My friend and coach, Jack, is just setting up a personal training business Jack Fish Fitness and I was super excited that he asked me to take some photographs for his new website. I have worked with Jack a couple of times before through photoshoots for fitness clothing brands Bear Strength Clothing and One Hand Lift – so he’s a bit of an old hat at this modelling thing now!
Besides an unintended modelling career, Jack has many other strings to his bow. His new business not only includes personal training, but mobility and rehabilitation, sports massage and programming as well, so was really important to make sure that each of these areas was covered during the shoot. We also went through the layout of the new site to make sure that the new images would suit the format of its design in terms of composition and tone.
As well as my photographic education, I also I have a marketing background and in particular, digital marketing, so whilst I was editing Jack’s photos, it got me thinking about the importance of photography in web design . This is where I now go on a little geek journey, but one I hope my clients and future clients may find useful.
It doesn’t take a marketing professional to know just how important a well designed website is for any business, large or small, new or well established. Photography has always played a big part in web design and probably always will – although now it is joined by an ever-increasing amount of video and animation. It is, however, important to invest in good authentic photography, but why?
In 2014 Google launched their Material Design Language, which in basic terms, were a set of template and design guidelines to help improve the user experience of their products. Google later made these guidelines available to third party developers and since then, more and more designers and developers are using these principles when creating websites and it is a trend that is likely to continue throughout 2017.
The ultimate aim for this style being, no matter who’s website you are on and no matter what type of device you are using to view it, it will act in a similar way. From a business and marketing prospective the upside is that the consistency will improve user experience for your customers, but on the downside, websites have the potential to become more uniform, making it increasing difficult to make your website stand out from the crowd.
This is where photography comes in. Original, authentic and bespoke photography that really represents you and your businesses ethos will make you stand out. Customers now demand authenticity from the brands they use and they will spot generic stock photographs from a mile off. If you want to connect with your customers, then you need to put you on your website.
Having a marketing background helps me to understand how important my photographs are to someone’s business and I always take the time to research who they are, what they do and make sure that this comes across in the photos that I take for them. If you are getting a website designed for your business, please feel free to get in touch as I’ll be more than happy to talk to you about how photography can be incorporated into your site.
To see more photographs from this shoot and similar click here
Shot on location at Crossfit Pi