Hotel Photography
New Aesthetic Trends and Necessities in Hotel Photography
The last 3-4 years there have been major changes in hotel photography , in the composition of the photos, the format of the photos since there is a great need for square images, the color palette of the images, especially for the ones used in social media. Furthermore, there is a also the modern marketing approach to focus on the “Customer’s Experience” in order to achieve sentimental gravity on the images, in order to increase their validity and their impact on the viewers.
As a specialized hotel photographer who is watching very closely the aesthetic trends and occurring changes, I can guarantee my clients that they will receive the variety and diversity of the photographic material they need to cover their hotel’s modern marketing targets, and always sustaining the high production and creation standards.
The photos of each hotel is an essential and crucial marketing tool for its promotion and its sales. Actually, photos mark the completion of the investment. If the photos are of high quality they can elevate the hotel even further and increase the sales but if they are of poor quality they will lower its image and the sales will also drop.
Hotel photography is a specialized job that requires deep knowledge of the touristic product, experience in organizing the photo-shooting and artistic quality on behalf of the photographer. Very often I see photos of hotels that are of poor quality, photos that fail to represent properly the specific hotel, its atmosphere, its beauty, its impressiveness, its quality of construction, its decoration and services. Usually these photos were done either by amateur photographers or professional photographers who aren’t specialized on this field of photography. It is very often nowadays customers to write in their reviews that the hotel was misrepresented by the photos. I have met some hotel owners or managers who mentioned to me that their poor photos make the customers feel happy after leaving the hotel because they had lower expectations!
It is a point of view, undeniable, but it means also that the hotel is losing clients from potential customers who don’t choose it because it looks poor or indifferent as a hotel. The secondary effect is that the hotel can’t get a higher price for its services, since the photos underestimate it, so it is actually losing more income!
In hotel photography there aren’t live events that need to be captured instantaneously. My job as a hotel photographer is to do a careful arrangement of the composition and the scene. Another crucially important aspect of my job is to study the natural lighting and to decide for the ideal shooting time and the extra lighting I will add so that this lighting will accentuate the spaces, the furniture, the decorative items and the interior decoration.
On top of this representational approach, nowadays has developed another one approach, that is focusing on the atmosphere, the mood of the spaces and even more to the experience of the client.
This last aspect, the experiential, is placing in the center of the photos the client, what will he/she feel, see, smell, touch, hear, what sentiments of pleasure, joy, relaxation, elevation, calmness, fun, he/she will experience during their stay in the hotel.
I would like to add a small but important comment which is very important in my profession as a hotel photographer. It has to do with the lighting. There are 2 major approaches. The first approach is using exclusively the natural lighting of the spaces. The second approach is adding artificial lighting. The mastery of each photographer on how, how much and from which angle to add lighting, in order to retain the natural feel of the photo or even to exaggerate the artificial lighting in order to create a personal style in the photos, is what makes a hotel photographer a specialized professional.
I personally prefer to work on the second approach. That gives me to ability to balance between the natural and the artificial lighting. It also makes more luminous and vibrant the textures, the colors, the shapes and the overall composition finally. The extra advantage is also that the photos have a personal style, to make them stand out from the competition.
My long experience in the field of Hotel Photography, allows me to depict properly the spaces and their atmosphere, without creating a misleading image that would make the customers complain about the photos and give a negative review for the hotel.
Also, when I have to photograph a space (room, suite, bar, restaurant etc.) with a unique view ( Acropolis view, monuments or any other locations of natural beauty) I have developed a special approach that emphasizes this view without diminishing it, or making it look smaller (a common problem of the wide angle lenses). I use a calculated technique to show the exterior view in the right size, exactly like the guest of the hotel will see it upon entering the space. That is why in many cases my photos have been used by magazines and even rental agencies (LIFO magazine, Airbnb etc.)
The use of drone is an extra tool in hotel photography that nowadays has become a prerequisite, a necessity, because it opened a new array of impressive angles of view . It can give astonishing images and at the same time reveal the architectural beauty of the spaces and the buildings. But the important thing in those photos is the photographer’s eye, that will choose the proper time, the proper framing for the final photos. Furthermore is equally important the editing of the photos, in order to render beautifully the tonalities, the colors, the shading and in some cases to remove distracting details.
TIP: Renew the image of your hotel with a new photo shooting from a professional specialized hotel photographer. The process of renovation is quite costly and expensive for each hotel. But the cost of a new photo shooting is immensely smaller than that of the renovation. Especially for periods of economic crisis it is the best mean to freshen up the image of your hotel.
