How To Take Professional-Looking Photos Of Your B&B
What is the best way to intrigue your potential guests and make them want to stay at your bed and breakfast? With photos, of course!
In this article, we’re going to talk about how to take professional-looking photos of your B&B so you can use your tantalizing photos on your website and in your marketing materials to increase the likelihood that people will reserve your rooms.
Your B&B depends on professional-looking photos to market your offerings. You want excellent photos that accurately portray your B&B in the best “light.”
Lighting Interiors
Taking photos of interiors can be tricky, especially when it comes to lighting. The best suggestion is to take advantage of natural light.
You might even call using natural light one of the “golden” rules of photography. When leveraging natural light inside your B&B, you want to turn all of your lights off. While this may seem counter-intuitive, it must be done.
If you’re wondering about the strength of the room’s light, it’s time to look at your camera’s shutter speed settings. Utilize a tripod so you avoid any motion blur and set your shutter speed to slow so you have a long exposure.
This allows your camera to do the heavy lifting and pick up the room’s natural light so you don’t have to bring in lights or use a flash.
Natural lighting allows your B&B to shine – your colors will appear crisp, clean and fresh. Shadows will look more natural, and you may not have to spend as much time in editing to adjust white balance.
Worth noting is that not all natural light is great for taking professional-looking photos. You don’t want to shoot a room when the sun is shining its brightest in your room. Try shooting on a cloudy day – you’ll be surprised at the great photos this produces.
Try shooting in the early morning or late afternoon if soft light is your goal. (tweet this) This also helps keep shadows at bay.
Raw Footage
If your camera has the ability to shoot RAW, you should use it. What is a RAW file? It is basically your photo raw and untouched. When you export JPEGs, they get rid of information to save space. Not so with the RAW photo – it keeps everything.
Why shoot in RAW mode? You have the utmost control when doing it this way. You’ll end up with more information for your photo while you’ll have more control over white balance and your photo’s final size.
You’ll need editing software like Adobe Photoshop or Corel PaintShop Pro to edit RAW photos.
Straight Lines
You want to choose the right perspective when shooting the interior of your B&B. (tweet this) Try different sides of the room and decide which perspective you like best.
If you’re unsure, shoot the room straight on. This means align right up with one of the walls. You can even use the grid guides in your viewfinder so you can align the vertical and horizontal lines.
Unless you have some wonderful architectural feature, shooting up or down isn’t recommended if you’re a novice photographer. Straight on avoids problems and allows for easy cropping.
Design is King
It is certainly easier to take professional-looking photos of your B&B in larger rooms like your breakfast and dining areas. But, what about smaller bedrooms and bathrooms?
Stay away from the wide-angle lens, and instead, work on the room’s design. Feel free to move things around to create the best arrangements. You can also try shooting through rooms – this works well in small bathrooms.
Don’t forget these tips when it comes to the room’s design and layout:
- Move furniture and tabletop accessories as needed.
- Hide cords.
- Move items that disrupt the room’s balance.
- Make sure the bed is neatly made.
- Decide what you want to showcase. Is it the bed, or the books, games and magazines? Is it the computer table, meal offerings, art work or other design elements?
- Consider vignettes like a tray on the bed with tea and cookies and a small vase of flowers.
Lastly, consider the golden rule when it comes to arranging your rooms for the photos. The golden rule is based on the ratio of 1 to 1.618.
When you use this ratio in your photos, you end up with a stronger composition that is perfectly balanced with a certain harmony. In essence, people will enjoy looking at your photos because they are more pleasing to the human eye.
A variation of this rule is the Rule of Thirds. This allows you to find the “sweet spot.” This is the first place the viewer’s eye is drawn to. It’s another way to plan the composition of your photos.
Sharp or Blurred
No one wants a blurred photo. So, when taking vignettes in your rooms, you want to know how to use your aperture.
What is aperture? It is the tool that controls the size of the light that is allowed to come through your camera. This is what controls your camera’s field depth.
For example, let’s say you want to take a photo of the bathroom vanity, and you want to concentrate on some small items, and you want these items to be the focus of the photo, you want to pay attention to two things:
- Your focus.
- The aperture number. The smaller the number, the shallower your depth of field. The larger the number, and you’ll have items that are more in focus and sharper.
Breaking that down a bit more: If you’re shooting the entire room, your f-stop should be cranked all the way up. If you’re shooting smaller items closer up, you want to shoot with a wider aperture – the smallest f-stop.
Steady Hands
You may think you have steady hands, but we want you to use a tripod. There’s no reason to waste time taking photos without a tripod just to end up with blurry photos.
Final Thoughts
As a last word when it comes to taking professional-looking photos of your B&B, it’s important to remain flexible and consider your audience. Your reason for taking these photos is to sell your property. Take some time to think about what parts of your B&B are worth highlighting.
Always take more photos then you think you need – you want a wide body of work to choose from.
Are you ready to put your professional-looking photos of your B&B to good use? At Hotel Propeller, we build beautiful websites. You’ll find everything you need to attract guests to your website. Take a look at our showcase and contact us today!
Images: MSMcCarthy Photography via VisualHunt.com / CC BY-ND and The Tedster via Visual hunt / CC BY-ND
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