videography

Blakes Maphanga Team

What A Team

When last did you update your website photos? For you, this may mean compelling profile pics of you and your team, if you have one, as well as some captivating behind-the-scenes shots of you all at work, doing what you do. It’s also key to showcase where you work by featuring attractive, welcoming images of your premises, indoors and outdoors (including aerial) if that’s appropriate for you.

We recently had the privilege and pleasure of capturing fresh website photos and footage for the fabulous team at Blakes Maphanga Attorneys in Randburg. An esteemed, long-established law firm that specializes in providing expert legal services, they have beautifully maintained premises including a library filled with law books. It’s special ambience contributed to creating a perfect setting for some of the team and individual photos, and for strategic filler pics that evoke mood for their new website:

Blakes Maphanga Website Photos

These filler pics purposely focus on relevant items such as law books, branded pens, spectacles, notebooks, cups of coffee and discreet vases of flowers, with the background blown out of focus. What items can help to showcase what you do and offer visual insight to enhance your website and amplify your brand? It’s worth considering this for your next photo and/or video shoot.

You want to help prospects instantly and easily imagine what it will be like to work with you, while building the ‘know, like and trust’ factor for your brand. Ideally, shoots will also promote teamwork in a powerful way, revamp your company spirit and reinforce your and your clients’ confidence in your business. Of course, professional video content can ramp up the impact of this even more.

Professional shoots that leverage skillful lighting as well as experience and expertise in composing photos and assisting you to pose attractively, can dramatically up-level the success of your marketing, online and offline. They can also help to position your brand as premium, empowering you to charge premium prices, if this is in alignment with the value and quality that you offer.

Mid-year is a great time to refresh your online presence and spice up your website with an up-to-date look and feel, to help you and your business finish the year strong! If you need help with professional photos and videos, you’re welcome to contact us.

Illovo Central view towards Sandton

Movers and Shakers

How strongly do you buy into the power of visual content to amplify your marketing and online media? If you’re anything like our valued client FWJK, you’re fully on board and leveraging it to the benefit of your business and brand. What started out as a casual introduction over a cup of coffee has blossomed into our excellent relationship with the highly professional team of engineers and project managers at this dynamic and dedicated property development company.

With specialist insight and input from the FWJK team, we capture the journey of each new development, from turning the first sod of soil to completion of their “AAA” grade high-rise office blocks in Sandton, Johannesburg – the heart of Africa’s financial hub. An effective strategy that we’ve implemented together is to create a quarterly update video and series of photos of the progress achieved over the previous 3 months, until completion of each project.

This is particularly appreciated by the stakeholders and investors, as they get to see the awe-inspiring work that results in each building rising up from an empty piece of land and growing every quarter into a towering icon. Premium finishes and fittings add the final touches to what will become a sought-after base for the prospective tenants and owners, as they proudly share their new abode with their clients, friends and families.

The video below shows FWJK’s latest development, Illovo Central, going up in the exclusive location between St Davids Marist in Oxford Road and the iconic Summer Place conference centre in Mellville Rd. It will be an 18 story “AAA” office facility, eventually sharing its ground floor with Illovo Point which is directly next to it, to create an upmarket retail experience for diners and shoppers. The video depicts the building progress from February to end April, 2019:

This strategy is a classic example of a modern corporate or commercial business adapting to the times and utilising the best possible platforms to market, inform and archive their exceptional achievements in the form of time-lapse videos, aerial video and stills, as well as traditional ground-based videography and photography. Including photos and footage of key players in the projects adds interest and appeal too, bringing the coverage vibrantly to life.

How can your business benefit from leveraging compelling visual content and archival media to ramp up the impact of your marketing? We’d love to discuss the value in this, as it applies to your specific requirements and industry, with a view to applying our extensive experience and expertise to support your business growth. Please contact us if you’re interested in exploring ideas and options. We’d love to assist.

Happy Rescue Pup Playing in a Park

Fun Pet Videos

On a lighter than usual note, let’s explore some of the aspects that can contribute to fun pet videos, starting with playful pets! If you’re anything like us, you’re quite possibly a dog lover, who appreciates how instinctively they live in the moment and enjoy life to the full. Storm (our Golden Retriever) and Sky (our rescue pup) take this to the next level at our favourite local park.

It’s expansive and beautiful, including open grassy fields, shade-dappled forest sections, a sparkling river and irresistible dams. Well, to Storm especially. He adores playing in water, not to mention any mud puddle that crosses his path, no matter how shallow and the messier the better! We plan our walk, or run in their case, to reach a big dam near the end of it, so that he can splash into the deep water and get a good wash before leaping into the back of our car. Sky is more circumspect, following his older brother a bit more cautiously, but always having his ears perked high with curiosity and eagerness to share in Storm’s unbridled joy.

Capturing this exuberant energy is the key to shooting fun pet videos, which can be made more interesting for your friends and followers when you also feature here and there in the footage, as I do in the above video, interacting with our dogs. Adding a light-hearted, royalty-free music track can add to the fun factor, together with editing your footage into a creative series of short, varied clips that alternate wider positioning shots with tighter ones where your pet is zoomed in close to the camera.

It’s worth setting up your shots for best effect, as Dave and I did by collaborating on the fly. I called our boys to me and held them for a few seconds while Dave got the GoPro camera ready. Then I let them go as he called them to him, resulting in the clips you can see above where they charged straight for the camera and then swerved past it at the last moment. What obliging little stars!

Dave & Naomi Estment's Dogs Storm & Sky

This took a minimal amount of time to shoot, edit and format to a practical size, in the natural course of a laid-back Sunday. It was super fun to share with family and friends via WhatsApp and social media. Few things in life bring smiles to our faces as swiftly as seeing pets having a blast being themselves. We humans can learn a whole lot from them, don’t you think?

If you’d like to lean more about shooting your own pet videos, feel free to post a question in the comments below 😀