photography

Website creators. Communication enablers.

Photography for your School website Your guide to creating great School photography.

The importance of photography on your School Website.

Great photography on your School website will help represent the vision of your School, showcase your values and evoke an emotive reaction. Using professional photography will reinforce many of your objectives without the need for lengthy descriptive paragraphs.

Photography plays an important role in everyday life; connecting us to people, places, feelings and experiences. Images serve several purposes, but for your school website, there are images that persuade, images that educate and images that represent. Getting the correct combination of this will give a positive lasting impression of your school.

Excellent website design alone is not enough; professionally taken images will improve the user experience of your School website. It’s worth putting some time into the planning of your photography to get the most visually impactful results.

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Getting the correct photos.

Capturing the right images that reflect your school is as important as the words you publish. Your school is unique; your photography needs to show this.

Take into consideration the facilities, buildings, history, and any specialist provision; e.g. teaching, music etc. as well as your overall objectives.

Many of the visitors to your website will want to feel what day-to-day life is like at your school. Photographs of your pupils, teaching and support staff will showcase this. A combination of candid and staged photographs will capture the essence of this and highlight the interactions that take place daily.

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How a professional photographer can help.

It’s a question of quality over quantity. Having a vast portfolio of photographs to showcase your school is great but having a selection of carefully prepared images that tell the story of your school and can be used in a digital format is priceless.

Getting a specialist educational photographer to visit your school, to work to your brief and then effectively capture what you are trying to achieve will enhance the user-journey of your website.

With the support of a professional photographer, your images will be fully edited and of the correct format and size for you to use throughout your marketing materials.

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Planning your photography visit.

Ahead of your professional photoshoot, your dedicated PrimarySite Project Manager will contact you with a pre-arrival brief to understand what you are wanting to achieve from the images being taken.

Things to consider at this stage include; the time of day that you would like your shoot to happen, the locations in the school that you are wanting to showcase, whether you need a half-day or full-day shoot, the pupils and the staff that you are wanting to feature in the photos, permissions for the use of those photos from consenting adults, but rest-assured our photography brief will take you through this.

Your Project Manager will share with you the details of your photographer who will, in turn, call you ahead of the planned visit to confirm the details with you and share details of their DBS for your records.

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Prefer to take your own images?

If you would prefer to take your own images, here are some minimum requirements and useful information for ensuring that your photographs can be used on your new website.

Photos that do not meet the following requirements may look grainy, pixelated, or simply not fit the slideshow on your website.

We require: JPEG file format Minimum 300 DPI Landscape orientation Minimum dimensions of 2000px x 1125px The main subject or focus in the bottom two thirds of the image.

Once you are happy with your photos, you can send your un-cropped images to PrimarySite using the following link https://primarysite.wetransfer.com/ To help us make sure we know who you are, please include in your we transfer message: Name of your PrimarySite Project Manager, school name and school postcode. If you would like any assistance with transferring your own images to us, please do not hesitate to contact your Project Manager.

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Help with the 2/3’s rule.

Below we have two images. One correctly framed with the focal point in the bottom 2/3rds of the frame and the other incorrectly framed.

Look what happens when we place each image into the slideshow on the website.

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Here the photographer has clearly placed the

Part of the subject is in the upper third of the

subject in the bottom 2/3rds of the image and its

image, obscuring the child’s head when used in

fits perfectly.

the website slideshow.