Hiring a hotel photographer
On this blog we like to think we’re pretty good at giving you information and advice on how best to use your shiny new DSLR camera to make the most of your photography. Using the tips we give, you could very easily go around your hotel and get some fantastic shots which you can then pop on your website to entice new customers. In fact, the Internet is chock full of websites that offer help and you can always find someone willing to give you a hand.
However, at some point you have to consider the time and effort you need to put into such an endeavour. You are probably a hotel owner or manager, you probably have a hundred and one things to do today, is it really worth your time to also be the hotel photographer?
Those that run the largest hotel chains in the country don’t do it, if you want to aspire to be the best, is it really in your interest to do it either?
I recently asked a small hotel manager how long he thought it would take to photograph every room and exterior interest of his hotel and he said he could do the lot in an hour. It wasn’t a large hotel, it was twelve rooms, only four different layouts to photograph. It had some impressive gardens, a small gym and a very impressive restaurant area. I said “OK then, do it and send me the photos”.
A couple of days later I received all the photographs in to my DropBox folder and I started to look through. The quality was “OK” but there were some glaring mistakes that really had to be taken care of. I’d say 5% of them would be usable after some work in LightRoom and PhotoShop, but there were some more that couldn’t be used and definitely needed to be taken again. Here’s a run-down of obvious mistakes:
- Lighting wasn’t consistent – the same room had different exposures when photographs were taken from different angles, made them look very odd
- Blurring – A tripod is essential, as is a remote in some cases, for great photos you need your camera to be rock steady
- Room decoration – some of the rooms looked terrible. A bedroom looked slightly “messy” simply because objects weren’t placed ideally
I decided to give the manager a call:
“How did your stint as a hotel photographer go?”
“I hated it!”
It turns out it had taken him most of the day. When I explained most of the photographs were unusable he admitted he wasn’t surprised at all. I estimate it would probably take a couple of days in post-process to get even the good ones ready. He was a little distraught.
“Can you come and do it?”
Yup.
If you’re on a really tight budget then by all means, take a phew photographs of your hotel and publish them, but if you’re looking to make the most of the medium, to get more people booking up and to beat your competitors at their own game then there’s really nothing better than a specialised company with experienced hotel photographers to make sure your hotel looks its absolute best.
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