Green
Green is often registered as an indication of freshness. At the end of winter, many are eager to see masses of green in the trees and lawn. While searching through books and magazines the eyes are dominated by masses of white pages and black type, while green tones are found to be instantly relaxing against blue tones. Therefore, a green lawn in the background or foreground of a landscape can emphasize the cooling tones of blue.
Blue
People are seeking the relaxing and cooling effect of water when looking through landscape photos. This might seem obvious, but it is often overlooked in many photos as numerous pools appear grey or white in portfolio and/or advertising photographs.
Used to balance the warm tones of reds in a swimming pool/landscape image, the blue shade of the sky can often be reflected on the water surface to provide a cooling effect. However, try to avoid the reflecting sun or too many washed-out grey tones from cloud reflections in the pool.
Remember, when altering photos on the computer, it is difficult to improve the realistic effect without making them seem over manipulated. When photos look unrealistic, clients may become naturally suspicious and may not trust what they see or the company advertising the photos.
Creating a digital portfolio
Now, with the project photos in hand and looking great, the following should be considered before putting together a digital portfolio:
Legal use
When considering the idea of posting images for the company’s portfolio on any website, read and become familiar with the policies with respect to the terms and conditions these sites impose on the content being uploaded. Keep in mind, the free use of these sites and agreement to their policies in some cases allows them to use and distribute any uploaded images without notice or credit.
Copyright
Upload the company’s images only. Few things are worse than having hard work stolen and improperly credited. One way to avoid this is to label the company’s ownership of the images using watermarks. Some software applications provide this as an option to users, while the metadata contained in the image file itself can also protect a company’s copyright and ownership.
File size and type
The file size of the images being uploaded can also prevent others from simply copying them. For instance, if the image size is too large, others may be able to copy the photo with all of the detail intact. Should the image size be too small, the file will look grainy or ‘pixelated’ and display very little detail, making the photo almost unrecognizable. Therefore, using a file size between 350 to 500 KB, or fitting the image within a 1024 x 1024 pixel frame in JPEG format is typically safe.
Social media
With reference to the legalities of using photography online, social media websites such as Facebook can also be a great tool for promoting the company’s work, as well as a way to create a loyal fan base that can refer the company’s work to others. However, nothing comes without work. Daily or weekly posts of photos and descriptive, intriguing content is what keeps people coming back to the profile to see what is new. Therefore, plan the content to be relevant to trends in the industry and offer titbits of information to generate leads.
