How to take the best photos for your farm machinery ad

Composing a quality advertisement to sell your farm machinery is a holistic exercise: the words and images should complement each other. Both elements are critical in catching the attention of potential buyers and increasing your ability to complete a transaction.

There’s no use writing the best advertisement in the world if the images are subpar or there aren’t enough of them to provide visual ‘proof’ of what you’ve mentioned in excitable tones.

Indeed, professional photos can be the ace up your sleeve, especially if the product you’re trying to sell is a ‘bread-and-butter’ model – one listing among a bevy of similar offerings.

Often a seller’s knee-jerk reaction to a lack of traction on an advertisement is to lower the price, but it doesn’t always have to be like that. Enhancing the quality of your photos is a fantastic way to pique more interest, so here are a few tips in helping you get there.

This one’s a common mistake. Often the go-to strategy is shooting your machinery in direct sunlight when there’s just too much contrast for the camera. That then plays havoc with detail and overall colour, so the best remedy is to remove the vehicle from direct sunlight – even shade may be a better option.

Cloud cover is often a better time to pull out the camera, as the light is more consistent without harsh direct sunlight.

For heavy machinery, finding the ideal location to shoot images isn’t as easy as plonking a car or motorcycle in a ‘money shot’ locale and start snapping.

That doesn’t mean that context isn’t important, and if it’s a tractor sitting it in a lush, green paddock – as opposed to a cluttered shed – then you’re on the right track.

It's all about context – you wouldn’t take a shot of a BMW sports car outside a backpackers’ hotel, or a caravan in the middle of a capital city’s CBD. It’s the same for machinery, but obviously with their more utilitarian bent the list of potential locations is limited.

Whatever the location, ensure the immediate background is ‘clean’. An old barn way in the background of a tractor sitting in the paddock is fine (as long as it’s not on fire…), but it’s more the immediate items that can distract a buyer such as poles, debris, other vehicles, etc. Take that element out of the equation and keep the purchaser focussed on the task at hand.

Camera time! A general rule of thumb is to get a selection of images from multiple angles and heights, which will provide the buyer a good feel for the item’s condition. And if you’ve mentioned there’s panel damage on one guard in your spiel, no harm in including that as well – better to be upfront than shying away from the issue in visual form.

Take images from both sides as well as front three-quarter and rear three-quarter, and make sure the item fills up most of the screen and isn’t a speck in the distance – that just frustrates the buyer, especially as pixelation kicks as they try to zoom in!

Interiors are also important for some machinery such as tractors and loaders, so don’t leave those out of the equation either.

After that’s done, one image will be selected as the main thumbnail photo; make sure that one’s a beauty.

There are also a couple of other ways to maximise the potential of your photographs, and these are more to do with ‘completing the scene’ than photographic flair.

If the product comes with optional accessories or has some unique traits, then make sure they are photographed as ‘evidence’.

Also, if the machinery’s service history is up to date, take a photo of that, as well as receipts to verify the new tyres are really new and the additional hydraulics are as you describe. Safety features can also be included in the photographic mix, and anything else that will complete the narrative.

All vital steps, because the next step in most cases is inspecting the product in person – and that’s not the time to leave a buyer blindsided by something that’s been omitted from both the words and images.

There is a saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, but a video is worth a thousand pictures. If you can show said machinery for sale in action, even better!

Placing an ad on farmmachinerysales allows you to upload video to your ad. The same principles of photography apply when it comes to video, ie avoid clutter in the background, but a major advantage that video has over pictures is you can demonstrate how smooth the loader is working or how well the tractor manoeuvres tight spaces.

For some good examples of videos for your ad, have a look at these ads for an Avant bucket broom and an AMAZONE Cirrus drill.

Photographs bring a product or vehicle to life, and if some basic principles are applied, it can make an enormous difference to the quality of the advertisement. It’s about engagement, creating a vision and creating a compelling case.

And in this era of Instagram and other image-dominated social media, we already know that quality and professional photographs can help a product leap from the page. It’s all about putting in the time and effort to prepare the advertisement: get that right and the chances of hitting the jackpot will go through the roof.

If you need more information on selling your machine, visit our Sellers’ help page.

Ready to place an ad? Visit our sell page here.