Do you want to be able to capture some really impressive photos to go along with your website’s content? The good news is that if that’s the case you’ll be glad to know that you don’t need to be a professional photographer to snap impressive photos, nor do you need really expensive equipment.
In fact, all you need to start capturing impressive photos for your website is a decent camera. Nowadays that shouldn’t be hard to find, and most smartphones have fairly decent built-in cameras. If you want to invest in a decent digital camera, go ahead – but if not you can make do with what you have.
At the end of the day capturing impressive photos is really more about technique, and there are several easy ways that you can improve your photography by leaps and bounds:
Try using the ‘rule of thirds’
Essentially the rule of thirds is a composition technique that involves dividing the frame into a 3×3 grid and then positioning the subject and other elements along the gridlines or intersection points. By doing that you’ll be able to capture photos that look more impressive because the subject will be positioned off-center, and all the elements will be more balanced and spaced out.
To start using the rule of thirds you should turn on the ‘grid’ feature that is available on most cameras nowadays. That will superimpose a 3×3 grid on your screen so you can start to position elements in your shots accordingly.
Embrace minimalism
Minimalism is a great way to snap more impressive photos by websites, and it also makes it a lot easier. To start using minimalism you should reduce the number of elements in the shot, or sometimes only shoot the subject itself – and couch it in lots of negative space.
For website photos, minimalism has a big impact due to the fact that the photos are normally published with text and other design elements accompanying them. By having a photo with lots of negative space the subject will stand out more – especially in the context of the website.
In short, minimalism can help your website photos to have a bigger impact and draw more attention.
Make sure the lighting is good
Lighting can make or break a photo and will have a dramatic effect on how it turns out. Ideally, you should try to capture photos in bright and natural light that is coming through a large window.
If that isn’t possible, aim to shoot in bright but soft (i.e. diffused) light. The main idea is to avoid any hard shadows or create too much contrast in the photo. In some cases, you may want to look at other lighting solutions as they are really quite affordable nowadays.
Experiment with your camera settings
Most people are likely to have never adjusted their camera settings and prefer to leave them as is. If you want to start to snap more impressive photos for your website, however, you should make it a point to experiment with the settings that are available.
One good place to start is to see whether your camera allows you to ‘lock’ the focus on a subject – which can normally be done by tapping the subject on the screen. After that, you can move on to some of the manual settings such as the exposure, white balance, shutter speed, and ISO.
Initially that may sound complicated, but there are lots of resources that explain manual settings out there.
Snap photos from different perspectives
If you want your photos to stand out and look unique – try snapping them from different perspectives. Most people tend to snap photos from the front and from eye-level, but mixing it up and trying to frame it from different angles or heights can make it look very different.
Photos that look unique tend to leave an impression on viewers. On top of that showing the subject from a different perspective may provide additional context in some cases – such as with product photography.
As you can see none of the methods listed above are particularly difficult, and yet each one could help you to improve your photos and make them look more impressive. Aside from that however, it would help to be able to edit your photos in order to correct any issues or make them stand out.
Make no mistake there are lots of user-friendly photo editors available nowadays that will make it easy to make alterations to your website photos.
By capturing more impressive photos and then editing them a bit to touch them up you should be able to come up with exactly the kind of photos that you need for your website.
