Seeker News is a unique business website, showcasing stories from Dorset and the South West. If your company or organisation are staging an event, Seeker News will help put it in the shop window, through words and pictures.

Founded in April 2010, Seeker News continues to grow,offering a first class service for businesses, organisations and events throughout the region.

Visit Seeker News.co.uk and you will see a host of stories, written by our own journalist and illustrated by beautifully taken photographs.

They will now be able to use these images as part of their presentation in the regional finals in Torquay later this month.

So what is an Engagement Object?

An “Engagement Object” is an element or multimedia component that you can add to your website that is engaging and causes users to interact with your website.

Recently Google has added to it’s algorithms used for Search Engine ranking to take account of these elements which it recognises add to the surfers experience when visiting your website.

By adding video or audio to your site you can actually improve your search engine results.

At Seeker Photography we have recently started video blogging, shooting short video clips for the web whilst out on still image shoots. This is a move that is increasingly common in news photography as the news media moves over to delivering more content online.

We use a variety of methods to create compelling video content for ourselves and our clients using both video and still images, edited together, with or without audio.

Bruce Clay, one of the world’s top SEO experts believes that it will develop to the extent that if you don’t have video, if you don’t have engagement objects on your website, you are just not going to rank.  “It will make you last among equals if you don’t have it.”

To find out more about Engagement Objects and how Seeker Photography can produce video to help your web presence call us now on 01202 779604

But, really the question should be “Will we do passport photos?”

Have you ever looked at the Passport Authorities guidelines for passport photos? In these technologically advanced days when they want all of the images to uniformly suit their automated scanning processes the guidelines have become increasingly strict.

The rules for passport photos – from Direct.gov

The photographs you supply with your application must:

• show you with a neutral expression and your mouth closed (no grinning, frowning or raised eyebrows)
• show you on your own (babies should not have toys or a dummy, and there shouldn’t be other people in the photo)
• be in colour, not black and white
• be identical
• be taken within the last month
• be 45 millimetres high x 35 millimetres wide – this is the standard size when you have a passport photo taken in a photo booth or studio (you should not trim a larger photograph to meet this condition)
• be clear and in sharp focus, with a clear difference between your face and the background
• be taken against a plain cream or plain light grey background
• not show you with red-eye
• be of you facing forward and looking straight at the camera
• not be torn, creased, or marked
• be printed on plain white photographic paper
• be free from shadows
• be taken with your eyes open and clearly visible (no sunglasses or tinted glasses and no hair across your eyes)
• be free from reflection or glare on your glasses, and the frames must not cover your eyes – the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) recommends that, if possible, you remove your glasses
• be professionally printed (photographs printed at home are not likely to be of an acceptable quality)
• show your full head, without any head covering, unless you wear one for religious beliefs or medical reasons
• be taken with nothing covering your face – you should make sure nothing covers the outline of your eyes, nose or mouth
• be a close-up of your head and shoulders with a recommended head height (the distance between the bottom of your chin and the crown of your head) between 29 and 34 mm
• not have any writing on the front or back – except when one of the photos needs to be certified

So really we should be thinking what’s the point in making life difficult for ourselves by shooting it manually, adjusting the head size in Photoshop, sending it to the lab for printing.

Today I had to get new passport photos, do you know what I did?

I didn’t go into the studio, shoot myself against a white background, etc, etc – I went to the shopping centre, put £4 in the machine and had the photos in a couple of minutes – easy.

If you really insist on doing it yourself try these websites:

• Paspic
• ePassportPhoto

As the business has developed we don’t do so much of this sort of work now, but the service is available to our clients if they require it.

In fact we’ve won a few awards for digitally composited images

Of the images above, we had to comp two images together to make the Santorini wedding shot to ensure that the exposure was good across the entire image.

The Matrix inspired shot originally included a chair that the model was stood on, and the Fish shot included multiple images of toy sharks and various fish from the local aquarium shop!

Having done lots of digital comping myself it was great to see how a designer does it as opposed to a photographer, and boy, do I wish it could be done it 2 minutes!

Love the “ooops!” moment.

Rubicon People were moving into new premises in Poole High Street and they wanted local scenes, featuring CEO Lloyd Banks’ daughter in their trademark purple somewhere in the images.

We shot a number of images around the Poole area, all featuring our model and produced the finished images as canvases, some up to 5′ across!

“Steve was invited to tender for our project and was chosen (from a field of 5) for his creativity, understanding of our needs and competitive pricing. I won’t hesitate to use him again as his work was extremely good.”

Lloyd Banks, CEO at Rubicon People

We recently spent a couple of days taking new photographs for the Queens Hotel in Bournemouth and produced some great results for their new website.

“We booked Steve for a photo shoot of our hotel. Steve worked with us for two days to get a series of images of the function rooms, bedrooms and communal areas. We found Steve very easy and pleasant to work with. Most importantly we have been really pleased the images he has taken. He stuck to the brief and showed the hotel in exactly the light which it needed. Steve was also flexible and punctual. We will certainly use him again.”

Layla Gordon, Sales and Marketing, The Queens Hotel

To see more of our photographs and to check out a great hotel in the heart of Bournemouth visit the Queens Hotel’s new website or The Queens Hotel’s photo gallery.

But can you take it too far?

L’Oreal are obviously full of very intelligent marketing people but after seeing this Shampoo for “Mid to Long, Fine Hair, that turns Greasy” I wondered if that might be TOO specific.

Maybe I should start offering PR photoshoots for “Businessmen in their late 50′s who are carrying a few extra pounds, losing their hair and dreaming of their youth” or “Business owners, late 30′s, in sharp suits, planning on building a business empire before they’re 50″.

This might be too specific?

Perhaps a wedding package for “Brides, size 12-14, mid-length, auburn hair, with 2 or more bridesmaids”?

All I know is that I won’t be using this shampoo as it’s not for “Short to Very Short, receding hair”.

I’d love to see comments from all of you marketing people.

It is always important for businesses to use fresh photography on their promotional material and websites and local images can help to connect with local markets. Seeker Photos.com has a whole catalogue for people to choose from, with a wide variety of Dorset landscapes and other images representing the south coast, local companies can advertise the fantastic area that we work in.

Because we wanted Seeker Photos.com to offer the very best local images we opened it up to all contributors and the website now features over 2000 images with more than 80 contributing photographers.

We live in a great part of the country, your customers live and work here because they love it, connect with them by accentuating what you love about the area.

You can find more information and view the exciting new Seeker Photos.com – the Image Library with downloads from only £5 by logging on to www.seekerphotos.com

Releases with a photo have a much better chance of being published and the image helps increase the prominence of your story from a brief mention in the business section to a possible feature article with more column inches.

Try these tips for success:

• You should always have current headshots of everyone likely to be mentioned in your press releases.
• Have a selection of natural industry specific working shots of your main people, CEO, directors, etc, with and without your company branding.
• If your press release tells a story ensure that your image reinforces this with the same message with enough impact to grab the attention of both the Editor and the readers.
• Whilst a headshot is useful and great for adding to a simple release, a feature picture can make the story. We’ve had numerous occassions where our image has promoted a run of the mill story to prominence including two paragraph pieces taking up half a page!
• Have a library of stock images taken of your business, shots of your premises, staff, processes and products – these can be handy for releases when you don’t have the time or resources for a specific shoot or to make available to publications to supplement existing stories.
• Always get landscape and portrait shots, and make sure that your images and method of delivery are accepted by the publication – there’s no point going to all of this effort only to get it wrong at this point!

Professional images are one of the most effective and economical ways of reinforcing your brand and communicating with current and potential clients – just check out these examples of how our images have been used in the media to promote our clients.