It’s easy to design rigid parts of the company website without much thought put into them. You know the site has to be responsive and look professional, which means it’s easy to determine the kind of language and tone to use on the copy. Even the structure of internal pages is designed to be intuitive. What requires a lot of work is capturing the business in action. You want to include photos depicting everyone at work, but this doesn’t just mean whipping out your camera to take random photos.
Here’s the better way to do it:
Inform Everyone of What’s Happening
You may aim for authenticity but end up having startled and uncomfortable employees if you fail to inform them of what’s happening. If you intend to get help from people specializing in business photography, you want everyone to be aware that there will be strangers taking photos of various parts of the office. You also want them to act cordial instead of scared, as their emotions will greatly affect the message portrayed in photos.
The last thing you want is to waste money but not have usable content because your employees didn’t feel like cooperating in an ambush photoshoot. Informing them about the shoot also means they’ll show up for work in their best clothes, which elevates the look of your company.
Have a Focus Group
You might want to capture the scale of operations by showing every corner of the room and including every employee you have, but let’s face it: not all parts of the office will look good in focus. You may have old desktops that act as spares, and some of the chairs may not be in their best condition pending an office redesign.
There might even be some cluttered desks needing a quick cleanup, which would certainly not look good for a company with an open floor plan. Think quality over quantity. Gather your best employees in the best area and focus on how they conduct work. You can still instruct the photographer to take zoomed out shots to show just how big the company is, but these will be impersonal, so use sparingly.
Include Candid Moments
You informed employees of the shoot, so they’ll be on their best behavior when the cameras are on them. They play the part of dutiful employees poised to complete each task without uttering a single word and with big smiles plastered on their faces. There’s nothing wrong with this, but ask yourself why you didn’t just use stock photos if you wanted generic shots that are too polished.
Candids work perfectly to tell site visitors that your employees are real–not robots and certainly not models paid to pretend. There’s a big difference between someone who’s projecting a smile for the camera and someone who’s smiling triumphantly because they’ve just closed a deal.
You hire employees for their skills, not their looks. But when it comes to taking photos of the office, they are your lifesavers, so coordinate with them properly.
