The Customer is Always the Hero

The customer needs to see themselves enjoying our store. In this image, we see a delighted customer showing off a model he’s just built to an employee. This could just as easily being an employee explaining a new game, etc.

Customers enjoying your store on their own

Here we’ve got a customer enjoying a book from the shelf. Could be a comic. Could be a new D&D rule book. We’ve got lots of opportunities to demonstrate this. Browsing the aisles, reading a comic, playing games, having coffee.

A Fun Safe Space for Kids

Pick the right employee for these shots. A mother wants a store that’s clean and safe with employees that love to interact with their kids. Win these kids and their parents and you’ve got customer for life. 

Make Your Store Look Fun

Never do photos of empty gaming space or aisles. It can be hard to get gamers to smile but a good photographer can do it. And bring in friends if necessary. When you shoot an aisle or a section to emphasize selection, you always want shoppers on the aisles. 

The last piece we need are shots for the product pages / blurbs. This is a screenshot from LionHeart Hobby’s website. Our featured categories won’t be exactly the same. We might have Comics instead of models, etc. Shawn can decide our 5-6 main categories. In terms of photography, not what almost all of these pics have in common. People! Even if it’s just a hand. It makes a huge difference. 

GAME HAVEN WEBSITE

  1. The Hero Shot for the Home Page (Currently 2560 by 1707 pixels)
  2. Background Image of Game Night. (I like the shot we have but we’ve got blurred hands everywhere. 
  3. Featured Image of Game Night. This shot is good but let’s take more and we can rotate them. (1200 x 800)
  4. Featured Image of Upcoming Big Event or Release. Images like this one are great except if you’re paying the photographer, have him remove his watermark. If you’ve agreed that he gets a visible credit, you don’t want anything that large. At times, this might be a graphic rather than a photo, similar to what you do for new MTG promotions, etc. (1200×800)
  5. Clear Images of All Five Locations Storefronts. Ideally, you take these just before sunrise with all the lights on. For real estate, the magic hour is closer to sunset but we cannot have any cars parked in front of the store. When scheduling the shoots for these, employees at each location need to make sure those spaces are empty. Rope off the lot in front, do whatever you have to do. If someone decides to park and leave their car at 2 AM, your shots are ruined. And, again, light the store up first. See the example linked above. Get windows washed. If possible, pressure wash the building, especially any stores like Bountiful with visible residue from previous signs. If that can’t happen, they’ll have to be photoshopped. 
  6. Photos of game night (or day) from each location. Make sure you name the photos in a way that lets me know which store is which. See #3 above for an example. 
  7. Staff Photos from each Location. Get everyone in for these. I prefer a wider image such as the example above (with plenty of space on both sides) so that I can crop it down if I want a more standard headshot or I can add a graphic over the shoulder, etc. Include first and last name in image so I know which is which.
  8. I would love to get a wide shot of the entire team from all the stores. That may not be do-able soon but if there’s a company meeting or party, that would be awesome. 
  9. Get me backstage shots from shipping and receiving, bookeepers, etc. Let’s show them who’s packing their orders. Who’s ordering new games, etc. Sometimes even a stack of orders getting ready to go out (or arriving) are things I can use. 

BATTLEGROUNDS COFFEE WEBSITE

  1. Hero Shots: 1920×1280 for these. These will rotate on a slider. Same terms as the shots for Game Haven. Give me barista and customers interacting and smiling. (If they’re in cosplay or other obvious game wear, that’s a plus). Also give me customers enjoying coffee both hot and cold drinks. Make sure cup/mug branding is visible. 
  2. Product Shots: I need every drink and food item on the menu. Use naming so I can easily identify what I’m looking at. Ideally, give me two different options for each item (ie a  white removable background and a shot in the store. You don’t have to include the entire store but enough so it’s clearly from Game Haven and not a stock image. So if we see coffee on a blue counterop and Game Haven doesn’t have one… you get the idea. 
  3. Shots of people drinking hot and cold coffee throughout the building. Both the game store and the coffee area and outside if there’s an outside area. 
  4. Lots of staff making coffee shots. Machines, beans, everything. 
  5. Shots of the building that feature the logo (signs, windows). 
  6. Shots of any coffee related products they sell. 
  7. The six images below give you an idea of what I’m looking for here. In the first two shots, I’m seeing happy customers being helped. I want these types of shots as much as the more traditional shot of the employee smiling at the camera. If we just show an employee making coffee, make it interesting like the shot of the girl masked behind the beautiful machine. That let’s patrons know this isn’t like getting coffee at Denny’s. Finally, look at the other shots here and take photos that show someone looking this place up on Google what kind of vibe to expect when they come here. 
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