How to get the most out of your website using the power of photography.

One of the most crucial elements that people can overlook on their website is photography. Image paints vivid pictures for a visitor to your website - nothing captures your eye or imagination quicker that an image, whether it’s an illustration, painting or photograph.

It’s this principle that works for billboards, magazine covers and newspapers: an arresting image catches the corner of your eye and makes you look. The message is delivered promptly, in seconds.

Much more can be conveyed/interpreted than say, a paragraph of copy.

And for the web, where everything is searched and found in seconds, patience is something scarce. If you are presented with two magazines, one with lots of copy and one with lots of photographs, you will naturally pick up the one with pictures, it’s more fulfilling, and we are affected by the Magpie Effect: something bright, eye-catching or shiny we will gravitate towards.

Just have a look at the covers of magazines when you are next in your newsagents, you’ll see.

The look and feel of your company brand can be portrayed effectively in an image or a series of shots. People browsing the web are a bit lazy and on a mission: they want to find what they are looking for, in record time, and speed-read the text for relevant information. An image will always deliver this more rapidly.

Finally, don’t forget to tag images on your website too: we all know about SEO and having the correct search words and tagging for our sites, but many forget to label images.

This is often overlooked. All images can be tagged with meta-tags, information, links and SEO keywords - then picked up by the search bots and spiders. When searching on Google, if you are looking for photographers, it helps you stand out if you have a strong image with your listing, particularly with Google Maps.

Professional photography can help make the difference between a website visitor and a new customer. Making sure your website has the best possible images is a basic (but essential) requirement.

Great rock photography is all about capturing the gig buzz – use it or lose it.

Capturing the essential buzz created from an electrifying rock concert on photo can be tricky, but after a few years behind the camera, plus working with superstars such as U2, Slash, Muse and Slipknot, I know how to get into a gig with the right equipment and walk out three songs later with killer shots in the bag on brief and on budget.

My recent shoot with rising rock-dance hybrid stars Pendulum, however, posed a few interesting questions when they performed at the Southampton Civic Hall.

For example, how do you transform a beautiful civic building into a wild anarchic music medley – not forgetting the cracks appearing in the ceiling?

There are lots of high-octane bands around, but not many make the mercury rise as much as Pendulum. Their performance in Southampton was totally electrifying.

In case you are wondering, I shot Pendulum for a front cover of Future Music magazine: a feature and the cover.

Shooting anyone live is a big challenge; there are many factors outside of my control:

• The lighting
• The pyrotechnics
• Where they are standing
• What the audience are doing
  

But it’s a question of being in the right place at the right time, to capture the buzz and the electric atmosphere. So, how do you that? There is no right rule, but following your own instinct for what feels and looks right has always worked well for me.

You know if the shot works, just looking down the lens, because you feel it as part of the gig. It’s hard to explain in technical terms – in comes from years of experience.

And that is what you have to listen to: when the music is cranked up, the audience is going wild, the air is buzzing, and the band is on fire. That’s the moment to capture.

Personally, I like to capture the essence of a gig with the lights; this is like trying to read the mind of a lighting technician, almost impossible – but not implausible.

And to try and get some of audience, too – but the main focus (pardon the pun) is to get the exact shot illustrating the band coming together, building up, before they blow the ceiling off the venue. This is the absolute money shot in rock photography terms.

Amango wins international photographic recognition using iPhone camera

The recent submission of our stunning panoramic shot (see above) of Bristol Cathedral and College Green to the Epson International Photographic Pano Award brought some surprising news – a Bronze winner for Amango. Great recognition.

The more surprising fact was that the image was taken using my iPhone camera, with some expert re-working using the iPhone imaging software app Hipstamatic at the same time. No expensive equipment, just a photographer’s eye and imagination in combination.

It’s always interesting when a photography competition comes around, as it always throws up lots of questions about what to submit - Do I shoot something to order or apply an image in my archive, What will the other photographers be shooting, and How creative can I stretch the boundaries?

The main question I ask myself is: What would the judges like to see, and does my style fit in with the brief?

Occasionally, I throw caution to the wind and apply myself as though I was an art student, disregarding all of the above. As a conscientious working professional, this rarely happens - but I wanted to do something different, and the Pano Award required a different approach.

The Epson International Photographic Pano Award is a photography competition run by Epson in conjunction with Lonely Planet. It attracts lots of photographers who shoot beautiful landscapes on panoramic cameras.

Seeing as my speciality is shooting people, I wanted to apply my own take. I usually have enough gear to sink a battleship, but the panoramic cameras and 360 VR numbers weren’t in my kit bag, so I decided to get inventive.

I have always loved the look of Polaroid’s and spent my final year dissertation on further and alternative uses of Polaroid film.

So this was my chance to develop my idea further - except I shot them on my iPhone.

Quite a cheeky move, but I wanted to challenge the judges and myself; this was a competition that said ANY camera, so I took it literally.

With any piece of equipment and a creative eye and imagination, a fantastic shot can be made from the most straightforward of tools.

Bearing in mind that there were 2,740 entries from 945 photographers in 79 countries, a Bronze award was an excellent achievement. And using my basic iPhone camera too. The Hipstamatic software helped to provide the final effect on a stunning shot.

Top five photography tips

It’s been a while since I offered a top tips blog post, so here’s part of a recent article which was published in Computer Arts magazine.

1. Shoot Raw. Shoot the largest file size you can, RAW is best as it retains all detail, and is the best quality. Failing that shoot large jpegs. Jpegs are a compressed file format and contain less detail than RAW but have more info than small jpegs.

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2. Exposure. If in doubt of your exposure, shoot slightly darker, to within one stop underexposed. It’s easier to brighten a darker image than to rescue an overexposed image with burnt out highlights. You can’t put in detail when it hasn’t been recorded by the camera.

3. Cut-Out. If you are photographing a person or item that you know will be cut-out in Photoshop, shoot on a clean, white background. This will make your life much easier later on, as you can see the definition and edges of the subject.

4. Layout. Are you working to a template or design layout? If so, consider where text or other images will go when you are framing your subject in camera.

5. Shoot full frame. Bearing in mind the above, also allow yourself a little extra space around your subject. Try not to crop too much in camera. This is in case you need to crop in slightly afterwards. This gives you options, when designing or laying out your pages.

Why Fashion & Music Niches Work Wonders

I am often asked why I came to focus on the niche areas of music and fashion in photography, rather than launch a general photography business back in 1998. My answer is always the same, and it’s the masterfully wry Bill Crosby who explains my ethos effectively:

‘I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.’

I agree with this, but in terms of finding and developing a niche or niches in commercial photography, it makes business sense to deliver in the sectors where your professional passions are most noticeable.

For me, fashion and music represent the very best innovations and impactful developments to be found in photography today: the reach of fashion and music are global, all-encompassing, and affects everybody. Fashion and music are driving forces in so many areas of all our lives.

To be involved in recording and creating lasting images which highlight the importance of these industries has been a personal passion for me, since I was given a Minolta 35mm camera for my 15th birthday.

That passion has remained with me and is a vital part of the services offered at Amango Photography. Without passion and purpose, photography is meaningless.

So, back to niches.

Niche photography represents the best possible way to deliver outstanding work to fashion and music clients across the UK, North America and Europe.

Since Amango launched, it has been a deliberate business decision to work within established niches, and remain focused on providing the very best possible service within those niches.

The thought of expanding into different commercial sectors, trying to please everybody out there, is totally unthinkable. It’s been a dominating force in the studio, to retain close links with the fashion and music industries, with their accessory sectors, and to provide expert counsel.

Far better to excel in one or two key areas than to try and grab a multitude of revenues from commercial sectors in which expertise are not solid. My focus remains unfaltering.