Reining Content

The use of photography to convey ideas and concepts is clearly fashionable in this 21st century. Some say the photograph is in danger of being superceded by video but I think if you believed the concept of the paperless office muted some 20 years ago then we have some way to go before we are completlely bored of the photograph as a medium. After all, where would one be without the selfie? Unlike video a photo defines a moment captured in time that allows our imagine to make endless connections and theories beyond the immediate image. As an art form it can sometimes be open to interpretation and misinterpretation.

Many factors have to be considered, the circumstance, the energy, the fun, the reasoning behind it. Often the photo is taken in the most extraordinary of places like the top of a mountain or building or in a cave and that can be the thing that defines our interesst in it. In other instances the humble photograph has caused us to stop in our tracks. There’s a term given to people who provide professional food product photography services for advertising industry called, ‘Food Stylist’. Who knew?  Using imagery as a seling tool has been around for 90 years or more. Big companies go a long way to use imagery that defines the qualities and aspirations of their products and entice use to buy.

The principals of using imagery to sell is something is not solely for the big guys. After all, almost everything we do in small business is scaled down from the sucesses and faliures of the big guys. So how do we use imagery to make ourselves look engaging on social channels? By being more creative than the titans. Creative can mean presenting your products or services using humour, seriousness, quirkiness and silliness. Using imagery creatively makes us memorable and garners feelings of positivity.

In our working day there can be much we walk past without registering it’s extraordinariness. I worked for a company that had plasma cutting technology that, in my mind, was just begging to be interacted with.’ Can it cut through glass? Can it make art? What can we cut in half? How intricate can it cut? Content Opportunity’ can be walked passed a thousand times until a creative spirit stops you to say, ‘Wait a minute… that’s extraordonary.’ Creativity can make this potential content soar even taking the mundane and making it interesting. Many of us don’t have creativity skills but those from the creative sector live and breath it and that’s when you should engage a design professional to extract the gold just laying about the place.