LightSwitch Creative

Cardinal Orthopedic Headshots

Mel — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 17:09:16 +0000

The folks out at Cardinal Ortho had us out to their Westerville office again to capture a couple of their new physical therapists on camera.

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Worthington Community Theatre’s Production of Annie

Mel — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 04:50:26 +0000

We love working with theatre groups, large and small. Here are a few of the multitude of production photos we delivered for WCT’s production of Annie.

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CATCO’s Production of Souvenir – Promotional Photos

Mel — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 19:06:43 +0000

Promotional photos for CATCO’s upcoming production of Souvenir. For more info, visit them online.

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CATCO-Phoenix – Peter and the Wolf

Mel — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 21:43:12 +0000

Inspired by the music and story of Russian composer Sergi Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf (written in 1936), this adaptation includes the idea of a play within a play. The beloved children’s tale is set in the Russian countryside during the early 20th century and features a significant life lesson about the importance of following directions. For tickets to the November 11 – 20 production of this show, visit CATCO online.

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Tech Karaoke Columbus – Halloween Edition

Mel — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 02:40:31 +0000

We’re not so “grown up” that we don’t still enjoy shooting just for the fun of it, and what could possibly be more fun to photograph than the Halloween edition of Tech Karaoke Columbus at Woodlands Tavern? Here are a few favorites, but you can check out the rest of the album on our Facebook page.

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CATCO – Evil Dead The Musical

Mel — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 00:21:29 +0000

Campy, bloody, and all-around awesome – that’s what you can expect if you’ve never seen Evil Dead The Musical. We enjoyed dress rehearsal so much during our promo shoot that we attended the show not once but twice with clients!

Here are some of the killer (haha… killer…) photos we captured that are favorites of the cast & marketing crew.

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CATCO – PNC Arts Alive On Stage

Mel — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 21:31:29 +0000

We were recently contracted by CATCO to photograph some rehearsals and live performances of their Be A Part of Art program. Here are just a few photos from the various staged readings.

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1251 Kriswood Lane

Mel — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 22:24:20 +0000

Whether you’re looking for a new home or hoping to sell, professional real estate photos are vitally important. Check out this beautifully updated ranch on quiet Kriswood Lane that we recently photographed for realtor Shanna Lafontaine. It has a completely remodeled bathroom with a large jetted tub, an updated kitchen, and a finished rec room perfect for a naturally cool home office or den!

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Bright Idea: Is Your Website An “Ugly Baby”?

Mel — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 12:11:22 +0000

You paid a website design company a few bucks a month to get in on a cookie-cutter template solution for your business’s website, and you’ve spent hours writing content, uploading pictures, and trying to figure out how to work and manage the template. Only, your core skill set isn’t in web development, marketing or social media and you’re finding that it’s not as easy to DIY as you’d hoped. Not only is managing your site taking up a large chunk of your time, but you’ve had $0 in customers walk through the door after your months of hard work (not to mention what you’ve spent) on something that’s not even what you DO. Why haven’t you seen any payoff for all your efforts? Well, the fact is: you may have an “ugly baby”.

No one wants to hear they have an ugly baby.

Just because no one has told you doesn’t mean your baby (aka website) isn’t ugly.

So, how do you know if your website is an ugly baby?

Let’s begin with your customer. Is your site customer-focused? Does it answer the questions that 80% of your clients (or 80% of the clients for your industry if you don’t have any real clients yet) ask when they call? Does it answer them within the first 5 seconds of viewing the page? Does your site offer a clear and direct call to action for your specific target client? (Do you even know who your target client is?) If you answered no to any of these questions, guess what… You’ve got an ugly baby on your hands.

What about your brand? We’ve talked in the past about how your customers perceive your use of stock photos and about the importance of brand consistency. Does your site effectively communicate the brand image you want your customers to absorb? Does it feel unique, professional, comfortable upon first glace? Or are you working to fit the square pegs that represent your brand image into the round holes that are the template limitations? If it’s the latter, yep, you’re dealing with an ugly baby.

Lastly, let’s talk functionality. Does your web design company’s template solution allow you access to the metrics for your site? Are you able to see who is visiting, where they’re going, when they’re doing it and how long they’re staying? Do you know where they came from? Or what keywords they used to find you? Can you easily make changes or add things like +1 buttons for Google or Like buttons for Facebook (let alone whatever the social media frenzy of tomorrow may be)? And what about SEO? Are you able to create valid tags? Meta tags? Are you able to leave the virtual breadcrumbs that the online crawlers look for when they come to index your site? Does the template limit you from uploading over-sized images which slow your load time and ultimately penalize your ranking with lead search engines like Google?

If your template can’t do these things – all of these things – how do you expect to know what to change or tweak as you try to drive more traffic to your page (and ultimately to your business)? I mean yes, you could spend outrageous sums in online advertising to get potential clients to the proverbial door, but how will you ever get them to knock, let alone walk through and spend their hard-earned dollars with you? And how will you ever know why they didn’t?

Ok, so you’ve got an ugly baby. Now what?

Go back to your web design company and ask them for solutions to these problems. If they can’t meet your needs for functionality or training to get these basics on your site cleaned up, it may be time to move on and start over with a firm that can. Chalk it up to a learning-experience and pay for a more professional, customizable solution. Continuing down your current path is just throwing good money after bad. If you need to change horses mid-stream, we hope you read our article on the importance of owning your own domain before signing up for your template solution.

Hire an in-house expert (or a design firm whose services include doing some of the work for you). You’re good at what you do. That’s part of why you went in business for yourself. But that doesn’t mean you’re good at everything. Keeping your website, newsletters, email campaigns and social media efforts relevant is time-consuming. Your time may be better invested in doing the thing that you do to earn revenue, and paying someone else who’s better suited to it to help bring customers to the door.

Last but not least, if you’re a die-hard do-it-yourselfer (or if your budget just won’t allow for any other solution), spend the time you’re currently not spending serving clients to really dig in and train yourself on website and marketing best practices. There are tons of bloggers and subsequent articles dedicated to helping you build your brand, many of whom will send relevant suggestions straight to your email for nothing more than the cost of a free subscription and the time it will take you to understand and incorporate all their good ideas.

Do you have an ugly baby? Have you ever had one? What advice would you give our readers about how to turn their ugly duckling into a swan?

Retirement Photos

Mel — Wed, 11 May 2011 15:05:32 +0000

We were back in the offices of The Cardinal Orthopaedic Institute today, but this time we were photographing something extra special. Three of their physicians are retiring or have retired recently, and they wanted to capture some portraits to be printed, framed and hung on the walls of their office along with other physicians who have retired from the group before them. As we did not do the photos for the previous retirees, our challenge was to make our shots look as similar to their classic style as possible. How do you think we did?