked to and from your website.
Whenever I post a new entry onto my blog, site traffic to my website increases dramatically. If you use Facebook or Twitter keep people up to date in the winter months.
When uploading images onto the web it is best to have the photographs in the sRGB colour space.
Image editing software will enable you to control the histogram, sharpness and tone giving you more control over the way the image looks and making it look more professional.
Resize your pictures in an editing programme to 72dpi that is all the resolution you need for a computer screen, slow loading images on websites make people move away. It is really important to keep the original at the dpi it was shot at!
I have folders that are just marked as web res where I keep the 72dpi web version. If your web or blog programme asks for images to be no longer than 800px on the longest side or have to fit into say a frame that is 800px by 600px resize your image to the dimensions asked for.
One thing to consider is if you have lots of text don`t have a black background as it makes it hard to read.
When using photographs be sure to caption them to get better SEO ratings. Search engines need text to find images, so it is important to title and caption images. In blogs or web programmes there is usually a place to add titles, captions, metadata and alternative text. When these are filled in, the search engine can then find the image and know its content.
Keep the images you post looking professional. If you are photographing a garden you have designed remove clutter and unwanted objects from the scene so that you make the shot look clean and neat. Untidy badly composed images look unprofessional as do soft out of focus blurry images.
Keep a visual record of the work you are doing. We don't always have a camera with us but chances are you will have a camera phone. There have never been as many camera phone photos taken each day than than there are now.
The cameras in phones are getting better each year. Your camera phone can be used like a visual journal of things that inspire you or have caught your eye. Plus you can try out new and interesting angles to take your images.
Look at sites such as Pinterest that are popping up. In the last few years there has been a massive jump in the number of Apps for camera phones, these can be fun to try out.
Stephen Studd's second article gives specific advice to get the best from your mobile phone camera.
Website: Stephen Studd photography website.
Comments