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We offer a trial 360° photoshoot on our first meeting totally for free.
So, if you like our 360° photos, we can continue the project with a virtual tour and If you don’t like them, you won’t pay a cent.
What is the difference between having good and bad 360° photos?
You have probably already seen some amazing 360° photos and some which are not great at all, right? But what is the difference? Is it a camera, lighting, position, or something else?
That is what we will talk about in today’s article.
Bear in mind that, every person has different tastes in photography, and this also goes to 360° photography. So, you will never create 360° photos which everyone will love. Some people will love it, some people will like it and some people will not like it.
So what? What can you do to create 360° photos that most people will like?
These tips which I’ll be sharing today can be used for commercial and non-commercial 360° photos, but we will be focusing more on commercial 360° photography.
PRO TIP: If you are taking non-commercial 360° photos you can use more creativity and just have fun shooting 360° photos. Do what you think will look cool and experiment a little bit. Do not care what others will think, just have fun!
On the other hand, if you are a professional photographer who is taking 360° photos for commercial use. You should think about a lot of aspects when you are taking the photo.
But the most important thing is that your 360° photos are created for some reason. Mostly because the 360° photo should sell something, it can sell the product, service, space, feeling, atmosphere, trust, and so on …
Every good commercial 360° photography must sell.
And that is the point. The business owner hires a photographer to help them sell the product or service to the customer.
So, if your commercial 360° photo is not able to sell – you have a problem.
But … how can I do that? How can I create a 360° photo that can sell?
Do not worry I’ll share with you a couple of tips and tricks on how to improve your positions and deliver great 360° photos for business use.
How to create great commercial 360° photos?
I divided this into a few sections: Camera equipment, Creation of a 360° photo, and Output delivery.
So, let’s start with your camera.
Camera equipment
Well, you need some sort of camera to capture a 360° photo. It is up to you if you want to use a 360° camera, DSLR, or mirrorless camera.
To be honest is not much about which camera you use, but how much experience you have.
Of course, a high-quality camera can create more clear photos which will not be blurry and pixelated. But it’s important to mention that it’s not about having the best possible camera, there are more important aspects of photography that deliver the results.
And of course, you need some stative (rather a tripod).
Taking s 360° photo
360° photos enable the users to explore the space and see every detail. So, think about what the user will see in the photo before taking the photo.
Look at the space and find out what are the interesting aspects that the visitor will love to see in a 360° view.
This means that you want to create an interesting panorama with interesting things in all directions.
PRO TIP: Sometimes you can put your stative in the center of the room to capture how the space looks like. But when taking 360° photos of smaller spaces, we do not recommend putting the stative in the center of the room. And rather putting it far from the center of the room because the space will look bigger.
Secondly, pay attention to the stitching process before taking the photos. This will save you a lot of time in post-processing. You do not want to create any stitching lines (errors) or distortions.
You need to create a seamless environment that the users will think that they are actually in that space. Any stitching error will disturb the user and it is more likely that the user will leave the 360° photo. And that is something you really do not want to do.
PRO TIP: Most of the 360° photos are created with tripods and we highly recommend deleting or inpainting the tripod in the post-processing. When the user sees the tripod in the 360° photos, the user realizes that this is not a real experience and they actually not standing in that space (bad user experience).
In terms of post-processing, you do not want to over-edit the photos (what beginners do frequently for example over-saturated photos), because these photos do not look realistic.
PRO TIP: If you working for company which has vibrant branding and use over-edited photos or somehow unordinary edited photos. You can create unique 360° photos which will be aligned with their company branding.
And last and probably the most important thing to consider is to take 360° photos in the best lighting condition. So that your photos will look realistic.
PRO TIP: If you are shooting with a 360° camera with a dual-lens system like Ricoh Theta Z1 when shooting in bright sun conditions turn the camera 90° to the sun. So that the camera will not create stitching lines between the overexposed and underexposed sides of the camera.
The lighting is the most important aspect of every photography. So, choose the best time of the day and focus on capturing the space in the best possible lighting.
This takes time to understand how to capture 360° photos in the best lighting, because it can be hard to capture nice shadows and highlights in all directions of the 360° photo. So, do experiments with your camera gear.
Delivering outputs
When taking the 360° photos it is also important to know where these photos will go. Will the company use them on social media (for example Facebook), Booking.com, Google, virtual tour, VR, …
According to the usage you can deliver formats that better suit the goal. Some platforms do not accept high-resolution, and others do (and some even highly recommend it).
Furthermore, you should deliver more formats and variants to use the 360° photos in more places so that the client does not need to adjust them or compress them.
