What separates a good photo from a great photo? One that elicits a response or an action from a student? What makes a photograph usable for print, digital ads, and table banners?
When you’re shooting higher ed photography, you need to be proactive, not reactive. It’s easier to plan your shoot around the usage of the photos than have to reshoot.
As a company that got its start as a higher education photography, publications, and branding business, we’ve shot more than 4.5 million photos. This decades-long experience helps us precisely understand what to look for in photos.
Let’s dive in.
Identify Your Needs Before The Shoot
First, it’s important to identify what type of photography you’re missing from your repository. Does that new program have engaging photography to use for its marketing? How about sports or event photography?
If there’s a unique aspect to your campus—like a historical building or a community tradition—capture it! This helps students visualize themselves there.
Additionally, think about what size photography you need for print communications, social media marketing, or email campaigns. There are ways to proactively shoot for multiple uses, like digital ads, brochures, and postcards. Our advice? Move back or use a wider lens.
Move back or think wider so your designer or art director has bleed room on publications. You don’t want anyone’s head kissing the edge of the photo. Plus, taking a few steps back leaves enough room on the photo for type.
Take a look at the fashion as well. Prospects and inquiries will know your photography is dated if there are ample shots of skinny jeans, side parts, Ugg boots, or peplum shirts.
This might be a great time to include your current students to help you identify what’s out-of-fashion. Trends come and go, so you should be updating your photography every couple of years to keep pace.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Why should you avoid the photographer with the cheapest quote? Well, you get what you pay for. The average, local photographer lacks the experience and understanding of what’s needed to produce high-impact, quality imagery suited for modern marketing to prospective students.
Too often, we see photos with trees or light poles growing out of students’ heads or ones where the secondary subject’s eyes are closed.
Experienced photographers know not to take just one picture of a setup. It’s best practice to take the same number of photos as the number of people in the shot from multiple angles using both horizontal and vertical orientation. Six students in the frame? Take six shots or more so you don’t leave the perfect picture up to chance.
They know not to crop hands or feet in photos and avoid shooting over someone’s head. They also know to focus on the eyes or eyelashes of the subject closest to them and ask that subject to look over the shoulder of the photographer, not directly at the camera.
They also set shots up so there’s less to do in the post-production because touching up mistakes in photos can be incredibly costly. That means making sure an overflowing trash can is not visible in a shot or a student wearing less-than-appropriate clothing isn’t present in the background.
Questions to Ask Yourself
Before you contract and plan a photoshoot, here are some good questions to ask yourself so you can find the perfect photographer for your vision.
What is your definition of the perfect photo? If your team is at the beginning stages, come together with a collection of images that speak to you. What commonalities can you pinpoint?
What does quality mean to you?
How do you want the images to be utilized?
What style matches your institutional brand direction? Consider the following:
- Saturation: intensity of color
- Tilt: the angle of the lens
- Movement: Do you want frozen action or a little blur in the movement?
- Depth of field: the distance between the closest and farthest object
We encourage you to embrace what you have and be open to the unexpected. You never know what gems your campus community has in store.
Higher Ed Campus Photography with The Parish Group
If your photo repository needs a refresh, we are here to help. Our photographers have decades of experience shooting specifically for higher ed, and have shot a wide range of institutions in three and a half decades.
View our portfolio for yourself. Alternatively, you can reach out at success@parishgroup.com or call us at 828-505-3000 to learn more.
Together, we do BIG things.
