What goes into a powerful image?
When we surf the web, striking images seem to get our attention. This begs the question “what goes into a powerful image?”
This image is essentially an entire website. One of the many website template examples you can purchase from squarespace.com. As you can see it’s simplistic yet captivating and very striking to the eye. If you’ve witnessed the ads for squarespace.com on television or Hulu you’ll notice their catch phrase is “Isn’t it nice, when everything just comes together.” This leads people to believe that when you purchase a squarespace.com template everything will just naturally fall into place and your “personalized” website will look as beautiful as the ones they advertise. Let’s pause for a moment and discuss what goes into one of the elegant photos that tend to make up the entire design of a squarespace.com templated website.
In the image of the dog there are some very essential tools needed for capturing this singular image.
1.) A professional Camera. Professional cameras run the gamut of a couple hundred dollars to the thousands of dollars. What camera you buy is not as important as number 2.
2.) A very expensive lens. If you thought cameras can get expensive wait until you start researching lenses, and which lens you need for what type of photography you want to achieve is a whole other story. There are certain factors that come into play such as depth of field for a striking portrait that shows the subject sharply with and elegant blurry look to the background, setting your f-stop for the correct exposure letting enough light in for just the right amount of highlights and shadows, etc. If you’re interested in learning here’s an excellent article called Why Your Lenses are More Important Than Your Camera by WILL GREENWALD. This directly relates to number 3.
3.) A decent knowledge of photography (manipulating depth field, exposure, & so forth) Taking a professional photo is not as easy as using your iPhone. It takes a well balanced understanding of the basics of photography at the very least. Which leads to number 4.
4.) Professional Lighting… this requires very expensive equipment. You can use natural lighting but you must understand the fundamentals of lighting and photography and know that you are working in an uncontrolled environment. Weather plays a big role and if you have the time to wait around for a decently cloudy day you may achieve your goal which leads to number 5.
5.) A somewhat reliable subject, a lot of time & patience, and a decent amount of luck. No photographer gets the perfect photo in one shot. If you do, it’s an anomaly. Photography takes patience, anticipation, good timing, and a lot of luck. Sometimes the face of a subject is perfect but there’s a blur where you didn’t want one or an obstruction in the background. This leads to number 6.
6.) Very expensive photo editing software for manipulating the photo to perfection. Any and every photo seen in any sort of advertisement is manipulated by software. There is an entire industry involved in photo editing and retouching. That’s how advertisers achieve the imagery they had in mind.
When you are considering building your own website from one of the many sites that offer such templates, did you consider all of the work it will take just to add one single photo that lives up to the stock photos offered by these sites? The interesting thing is that many people do not want to invest in a professional website because there are so many free or cheap options out there. Sadly you get what you pay for. If you purchase a website template such as the ones from squarespace.com and neither have the time nor expertise on personalizing your site with strong imagery let alone understanding interactivity and how users navigate a site in addition to getting your message across you will end up exactly with what you paid for. If you don’t know anything about construction you wouldn’t try to build a house would you?