Prabha Shiyani – Callum Winton Photography

I’ve created this post to illustrate how we can’t help transferring our feelings of the quality of an image onto the person or product that’s in the image. And as a direct result this will influence the interest that we have in that person or product.

We can’t escape that engrained part of our nature that, in the first 5 seconds, we will have assessed and judged a subject by it’s appearance and a lot of our following attitude to the person/product will have been decided in that 5 seconds.

During a recent conversation, I was asked whether or not it was worth having a professional picture of themself to use on websites, email, business cards and other marketing materials?

My reaction to that is of course "Yes", but they suggested that existing snapshots from a recent holiday or wedding should suffice?

While the holiday/wedding snapshot may be free, what image will they really be portraying?
Poor Quality? Slapdash? Cheap?….. none of which you want potential clients or contacts to associate when they think of you or your product.

If you look at successful people or companies, you’ll see a common trend in that they only have quality images representing either themselves or their product or service. As an example, some companies invest tens of millions of dollars in advertising every year just to encourage us drink their brand of fizzy pop.

It’s nothing to do with ego or pride, they just know that people instantly judge by image quality.

So, an example.
If you were attending a business seminar or looking for a professional service from someone and you see a flyer or promotional email or poster with the following images … which person would you instinctively want to listen to or hire?

It’s the same girl in both pictures, but we all expect the person conveyed in the image on the right will be the one that will give us the quality service we want. You may think that it’s an extreme example, but it’s not. You’ll be surprised the number of images you see around that are like the one on the left.

But the good news is that it doesn’t actually cost much to get a professional image and therefore you can be 3 steps ahead of your competition.

If money is super tight then you could still book a photographer for a session, but by sharing the session time with a few friends or colleagues you’ll find that it’s much more affordable. The photographer won’t mind sharing and in fact they’ll probably encourage it.

I know which direction I want to move my photography and with that in mind I started looking for workshops that would broaden my experience in the disciplines that interest me.

Bert Stephani is a Commercial and portrait photographer based in Belgium and has become well known through his videos on Youtube and workshops where he openly shares his knowledge and experience. He also co-founded the LIME project with Pieter Van Impe, a Belgian Wedding Photographer, and the ethos of LIME is Learn, Inspire, Motivate, Experience.

Bert occasionally gives 2 and 5 day workshops in Belgium around his busy schedule, but I was unable to attend some earlier in the year due to some bookings, so I dropped him a mail about doing one in the UK later in the year. He said, “Sure, you arrange it and I’ll come over”

Fast forward 5 months and I’m standing in Heathrow Terminal 5 with my girlfriend on a cool Sunday evening holding a sheet of A4 scrawled with “The Varnisher” in black marker. Meanwhile a 6’6″ Belgian wanders out of Arrivals with a big grin and a 50mm f/1.4 mounted 5DMkII slung over his shoulder and shakes my hand with one of his big paws.

Bert is in the UK.

For 2 sunny hot days in early September, Bert guided us through one of his Location Lighting workshops “Seeing the Light”.
Day 1 was indoors where he covered the management of light within composition and talked us through the process of making images from editorial and advertising assignments which the group thought up for him.
We used the Richmond RACC Drama room as it was spacious enough for the group and had lots of props and clothing which we used in the assignments and for goofing about in the breaks.

On day 2 we were running about Richmond by the towpaths, bridges and in the parks in groups of 3 with a couple of models and a make-up artist while Bert gave us assignments. Although the workshop ended at 18:00, Bert and a few of us headed into Canary Wharf for some food and then we did some night shots around the unique architecture that Canary Wharf provided.

Apart from being approached by Canary Wharf Security, where a copy of our permit sated his questions, the workshop seemed to go pretty much like clockwork. The people that signed up for the workshop were a relaxed and creative crowd and that helped to make the workshop a great success.

Wednesday came and a relaxed Bert headed back to Terminal 5 with some presents for his family

He landed, he LIME’d, he left.
Or as my girlfriend says, “Veni, vidi, visa ….. I came, I saw, I shopped”

Our talented make-up artist was Emma Ridgers: www.fabulousyou.co.uk
Male Model – Nick Crispini: www.crispini.co.uk
Female Model – Prabha Shiyani: Prabha at Usana.com

Images from the group are here: https://www.flickr.com/groups/1228981@N23/

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