Are Your Images “Comment-worthy?”

While in Las Vegas, attending the WPPI conference a few months ago, I was able to sit down and chat with the wedding and portrait photography duo of Scott and Adina Hayne. They are a married couple based out of Norfolk, Virginia, and have been in the wedding business since 2008.

Scott is the photographer, and Adina is the marketing, PR, and business brain. Their promotions are almost exclusively word-of-mouth, and they use their blog and Facebook with great success. By uploading images from portrait sessions and weddings immediately after the shoot, and tagging the subjects, bride, groom, bridesmaids, family members and other known guests, they have been able to accelerate word-of-mouth viral activities that result in new bookings.

During the conversation, Scott casually mentioned that they carefully select which images they upload to Facebook. I’ve always thought that you should upload your “best images,” but that’s not exactly the case for them. There is one main factor that they are looking for with each image, and it wasn’t something I’d heard of before.

“They must be comment-worthy,” he said.

Obviously, the more people that comment on images, the more the images will show up in other people’s Facebook news feeds. If the goal is to cast a wider net, beyond that of the invited guests, choosing images that are likely to receive the most comments is a great tactic.

What makes an image “comment-worthy?” Scott and Adina have noticed that certain types of images tend to get more comments, and they are not only editing with this in mind, but have also learned to look for these types of photos during the shoot itself.

5 Elements of Comment-worthy Images

1) Lighting
Is the lighting dramatic, or unique, or special? By paying attention to lighting, and using it to enhance a moment or tell a story, people may comment based on this alone. The idea is to make the moment look special, or out-of-the-ordinary, and if you’re able to find (or even create) lighting effects that nobody else can do, you may end up with additional comments (and praise.)

2) Emotion
Images that show emotion resonate with people, and are more likely to elicit comments. Extreme happiness, relief, joy, pride, confidence and exhaustion are just a few of the things you should be showing in the images that you are sharing via Facebook. A few key differences between a professional photographer and a wedding guest with a DSLR: the experience to anticipate a visual opportunity, and the patience to wait for it. A professional will work to show the emotion of the event, where a guest will show merely that an event took place.

3) Mood
We’ve all heard that photographs can have “moods,” but what does that actually mean? The image itself doesn’t actually have feelings, its people that have feelings and moods. So it’s important to create (and upload) images that produce a mood in a viewer. Images that do so (perhaps because of what they saw in #2 above) tend to get more comments. “I cried when I saw this,” or “This makes me so happy.” You should aim to upload images that will connect with a viewer on a personal level, so they feel the mood of a photograph, and comment about their emotional reaction to that photograph.

4) Larger than life
If you are able to make subjects look “larger than life,” you may see more comments. By giving subjects the same visual treatment that models or celebrities receive, you’re creating something very special. Most people rarely (if ever) have the opportunity to see themselves, or their family and friends, portrayed this way. If your subjects end up looking like rock stars, people will probably want to talk about it.

5) “Magazine Worthy”
This is somewhat related to #4 (above), but quality images with high production values, of the type that you may see in a magazine, often get comments from people, Scott says. It might make sense to pay attention to fashion magazines, just to get a feel for how those images look. Pay attention to posing, framing, how clothing is shown, and the settings in which images are made. When you make portraits of people, imagine that it will end up in a magazine ad – doing so just may result in more “comment-worthy” images.

Thanks, Scott and Adina, for taking the time to chat with me!

Follow Scott and Adina on Twitter: @scotthaynephoto.

Visit their Facebook page: www.facebook.com/scottadinahayne

Visit their blog: www.HaynePhotographersBlog.com

Attend one of their “No Rules” Photography workshops: norulesworkshop.com

About the author

Grover Sanschagrin
Grover is co-founder of PhotoShelter. He is a frequent contributor to the PhotoShelter blog. He loves tequila, Frank Zappa, and avocados. You can follow him on Twitter here: @heygrover

5 Comments

Jaak Nilson Photostock 4-15-2011

Hi, Here is two photos. Your comments please. http://bit.ly/g16xhz http://bit.ly/ePNmJy Cheers, Jaak Nilson

Edwien 4-16-2011

Thanks for the very useful post. A question: you wrote “tagging the subjects, bride, groom, bridesmaids, family members and other known guests”. Normally the photographer is only FB friends with the bride and the groom. So how can she/ he (FB) friends the guests and others without taking to much of her/ his shooting time and seem pushy?

Grover Sanschagrin 4-16-2011

I know several photogs who friend the bridesmaids, etc. at the wedding so they can tag them in the images. Most people don’t see this as being pushy at all – most like it, and want to see the images ASAP.

Anon 5-5-2011

Getting comments is for the birds, Check out flickr , some of the worst photos get loads of comments just because of the culture of you comment me , ill comment back. It’s not an accurate way of determining quality. And it depends on what the comments say , does comment worthy mean critical comments as well , believe me they are plenty of photographers who need bringing down a peg or two , who get big heads because Sally and her 20 friends from Ohio said your shot of your kids is cool !. If all I had to worry about was if my photos were comment worthy to get rich , believe me id be friending every mother on FB , flickr , photobucket , deviart , myspace , photoshelter, blogger , wordpress the list is never ending.

Tracy 10-3-2011

May be most of moderate level photographers fall apart on point no. 4 They took pics in extraordinary lightning, having best models but have lower concept…

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