Picture This
How to Do Simple Photography to Document and Market Your Stone Installations
Mark Lauzon
Special Contributor
Photo by Zach Smyser, Artistic Stone Design
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The most important tip to remember is to hold your camera still. The best way is to use a tripod to hold your camera motionless, especially in low-light rooms. Be aware of what your LCD shows you – overhead lighting will affect reflective surfaces like polished tops, range hoods or appliances. And make sure the shot is clutter-free of rags, bottles, brooms, papers and other installation debris. |
When I first started my stone shop back in 1999, I didn’t do everything correctly….not by a long shot. But I did do one thing in those early days that in the long run proved to be the very profitable, years later. I took pictures of almost every job I installed.
Not important for you? Remember that Typhoon Green kitchen you installed six months ago, with the triple pencil edge and the three-level island with the giant radius? Try to describe that without pictures.
Or, imagine you’re meeting with a prospective client and trying to explain what you think is an amazing detail that can also add profit to a job and your bottom line. Now you’re kicking yourself for not taking some photos; been there, done that.
Photos are a record of your efforts and craftsmanship. Forget that a photo is worth a thousand words. Try hundreds, or thousands, of dollars instead.
I won’t attempt to explain the technicalities of photography; If you don’t know an f-stop from a stop sign, no worries. Don’t know what a histogram does or how one works? Forget about it. You think exposure is what happens if you stay out in the cold too long? No stress, brother.
Welcome to the age of digital photography. Modern digital cameras are everywhere. While most of you have decent cameras on your phone, they are not really up to the task. They do a poor job in low light, and unfortunately for you, your customer’s kitchens typically would be considered low light shooting.
Professionals use a combination of flash photography and really expensive gear to get the shot. You don’t have the time to set all that stuff up and I doubt you want to spend thousands of dollars for gear.
To get great results (not professional), I recommend the Sony RX100 IV. It is about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Its compact size allows you to leave it in your glove box. You can have it with you all the time. And it only takes a few minutes to go in after the install to get a few shots.
The RX100 camera is an engineering marvel and performs amazingly well in low light. Don’t take my word for it, read some reviews and look at the results.
When choosing a camera, I would look for the following features:
- 12-megapixel resolution or more (the RX100 is 20 megapixel and shoots 4K video).
- It should have an actual lens with good wide-angle capability and low light performance (The RX100 is rate at F1.8…outstanding in low light)
- It should have a remote control, and
- It should have an articulated LCD display (one that you can swivel or twist into different positions), enabling you to preview the shot while holding the camera over your head.
Furthermore, you’ll need a Mac or Windows PC with some photo-management software. I use Photos® on my Mac. (If you don’t have a computer, consider a Mac; they’re easy to use and come with great photo-management software.) On my Windows machine, I like to use Photoshop® Elements; it has many great features for editing photos, and is much lower in cost than the full-blown Photoshop® software.
Also, purchase a small tripod, a camera case, an extra memory card that’s compatible with your camera, and a backup battery. There is nothing more annoying and embarrassing than having a customer clean the house, invite you in, and you not be able to take pictures because the battery is dead, or your memory card is full!
How to Get the Shot
When you’re setting up to take pictures, make sure there are no odd things like dish rags, water bottles or clutter in the shot. This seems obvious, but having returned home and found a broom leaning against the wall in the background of the nicest photos I have taken is annoying … to say the least.
Never use a flash unless you really know what you’re doing. Pros who know how to use a flash and have the equipment and training can get great results. Every picture I have taken with a flash comes out looking horrible. And, remember that most of the work you’ll shoot has nice, glossy finishes that will act like a mirror to reflect back the flash and ruin the shot.
It’s also important to look at the LCD – the screen that shows what the camera sees – when you’re taking pictures. For one thing, a camera’s viewfinder may not be completely accurate, and the picture that you get may not be the one you thought you were taking.
The LCD also shows a true image. Your eyes and your brain work harder than any computer yet built to correct light levels and colors (note: the fancy and technical term for this is chromatic adaptation), so you may think everything looks fine. The LCD will show the bad light reflections and strange color contrasts that you may be able to fix by turning lights on or off, or closing a window shade.
The biggest challenge you’ll have is taking good photos in bad – basically, low-level – light. I always use a tripod or brace myself and/or the camera on a solid, steady object, for every shot. Sometimes the shutter speed will be so slow that any movement would result in a blurry mess.
The cost of photographing with a digital camera is pretty much free. I use a shotgun (or what pro photographers call the safety) approach; I’ll take an average of 100 photos in a kitchen.
I often hold the camera against a door jamb over my head to get a high-angle shot (this is where the articulated LCD screen comes in handy) and take four or five photos from the exact same position. Without fail, one of them will be in better focus then the rest.
I’ve used the top of the fridge, walls, countertops and toolboxes to brace the camera. It is extremely important to hold the camera as still as possible in poor lighting situations (which is usually nine out of ten projects). To that end, I use a tripod with the remote; this results in great photos if you can get the camera where you want it with the tripod.
I like to shoot details and close-ups. I always hope that I can get six or seven photos (out of a hundred) that really look great and show more than just the kitchen. Clients love the little detail shots.
If you can, try to go to the house when the sun is shining. This is the one time a flash can yield interesting results; experiment with the flash when the sun is shining through a window. Because the flash is just providing some fill-in illumination, you might get lucky and take some really great-looking shots.
Clients enjoy seeing the fabrication and installation process. I’ve taken pictures of workers templating, the cutting of slabs and the finished pieces being fit into place. If you use a computer in your showroom process, photos make really cool slide shows. When you do tour homes or home shows, set up a computer with a running, start-to-finish slide show of a job. Folks will stand and look at it for a long time–and they may be potential customers!
When doing design work with clients, consider using the photo library on the computer to show them different ways to do things. The client, having seen several hundred photos in your library, quickly becomes comfortable in the knowledge that you know what you’re doing.
I cannot stress enough how important it is to have quality photographs of your work. I’ve built many websites for stone shops and often have to resort to purchased stock photography. In my experience customers actually prefer good, genuine pictures of YOUR finished work over perfect stock images – the operative word being “good.” Unfortunately, when I request photos from my customers, I wind up getting grainy, blurry photos that look horrid, and are no substitute for showing your hard work – and the expensive stone – to best advantage.
If you’re a professional photographer and happen to be reading this, stop making fun of me and go make some money taking pictures! If you cut stone for a living, get a real camera and start taking some photos of your outstanding work. It’s one of the most valuable things you can do for your business.
Mark Lauzon is a former stone fabricator from Oregon and a sales manager at Sasso USA.