Taking Great Photos and Video

For those in the industry who know me, I have had a lifelong love of photography. I have owned lots of cameras: Nikon, Olympus, Minolta but my best was manual, mechanical, and dependable Pentax MX.

I have probably taken more photos in the robotics and automation industry than anyone I know. I certainly have spent a lot of money and time doing it. A lot of Saturday mornings were spent at ATS Automation in Cambridge, positioning, branding and bolstering marketing through a lens.

I didn’t do it alone. I had help. I set budgets. I hired the best photographers, photographer assistants, videographers, toolmakers, programmers, cleaners. I hired models, ad agencies, makeup artists, when it made sense - and it did a lot. I put up with flack from employees, management, project managers, purchasing and yes I made mistakes along the way.?

My secrets and some of my mistakes, too:

Create a Budget

Nothing happens in marketing without a budget. Be prepared to back up the spend and show where the spend supports strategy and sales.

Schedules

I used Outlook to schedule photos of machines, people and systems that I thought needed a photo or video or promotion of a special project or technology.

Involve Partners

The big brands and big robot OEMs and maybe your customers may have more resources than you, so put together a proposal or a partnership. They need stories too.

Walk the floor

How do you know if a system, machine or cell is photo-ready unless you walk the floor? I purposely parked in the back of the factory parking lot and walked in the shipping entrance to make sure what was photo ready and what was not. I talked to the toolmakers and programmers: they know.?

Don’t wait for perfection

Sometimes a half-built machine is a perfect photo backdrop, especially if there is something unique about the system, such as stainless steel.

Invest in props

I always had a box of props: coasters, maps, clipboards, safety glasses, stopwatches, shirts, mugs and pens. These proved to be invaluable, especially the shirts, especially when given away.

Get dirty

I moved garbage cans. I swept and I dusted. I gave away logo’d shirts. I learned how to clean Lexan without scratching it (it is super soft, BTW).

Have some rules:

Always be safe.

Never take a photo of a part in place, unless it was for engineering purposes.

Don’t wait for permission, it will never come.?

Never record IP.

Photography and video is always inconvenient.

Models are a good investment.

Shoot down, not up.?

Know where the ladders and brooms are.?

Get your Skyjack Training.?

Clean up the background: garbage pails, cardboard boxes.

Put people in a version of every machine photo.?

Grab team shots where possible, even impromptu.

Use Toolboxes as props or for colour and to fill in gaps on the floor.

Always obtain a photo release. Take a photo of each person holding their release, in large black letters, especially the models.

Use a similar backdrop for management-style photos.

Lock down the photo library. Not everyone needs access.

Give a DAM

Finding photos and videos are complicated. Consider buying or subscribing to a Digital Asset Management software system to quickly and efficiently find the photos that you need. We had a "one page" of key searchwords that we used to codify each photo/video. If I Needed a photo of a robot and a person in a medical device environment, it was seconds away. Try Extensis Portfolio or similar.?

Filenames are important, until they are not.

I had a couple of rules for photo file names. Keep them simple and never change them. I used the machine “job numbers” for photo file names wherever possible, added a suffix, such as CC for close crop. Use the person’s names in the filename of a staff photo: Jim Beretta Headshot 1.jpg?

ATS is still using photos that I took 20 years ago and I do get a chuckle when I see this.?

Turns out that photos and videos are a good investment and awesome photos have staying power.?

The mistakes? I took too many photos of component parts that were made by the automation. I didn’t need them all and only used them for internal purposes.