Get the most from your photos during LOCKDOWN

Like many businesses, we deal directly with clients in person, so have taken quite a hit with this lockdown. We can’t really leave the house to do any new work – and if we could, we can’t get close to people so it’d be awkward.

Here are a few things you can do remotely, and we can help you with, to keep your marketing images relevant

1 Use archives for your marketing

So the first one is that I have got literally hundreds of thousands of images from all over Europe, India, the UK and the People’s Republic of Yorkshire on my hard drives which could be used to help with your:-

Blogs
Websites
Newsletters
Social media
Flyers
Articles in the press
Etc.

If you need some eye-catching images to make your marketing stand out whilst we are all working from home and checking social media constantly, ping me a message if you need an image and I will create a Dropbox folder with a selection of images for you to choose from.

I will base prices on HALF of what the ALAMY stock photography website’s usage calculator says.

2 Additional photos from old shoots

If we have done a photoshoot in the past you will have chosen a small selection from a larger library of images to use

The good news is that these will almost certainly still exist on my hard drive, and your preview files will still be in Dropbox (unless you’ve deleted them yourself).

We can reopen your project and edit as many of the photos you didn’t choose as you like, so you will have something, maybe not brand new, but different to use online.

3 A new look to existing photos

A little bit like number 3, if your existing portraits are the ones you really love and you don’t need anything new, then maybe a little refresh in the processing could help get you noticed. We can reopen the project and have a look at a different vibe to the images.

It may be as simple as doing a black and white version, or making a previously soft and warm photo look cool and edgy, or adding in some creative light flare and textures….

Essentially we can have a think about what you are using them for and come up with some ideas on how we can differently process them for you.

4 Shoot new photos without people in them

If you have a property, product, food or a drink, car or anything which I can drive to and photograph without breaking the 2 m rule of social distancing, then I will be able to help.

for small things, I can take delivery and photograph them at my humble abode
for property exteriors, I think I should be ok legally to photograph them from the street
for property interiors we could meet at a safe distance, then let me go in and shoot the interior hello must you have a coffee
cars may be doable at a showroom or on somebody’s drive but I don’t think we can take them anywhere pretty with the current lockdown rules

5 Help with WordPress websites

I have a background in software engineering (which I try my best to hide) and it comes in handy when I need to deal with websites.

Whilst I don’t get embroiled in massively detailed websites with dozens of mission-critical pages, I have lots of experience of using WordPress to craft image-driven websites. I use a popular, beautiful visual theme to create my own websites and a few others.

So if you do need an online presence which needs to look good, I can help by

setting you up with a web hosting account and email – I use Krystal, they seem a great UK company
showing you how to get your domain name (e.g www.mywebsite.com)
Installing WordPress for you
adding the theme I use which has a lovely page Builder – I use Oshine as it’s great for images
creating 3 to 5 pages and adding your content
advice on sizing images for your web pages
importing video to your site etc.
help you learn how to manage it yourself over ZOOM

It could be any of those steps, or the whole thing. Many just need the site installation doing, then they can do the rest.

6 Teaching photo editing over ZOOM

The last one in today’s list is probably the most obvious, with ZOOM we can share each other’s computer screens so I can walk you through the process of taking a photograph from it’s raw form to something far more eye-catching.

The beauty of doing it this way is :-

it’s totally remote and safe from the dreaded virus – you stay at home
it will be 1 to 1 so you can ask any questions you like
we can pace the session to you
we can record the session so you can play it back as many times as you like

I have helped people learn an effective workflow from taking the card out of a camera through to producing images you could give to clients. Or you may just want to learn how to spice up your landscape photographs...

Maybe you’ve never used Lightroom before and quite fancy a go, or have you always wondered what layers and masks were in Photoshop?

Now is probably the best time I’m to get some help with these things, because during lockdown you are limited in what you can actually do. So you may as well get active learning something ready for when you can get back out with the camera.

Just drop us a note…

If any of those could be useful, or you want a catch-up, or anything else during this lockdown – I’m here at [email protected] or use my new capture form below

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