Taking a Good Photo or Video
We may not all be experts at lighting, angles, staging, and equipment, but we can all use our phones and other cameras to get studio assets to help tell stories.
If you are capturing media about research, please follow the media safety policy to ensure usability.
Composition
What makes a Michigan Tech photo?
- Our shots are honest examples of who our students, faculty, and alumni are and what they do
- Our photos show students and faculty doing real work—in the lab, in the field, on campus, and abroad. We work hard and play hard in all types of environments.
- We avoid unnatural filters, gels, and lights.
- We capture images from eye level—our subjects are not always smiling at the camera.
Photos should highlight our natural environment. It is OK to show extreme adventure or conditions.
General Tips for Capturing Media
- It is always better to get more content. What isn't usable can be deleted later.
- Get a variety of angles—close-up, medium, and wide shots; low, mid, and high angles.
- Use a variety of distances—close, medium, and far. Move your body closer to or farther away from the subject prior to shooting, instead of zooming.
- Tuck your elbows to your sides to maximize stability.
Photo Capture Tips
- Change your angles and distances by moving your body.
- When taking images for a research story or other webpage, think about the long horizontal banner image. This would be a wide shot of the entire scene.
- If you want a smaller square inset image, this can be a close-up.
You should get a variety of images to help support what you are working on.
Video Capture Tips
- When filming on a phone, hold it horizontally to capture in landscape mode.
- Find the best angle and make adjustments before you start recording. Still capture a variety, though.
- Stop your recording between shots to make editing easier.
- Try to capture clips between 10 and 30 seconds to ensure there is enough usable footage.
- Unless you are filming a selfie, try to keep the camera close to your body to maximize stability.
- For panning footage, tuck your elbows to your sides and rotate your waist to maximize stability.
Video Conferencing Tips
When hosting a video conference over Zoom, Google Hangout, Skype, or another platform, we recommend following these tips to improve quality while being courteous to others.
If you are recording in Zoom, don't forget to update your settings and enable audio transcription before beginning the recording.
- Let any others in your home/location know that you are about to begin a video conference call.
- Find a quiet, private room with minimal echo and close your door, so pets and others do not wander in.
- Adjust your distance from your phone or laptop so that the frame crops from the middle of your chest to a little bit over the top of your head.
- Use a virtual or neutral background. Bookshelves or a blank wall work well. You can download Zoom virtual backgrounds.
- Mute your microphone when you aren't talking.
- When conducting a remote interview, the lag in time between speakers will likely cause multiple people to speak at once. To avoid
this:
- Interviewers should articulate questions to clearly indicate when their question is complete and they are ready to receive an answer.
- Interviewees should wait for a moment of silence to ensure it is their turn to speak.
- This practice will not only make interviews look and sound more professional, it will also enable future use of sound bytes from the interview subject without disruptions in the recording.