Selecting Appropriate Photography for Your Website

Selecting Appropriate Photography for Your Website – Part 2

JuliaBaldwin | 26 March 2008 |

In Part 1 of this series we explored the steps necessary to decide what type of photography you’ll use on your website. Today we’re going to explore using stock photography a bit further and give some tips for finding compelling imagery for your website.

Using stock photography.

This is a great option for many of our clients and there are many choices available. Using stock photography can be more budget friendly than hiring a professional, but obviously you will not find stock photos of your property. Stock photography is great for photos of your area, photos of people and small details like food and flowers. Because stock photography is professionally shot, the imagery is clean and crisp, two factors that are key to providing your guests with an experience on your website – before they even come to stay with you.

With stock photography, Blizzard can do the searching for you (if it is in your budget) or you can do it yourself. If you opt to do it yourself, two sites that we often recommend to our clients are www.istock.com and www.fotolia.com. These are both inexpensive options that have billions of photos in their databases. Photos can be purchased from $1 each, depending on the resolution required. If the image you’re placing on your site is quite large and fills the page from sidebar to sidebar – you’re going to need a higher resolution photo. Smaller images can be lower resolution.

On both of these sites, you can create what’s called a “lightbox” to store the photos that you like. A lightbox is essentially a shopping cart, but you can share it with others and give it a special name that relates to its content. You can have one for people photos, one for beach photos, one for boat photos…it’s up to you, and you can create as many as you like. In order to make one, just create a user name and password and start browsing for photos. When you find one that you think might work for your website, simply click “add to lightbox”. When you’re finished, send us your login information and Blizzard can purchase the photos for you if it’s quoted as part of your website. This way you know you’ll be getting the correct resolution and dimensions for your site!

Browsing for photos on these sites can take some practice. The general rule of thumb is to start out with something broad, such as “California vineyard” (this particular search term yields 780 results). If you’re looking for something more specific, such as a California vineyard with mountains in the distance, try searching for “California vineyard mountains” (this search yields 21 results). You can also narrow your search by many other parameters, such as photo orientation, file type, etc. Click on “advanced search” to see all of the search parameters that are available.

Many chambers of commerce also keep stock photos that you can use for a fee, or for a trade. Check with yours to see what they have available. If your town has an annual festival or event, it’s likely they can provide photos from it. They often also have photos of area attractions and scenery.

Likewise, many local photographers may have their own inventory of stock photos available for you to purchase. They tend to be more expensive than the large internet sites, but less expensive than having the photographers visit your property.

Most of our clients use stock photography to supplement the professional photos they already have. It’s also a great option if your property is under construction but you want to get your website up sooner than later.

So stock photography is a very viable option for providing filler photos for area attractions pages, activities pages and other imagery that is not specific to your property. Keep in mind that others can also purchase and use these photos – so you’re not necessarily getting something “unique” but that isn’t always a bad thing. Tomorrow we’ll explore tips for taking your own photos in Part 3 of Selecting Appropriate Photography for your Website.
Here are some websites that use stock photography in additional to photos of their own:

Bama Bayou