Professional Industrial Photography – Why?

by Mark Werle (Mark Werle Photography Pixels + Motion)

So you're working on a new website or a piece of promotion and you need some really nice photos of your parts or processes. The question is, should you take these photos yourself or should you look at hiring someone to do this for you?

Like anything else, the answer lies in what you would like to accomplish. Industrial Photography is typically geared around a manufacturer to help create a message that not only presents the products or documents a service but also creates a theme throughout the images. A theme that represents quality, technology, craftsmanship, cleanliness, or other focal points in your manufacturing.

Technology today gives most cameras the ability to take a great photograph from just a push of a button. However, only a professional photographer will incorporate years of experience in lighting, composition, color accents, and attractive backgrounds. It really boils down to the “WOW” factor and can you accomplish what you want to achieve on your own? Some of the strongest images are the simplest images, yet some of the simplest images can also be very uninspiring. It’s that creative factor that will capture the attention of the viewer and invite them to explore further.

Original photographic work is a worthwhile investment if the image is planned and used wisely. A well planned photo could be used in many places to support your business, areas such as marketing brochures, catalogs, web site, blogs, direct mail, trade shows, office art, and so on.

As the saying goes, one photo is worth a 1000 words. You could describe in many words the great details about the quality of your product and the wide range of applications your services can cover, but seeing is believing. Industrial photography can illustrate a manufacturing process without having to pull your potential customer into your shop for them to fully understand.

One option many companies use is buying off-the-shelf stock imagery. While that might work fine in some situations, it sure is embarrassing when you and your competitor have the exact same picture on each of your websites talking about your “unique capabilities”! One of the greatest values of investing in original industrial photography vs. stock imagery is that it is exclusively yours and cannot be found in any image stock house. Your competition will not be able to obtain the same image and create marketing materials that might appear similar to yours.

So the answer is yes, you can do it yourself. But high quality industrial photography is a wise investment to promote your business. It will help capture your customer’s attention and generate new revenues to position your business above your competition.