Photos in Public Relations

Images and video are crucial tools that often go unused. Here is a series of posts on how to use photos and video in public relations, including what to wear for the cameras, three mug shot mistakes and how to fix them, why the eyes rule the brain and how to write great photo cutlines.

Images and photos are powerful, persuasive -- and underused in public relations. Editors and reporters swim in a sea of press releases, pitches and opeds. It's almost always words. You rarely see great photos or video with a release or oped. That's a huge mistake. Newspapers, especially weeklies, are desperate for good photos. TV stations need images. Stories without images get reduced to readers.

You see photo-ops every day: governors and presidents signing bills into law, Hollywood stars on the red carpet for the premiere of a film or a football owner signing a free agent to a contract. So how do you set up a photo op? It's about the little details: lighting, location, action and the background.

What looks good in real life is much different than what looks good on camera, whether it's photos or film. Here's what to wear -- and what NOT to wear -- and how to prepare for a successful appearance.

There's nothing more basic than a mug shot. In Hollywood, they call it a head shot. You see them in newspaper stories and opeds, on the TV news and on web sites. Most mug shots are terrible. Not because the person is ugly. It's just so easy to screw up a mugshot. Here are three common mugshot mistakes and what to do about them.

There are two common photo problems to confront: (1) The Frozen Smile of Death Mug Shot and (2) The Typical Boring Group Photo. What you need are action shots of people doing something related to the story. "Action" doesn't have to mean Bruce Lee acrobatics or Michael Bay explosions.