IAC logo

The world of non-commercial film and A-V

Events Diary Search
The Film and Video Institute find us on facebook Join us on Facebook

 

Getting and Using Pictures

Where's your press photographer?

We rarely take pictures of the film making process. Pros take hundreds - each day. Every club should appoint a photographer.

You do have a small team shooting a "Making of …" for all club films, don't you? (It's a great help for critiquing technique and generating images to promote the finished film on the website.) Your photographer should be there too.

Record club meetings.  A lot happens in speech, but keep an eye out for facial expressions: "Pat is perplexed by chromakey", "Jo covets that tripod…" and so on. 95% of such pictures will not be used, but the remainder may be gems.

Film crew shooting in a kitchen. A film crew shooting an interior shot.

Pictures never lie ... duh!

Still from 'Rentamate'.Aim to make the images look great. Feel free to adjust brightness, contrast, colour saturation and sharpness. Zoom in on interesting details or crop the image. Consider blurring the background and cutting out exit signs, trees or chimneys. Try to have only a couple of different picture sizes on a website.

Frame grab from Rent-a-Mate by Nigel Barton. The film's image quality is excellent. Nevertheless the brightness, contrast, colour saturation and sharpness of version have all been tweaked to do justice to the movie.

How use pics on a page

Don't just scatter them at random on a page. Choose where to put them. Some images look better on the left, others on the right.

A still from 'Lecture' showing man facing right and throwing a paper dart.Still from 'Flowers for Father'.If the picture shows someone looking right, flying a paper aeroplane to the right (our still is from The Lecture) or a vehicle going  left to right … the picture looks better on the left of the page.
On the other hand this still from Flowers for Father emphasises the old man's feeling of being up-against-the-wall as he is being firmly fed by a visitor and looks better on the right of the page.

Dividers

A practical use of pictures is to use them as page dividers as well as illustrations ... a trick we sometimes use in this series. Aim to have at least one picture per web page. They add a warmth and interest to a mass of text.

Galleries and Slide Shows

Some web design programs allow you to create a gallery of pictures. Tiny images appear like a page of stamps and when you click on one that inage is shown full-size. Other tools let you add a slide show where a series of pictures appear one after the other.

A web page showing a photo gallery.

Either approach might be used to display portraits of your members or shots from a film.

Keep still!

Our final plea: on your website do not have images which move, apart from embedded videos. Animated gifs of a running film projector, flash movies and so on may be technically clever but wear their welcome out very fast indeed.

The first time you see a site opening with an old-time movie countdown is fun, the second time tedious ... and chances are you will not visit a third time.

Pictures as Links

You can make an image into a hyperlink so that people clicking on it go somewhere else. It might take them from a postage stamp sized photo to a larger version of the same picture, for example.

You can also use pictures of arrows and buttons, making them links but it is always good practice to have a text link alternative somewhere on the page.

How do you process pictures? That's on our next page ...

The Weebly Way

Tips on: using pictures in Weebly | creating galleries & slide-shows in weebly

Weebly offers a way  for absolute beginners to create good websites
easily and without cost. Our series on how to use it begins here.

Right arrow. Go to Getting Pictures

Go to Processing Pictures Right arrow.


Website Makeover Guides - Introduction

What Should the Content Be? | Navigation | Planning Navigation | Anchors & Links | Words | Getting Pictures | Getting & Using Pictures
Processing Pictures | Video | Presentation Pictures | Colours | Layout Principles | Layout Schemes | Fonts | What is SEO?
Search Engine Factors | Check Your Search Ranking | Stay Legal | Website Health Check | Website No Goes more to come ...

A Beginner's Guide to Creating a Club Website with Weebly

Don't Panic! | Signing up to Weebly | Making your first (elegant) page | Adding more pages and navigation
Adding pictures and words | Creating a complex Coming Soon Page | Adding Forms, Emails, Maps and Videos.

IAC Competition to find the Best Club Website 2011


Share your passions.

Audience silhouette.

Share your stories.

Page updated on 19 January 2011
Contact Webmaster
Data Privacy
find us on facebook Join us on Facebook
Bookmark and Share
UNICA information UNICA member
Company Limited by Guarantee No. 00269085. Registered Charity No. 260467. Authors' views are not necessarily those of the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers. Website hosted by Merula. JavaScripts by JavaScript Source. Menu by Live Web Institute. Art work by Tony Kendle.