The importance of the photographic image

Photographs go a long way and can be used for media purposes, websites, posters, flyers and record sleeves, so don’t be scared to make sure you get excellent ones. Photographs are important to musicians because, in an environment where a member of the public may not be in a position to listen to your music, they can say a lot about you and your music. As visual images they are also the first thing the eye travels to on a page of print.

 

Invaluable space filler

 

As a backup to information you are sending out to media, they are an invaluable space filler that can be used to plug unexpected gaps in publications (assuming they are good enough) and create the tonal variety that media personnel are looking for in their page layouts. But most importantly they create instant visual recognition for your group amongst the public. Your photographs on websites, newsletters, newspapers, posters and what have you will mean that the public recognises you both on- and off-stage and, once they recognise you, it means they can tell their friends who you are as well.

 

What, where, how

 

These days your photographs will primarily be in digital form – that is, images stored on a computer or cellphone that can be transmitted via email, download or MMS. It is always a good idea to create some physical pictures as well so that, should you not be in a position to use electronic communications or indeed not have access to them, you can still give people physical photographs that they can then scan and use. In their digital form, you ideally need two versions of each picture; a high resolution file, and a smaller, low resolution file. If you’re feeling thorough you can make a medium-weight one as well.

 

 

High res vs low res

 

Your high resolution file is a big .jpg file of around 3MB in size. This is big enough to be reproduced as a full page in a magazine. It should be set at 300dpi and consist of several thousand pixels and not appear grainy at 100% magnification. Photos of this size are generally to be sent to magazines and newspapers, your album sleeve designer and flyer or poster designer. Basically anything that will end up in printed form needs a high resolution file to start with in order to give your designer flexibility with sizing and to ensure that your final printed product is not blurry or pixelated.

 

Your low resolution file is a much smaller .jpg file, at 72dpi and only around 80kb in final size. When reducing your files to this size, be sure that they do not get grainy and blurry in the reduction process. The image can still be 5 or 7cm tall and wide, but must be a small digital file. These smaller files are for use in online or email communications. For example, if you create a press release that you want to send out to your email database, you cannot paste in a 3MB file and send it to multiple recipients. For a start, your own email system will probably battle to handle the load and secondly, it is considered bad email etiquette to send large files to media unsolicited. Make it clear in your message that high resolution photos are available on request and send separately only if asked for. You also don’t want your fans cursing you because your newsletter took 20 minutes to download thanks to a string of enormous pictures. So make all your pics you want to send via email nice and small. For your website, your resolution also only needs to be 72dpi because this is the resolution computer monitors display at. Anything higher is unnecessary overkill that makes your web pages heavier and slower to load and chews up bandwidth.

 

Originally published in David Chislett's One, Two, One, Two: A Step By Step Guide To The South African Music Industry. Download a free copy of the book at www.davidchislett.co.za.