A picture is worth a thousand …
… dollars? Today I took part in a professional photo shoot, with an amazing photographer who took pictures of children in a school setting. A private school, the client didn’t have a large budget for photos but was very open to our suggestion of using “real” kids and teachers to tell their story on their new Web site. It was hot and noisy, not to mention it was the last day of the school year, so imagine how hard it was to get everyone to focus!
But the shoot went amazingly well and we now have a gallery of professional photos that can be used for ads, brochures, presentations, the Web site, and tons of other marketing materials for this client.
I know there are literally hundreds of thousands of stock photos available on the Internet, and we’ve used some of them successfully for projects. But these “real” photos captured the fun, the humor, the hard work and one-on-one interaction with teachers—the photos tell the story of this great school without our having to write a story to “fit” a stock photo.
From a PR perspective, if you’re submitting a news release or pitching a story to an editor, real photos can help a writer choose your story over another. Today we took a few hundred amazing photos, and we’ll have about 200 great ones to use for years to come. The cost will come to around $5 per photo. I firmly believe that a few of those $5 photos will help sell this school to prospective parents. I’ll keep you posted.
