“Invest in good photo shoots: a great photographer can add a fortune to your Web site’s business value.”

For the most part, photographic images on the internet are poor and cheaply done, and they look like it. But as the internet matures I believe the photography will to. Its like years ago when everyone was using a 35 mm film camera and all of a sudden a little 110 compact pocket camera became available and everyone bought one because of convenience. But we sacrificed image quality for convenience. Same thing with the web, its convenient now and cheap photography is accepted, but it will become more competitive and mature and really good photography is going to be required. Generic photographs done on white paper are not going to cut it.
Jakob Nielsen, a web site consultant has concluded that random photographs and stock images for internet use online are completely ignored by users, add more clutter to a page and does not help from a business standpoint. His eye tracking survey found that these filler images of stock photos or generic people photos are intentionally disregarded by the consumer, while actual photos produced for a specific intention ( an actual photo shoot, professional photographer = $ ) and a picture is specific and real, users will engage with the image for an extended period of time. Jakob Nielsen also states that "most sites are full of fluff - of which there's too much of that clutter already on the web." Bottom line is this study concludes that people ignore generic images online. See full story HERE at New York Times. See Jakob Nielsen's "Photos as web content" HERE. Mr. Nielsen concludes with advice to those using the web to hawk products, services or content, "Invest in good photo shoots: a great photographer can add fortune to your web site's business value." I guess you get what you pay for!

Tenderloin or Taco_?

The state of the advertising business can be summed up pretty easily, more for less. Give me more services for less pay. It is happening across the board right now. What is it exactly that you want? Do you want to sell your products? Selling your products consist of one of the most important things, a visual advertisement... professional photographic imagery that sells the product... and that costs money. After all the time and money going into developing and producing a product, it's the image that grabs the attention of potential buyers and sells the product ... Just look at most of the photographs that catalogs offer on the internet, they are cheap looking and very badly executed, camera inputs are wrong or they're shooting with a cheap camera that does not support camera adjustments, and lighting usually sucks. I do see a trend happening with some of your bigger companies producing better photography online, and there are many print catalogs that have consistently produced beautiful photography. You get what you pay for. Some companies don't realize how many more sales they can execute had they put more thought, and better photography (this costs more $money$) into their layouts, print or internet, but eventually they will...to stay competitive and make money. Spend the money on a tenderloin, sales will benefit, and it tastes better.