How to take pictures of your business
Its important to make sure everything in your business is at its absolute best before taking the pictures or having pictures taken by a professional photographer.
If you take pictures yourself use a good quality camera (not an iPhone or similar). A suitable camera would cost around 99 pounds from amazon. You will use it often (social media – brochures – scans of documents etc) so its worth the “investment”. Use a tripod to steady the camera or just some Blu-Tac on something fixed (like a table or bedpost). Steadying the camera is THE single most important rule in modern photography. Make sure the camera and thus the image is level – a jaunty angle isn’t usually cool.
Take lots of pictures as digital pictures are effectively free; and choose the best ones. Take pictures of bedrooms and public areas in any weather conditions but don’t point the camera at the window in a bright day. Use a mirror to bounce light into shaded areas of the room. Take pictures outside of the property on a good weather day – not dull or overcast. If your hotel or B&B is white, wait till the sun has gone/going behind a cloud; this prevents burn-out of the image.
Images on your website should be plentiful and easy to navigate. They should also be small in file-size, typically 800pixels along the longest side. Aim for less than 100kb file size per image max. This will give a beautiful experience on a PC or tablet, but also load efficiently on a phone on a 3G connection. Your web person can “optimise” your images for you. If your page loads slowly it WILL put potential customers off and you will be perceived as a waste of time.