How To Take Great Photos
When you are the person tasked with taking photos for an event, a website or social media, there are some practical guidelines to make sure you get quality photography that fits the space.
Format #
If possible, shoot images in RAW, or RAW+JPG. WVU designers can process RAW files for use in marketing materials and other high-resolution applications.
When using your phone’s camera, do not "zoom in." Move closer to your subject and photograph at .5x-1x zoom. Make sure your subject is extremely well lit; daylight in an exterior location works best.
Due to current website and print constraints, photos for general use should be horizontal (landscape) format, unless otherwise noted by the requesting client. This includes on-location portrait photography, as shown below:
Subject - Focal Point #
Health Sciences marketing photography aims to allow the viewer to "picture themselves" at WVU. Consequently, the subject is ALWAYS the person in the photo.
No matter how cool the scientific equipment is, if a person's face is in frame, their eyes must be in focus, even if that means the equipment will be blurry. To highlight technology, take another photo that features the cool equipment alone, or with human hands only.
No Recognizable Animals or Human Body Parts
If the science being displayed includes animals or invasive bodily procedures, make sure to frame those elements out of the shot.
In the example below, this person is performing brain surgery on a murine model. We don't need to see the surgery, because the subject is always the person. Note the subject's eye is in focus.
Here's another example: Because few people outside of biomedical research would recognize the object in the center, you MAY photograph it. Also, there is no person in the shot, so it focuses on the "cool equipment."
Pathology and anatomy often involve human organs. When shooting images for general use, avoid photographing anything that might be disturbing or shocking to a non-clinical audience. For example, if you have a choice between photographing intestines OR slices of a liver, choose the liver. Don't show recognizable cadavers or recognizable human/cadaver surgeries. Again, you MAY show non-recognizable parts, like a blurred image of the inside of an intestine on a screen during robotic surgery. Try to minimize the appearance of recognizable blood.
Required Protective Equipment and Dress Codes
When photographed in a clinical or laboratory setting, subjects MUST wear all personal protective equipment (PPE) that accrediting or supervising bodies would require and follow their school's dress code. It is the photographer's responsibility to confirm that the subjects are meeting these requirements. Subjects rarely wear the correct PPE without prompting because they get confused by reenacting their work.
A typical conversation is as follows:
- Photographer: "Are you wearing all the PPE that you would need to wear when you are actually performing these [experiments, surgeries, tests, etc]?"
- Usually, the subject will respond, "Oh yeah, this is what I always wear to do this." This isn't a good enough answer.
- Photographer: "What is the official dress code? Do you need your hair up? Should you be wearing a lab coat? Do you need eye protection? What about gloves and a mask? Please remember that these photos will be unusable if any PPE is missing."
- Subject: "Oh, well maybe I should wear [eye protection, etc]..."
Depending on the unit, scientists, clinicians, clinical students and others with long hair may be required to tie their hair back or wear a head covering. Please inquire with the unit directors or subjects about this.
Photographs that violate official dress codes cannot be used in our marketing materials or digital channels. Any photography shoot that fails to follow PPE or dress code requirements will be discarded.
If white coats are sometimes worn in a lab or clinical setting, they should be worn for the photoshoot. Designers typically remove names from the coats in post-processing.
If the subject is wearing plain clothes, they should not wear logos from other universities, or garments with distracting graphics or offensive content; only WVU-branded attire or attire associated with a collaborating entity (for example, CDC, local health department, etc.) is acceptable.
Background
You can use a short depth of field to blur the backgrounds of images. You can also frame shots in a way that creates negative space in the foreground of images. This space is often used by designers as a location for text and graphical elements.
Look for trash cans or other items with negative connotations in the background and temporarily remove them during the photoshoot.
Workflow Recommendations
Try to budget 30-60 minutes to photograph your subject(s) "working" -- show them with the equipment they use, in their workspaces, and working with their students or lab techs, if students are available.
To maximize usable photos, try to get a variety of people, equipment and locations. For example, if the faculty member has 3 students in a lab (or office), try to get shots with the following combinations:
- Faculty member alone
- Student 1 alone
- Student 2 alone
- Student 3 alone
- Faculty with student 1
- Faculty with student 2
- Faculty with student 3
- Faculty with multiple students
- Multiple students together
- Cool-looking equipment by itself
Photo/Media Release
Please obtain an official WVU photo/media release for all subjects for every shoot. If the photoshoot occurs in a WVU Medicine facility, please coordinate with their marketing and communications office in advance. They may send an escort with you to guarantee HIPAA compliance.
Helpful Tip: For photographing large classes, take a stack of red paper cut into four squares. Before a shoot, ask if anyone DOES NOT want to be photographed. For those people, set a red sheet on the desk in front of them so it is easy to see who to avoid photographing. The easiest way to avoid using a photo of an unwilling subject is to never take the photo in the first place.