Taking Better Jackpot Winner Photos

Sponsored Content by Red Circle

Chad Germann, Founder & CEO talks with TG&H on the importance of a well thought-out plan around photography (and please, stop using stock photos!)

I love a good photograph.  A good photo taken well, with purpose and craft, pushes my buttons.  Gets me fired up!  You see, my day job might be to help run Red Circle Agency, but the truth is — deep inside me — I’m a photography nerd.  Full-blown nerd.  If you were to set up a time-lapse of my living room, you’d see more photography instructional videos on my tv than anything else.  And it’s not even close.  (See that time-lapse reference — that’s a photography reference!)

In the conversation I had with TG&H, we talked about making photography a priority and not an afterthought. It diffuses your brand when you use stock photos or generic photos for your website and advertising. In this article, I want to take it down to another level, something that you can change TODAY.

A photograph is worth a thousand words.  Who said that?  They were so right.  When we are building our marketing messaging, we use photos to help convey an idea what our casino’s experience FEELS LIKE.  And — here’s another truth — photos that we put the least time and effort (and technique) are some of the photos that work the hardest for us.  I’m talking about your jackpot winners photos — which consistently out-perform just about any other kind of post on your websites, in your social media feeds.  They are what people want to look at.  It inspires them, gets them excited.

(If you want to know why REAL and TRUE messaging works harder than the manufactured brochure stuff many casinos produce, just read pretty much any of my other blog articles.)

So in this blog post I’m going to walk through a couple of simple changes/suggestions for making the best jackpot winners photos (while keeping in mind that Hosts on the floor are busy and can’t be expected to learn to operate complicated professional camera equipment).

WHAT CAMERA IS THE BEST CAMERA FOR THE JOB?

Ok, this is actually really easy.  The best camera is a new iPhone Pro Max.  Not because it’s better than a digital camera made by Sony or Canon or Fuji — no, the reason is because iPhones (and Google Pixels and the like) are built to make bad photos better.  They are a super computer with a super-sophisticated camera — that’s only a phone as a secondary thing.   The camera is a hugely important feature.  Think about your friends and family — seems like most people upgrade or stay with an older phone is the camera.  And because the sales cycles of these companies rise and fall on whether people buy upgrades or not, they are always making the camera better.

My recommendation? Apple is the best, and so my recommendation starts and ends with the iPhone Pro Max. Best camera, software that automatically makes every photo significantly better. And if you want to improve it more, the camera’s software is easy to use and really helpful.

And it’s a phone. So it’s just in your pocket all the time.

FLASH OR NO FLASH?

Flash, always. Most of what’s wrong with jackpot winner photos is the harsh lighting and deep shadows on the face (you pretty much don’t ever want deep shadows on the face when taking a portrait). Using a flash eliminates that problem. So use it. The iPhone has a pretty good one.