Small Business Photography: What to Do When You Can’t Afford a Professional Photographer

Comparison of poor vs compelling food photography

Break This Rule and You Will Lose Your Business!

You MUST manage your cashflow.   There is no work around, no magic bullets, no sustainable wizardry.  Manage your cashflow or lose your business.    Cash flow is oxygen for your business.

Skilled professional photographers offer tremendous value, but we are not cheap.  We know the value of professional imagery and how it can boost or sink marketing objectives.  

Can you see the problem? You need high quality compelling photos, but you need to manage cashflow.  For a small business the outlay of a few hundred or few thousand dollars can drain your resources affecting your ability to make payroll, take out some profit for yourself, or keep the lights on.

The good news is that when push comes to shove, you can step back from running your business and develop some rudimentary photo skills and fill the void until you are ready to hire a professional photographer to help take your business to the next level.

 

Small Business Photography: The Rule of First Impressions.

Imagine you are at a trade show, and you see a booth with a large banner: 

MARKETING EXPERTS You’re Sucess is Hour Busness!

Are you impressed? Do you immediately run over, sign them up and make a financial commitment?  Probably not.  More likely you walk away laughing at the audacity of someone with such poor grammar, spelling, and inattention to detail trying to pawn themselves off as experts at anything.

It is not any different when someone looks at a lousy image in your brochure, advertisement, website or social media post.   Does this image inspire you to purchase the chocolate muffin?  Probably not, unless you’ve been in a cave starving while on a 30 day water fast.

Coffee and muffin on a table, overshadowed by poor lighting and unflattering angles.

The point is, first impressions matter, and if you do not want to do your business more harm than good, you must have solid imagery.  It doesn’t matter whether you, your friend or your cat takes the picture, it has to be good.  Otherwise, once you’ve dissuaded potential customers with non-compelling imagery, they have no reason to come back!

Let’s talk about the mindset you need to have for small business photography before you even pick up your camera or cell phone to take a product photograph or “selfie” headshot. 

Perceive Before You Conceive.

First and foremost, your photo is not fine art.  It is not a gimmick or cutesy and should never be an afterthought.  It is a sales tool.   It has a job to do and like anything else in your employ, you need to make sure the photo does its job.

 Like any good employee guidance, you need what Dr. W Edwards Deming referred to as “operational definitions.”   You shouldn’t expect employees to perform at their best without clear objectives and by the same token, your photographs won’t be successful without clear objectives.

To better ensure the success of your photograph, you need to establish:

• The Unique Selling Point (USP) of your product or service – how do you express that through a 2-dimensional image?
  

• Do you have consistent branding objectives? How do you achieve that through color matching, color grading or look and feel?
  

• Is there a mood that enhances the appeal of your product or service?  How are you going to achieve that through lighting, perspectives, angles?
  

• How can you make your photo stand out amongst the billions that are posted every day or amongst those posted by your competitors?   It’s a tough and competitive visual world full of distractions all trying to pull attention away from your image.
  

  

  Portfolio concept image of a magazine cover showing a pitcher pouring red beverage into a shot glass

Once you have thought your way through these questions, and probably a lot more I didn’t mention, you are now in a much better position to conceive an image that will do its job of compelling a customer or client to think of you when they need your product or service.

In my next article, I’ll discuss some methods and approaches to shoot it yourself, without shooting yourself in the foot.

May the images in your mind become your inspired creations!