Photo Business Cards

Professional Photographers And Head Shots.
How To Get The Best Photo Taken For Your Business Cards

When it comes to photo business cards, many of the same principles apply to professional photography and taking your own photos.

The main point that one should understand about photographers is that they are artists. Professional photographers are, therefore, professional artists. One main thing professional photographers and graphic commercial artists share in common is that the job entails the expression of concepts in imagery. We take ideas and concepts such as 'strong, dependable, professional and trustworthy' or 'fun, exciting and sexy' and translate them into images. Photo business card design is one of the ultimate meeting places of these two disciplines. The graphic artist and photographer are working on the same job and attempting to express the same concepts. If you want your photo business cards to represent your company effectively, think about what impression you want to give people about your business. If you're a stockbroker, you may want to give the impression of being 'fast-paced, timely, dependable, knowledgeable and profitable'.
If you're an interior decorator, you may want to let people know that you're 'fashionable, tasteful, refined and elegant'. If you've given some thought to this, you can help the graphic designer and photographer immensely by telling them what you want your photo business cards to convey. They can then create the most effective photo business cards for your unique business.
The next best thing you can do to help the graphic designer and photographer create the best photo business cards for you is to let them do their job. I can't tell you how many amateur looking business cards I've had to print because the customer knew exactly what they wanted. By telling me exactly where to place their photo, how big to display it, what color text they wanted, the fonts to use on each line and exactly where to place each line of text in relation to the photo, the customer, in effect, designed their own business cards using my technical know-how of the graphics program. The only problem with this is that those customers are not professional commercial artists. Had they told me what they wanted their photo business cards to convey, they would have wound up with a much nicer looking and effective design. The same holds true for photographers: tell them what you want the photo to accomplish and let them do their thing.
The main advantage to using professional photography for your photo business cards is, of course, the quality of the images. You don't have to worry about lighting, color quality or sharpness.
But another huge advantage of using a professional photographer is that they should be able to provide you with a CD of your images in electronic formats ready for printing. This can be very important for your marketing campaign. If you have a selection of images on CD, all ready for printing, then anytime you need any marketing materials designed and printed, all you have to do is choose which photo you like for the project and email it straight to the printing company's designer.
Many of my photo business card customers have sent me two or three photos to choose from. They tell me that these are their favorite photos and to select the one that works best for their photo business card layout. This is the ideal situation as it allows the designer to use their skills and talents to create the best design possible.
So, in a nutshell, if you're going to hire a professional photographer for your marketing images, there are three main points to remember:

1. Tell the photographer what you're trying to convey with the photos and the purpose of the photos.
2. Let the photographer use their creativity, talent and skill to get the best photos for you.
3. Hire a photographer than can provide you with a CD of all of the images, so you have them in an easy to use format, ready for printing.

For more information on getting and choosing the best photos for photo business cards, see
Using Your Own Photos On Business Cards