With many businesses switching to a work from home set up due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s been a clear surge in demand for video conferencing.
Whether this is your first time stepping in front of a camera, or you’ve been using web conferencing for years, there’s always more to learn.
In this video, we’re helping you make the best visual impression when talking to your clients, business partners and even your staff.
From finding your most flattering webcam angle to getting the best lighting at home, our studio manager Andy Green has got you covered. Click the play button to learn more.
[VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION]
Hey guys, Andy from Business Blueprint here, just giving you a few tips on how to step up your webcam game and how to take your Zoom calls from looking like this: Bad Webcam image
To looking like this: Good Webcam Image
Now the way we can do that is through three simple steps. And to keep it easy for you, we’re gonna call them “Lights”, “Camera” and “Action”. So you’ll remember each one, you’re doing some filming, you got to remember your lights, you gotta remember your camera, you gotta remember what you’re actually doing. So let’s jump in with lights. And so when it comes to lighting, there’s one really important thing that you need to remember is I do at your home or office, where is the primary light source? So if it’s behind you, then you’re gonna blow out like this. So I can’t even see myself and it’s slowly coming into focus. Now you can sort of see me and even if I position my camera like that, it doesn’t look that great, the light is blowing out and it just looks a bit average. So what we can do to fix that is just this. It’s amazing. Yeah, I don’t need to buy any LED lights or don’t need to buy any, you know, extra fancy gear, just simply making sure that I’m facing a window where basically the primary light source is going to be just dramatically improves the picture. So you can see here, I look great and the background is lit fine. It’s all nicely even. So the simplest answer is to just face a window and just make sure that that light is hitting your face head on and you don’t have anything behind you. That’s just really going to step the picture’s quality for everybody else on the call.
Now when it comes to the second tip for “Camera”, you might be thinking we’re going to talk about gear, some recommendations and yes, you could go out and spend a bunch of money on a little Logitech camera like this, you get a really HD image. But for me “Camera” is less about the gear and more about what you actually can do with it. So for this one, I want you to think about where you’re positioning your webcam to get the best result. So let’s have a look. So right now you can see this is you know, it’s okay lit, I’ve got the lighting on the side here, that’s fine. But I can see right up my nose right on my nostrils and nobody particularly wants to see that. So what do you do to avoid that is just think about where your webcam is going to be positioned, and making sure that it’s at your eyeline where you would be normally speaking to someone or higher. So when you can do to achieve that is by getting some things that are just flying around your office or home, to just prop your webcam up. If it’s on your laptop, it’ll be something like a riser like this, where you can just put it underneath and then just reposition the webcam so that it’s a little bit higher. What if you don’t have one of these things, just get like a pile of books or a little filing cabinet, like I’ve here and reposition the camera.
So now that camera you can see is right at my eyeline. It’s right there. And it looks like I’m talking to you face face I’m not standing right over you. It’s a little bit intimidating and weird and you don’t want to see all my nostril hairs. So for “Camera” really think about getting at your eyeline or even slightly above your eyeline works as well, if you’re just slightly above. If I just shrink down of my seat maybe, you can see that I’m not, it looks much more natural, it looks like I’m speaking to you as an equal. And I’m not distant. Okay, so the third tip is “Action”. So it’s the literal actions that you take while on the call that’ll make it a nicer viewing experience for everybody that you’re chatting to. So to me, one of the biggest ones for this is what I would deem as being polite. It’s to chat to people as though they’re there and not ignoring them. So what do I mean by that? Let’s have a look. So when I’m talking to people, and I’ve got a separate webcam set up, the way I talk to them is by looking at them which is looking at them here, where the camera is. So when you’re speaking to people, make sure that you actually connect with them on a personal level by looking at them in the eye, and this is their eye.
If I’m over here doing work, it’s kind of like “Yep, I’m listening to you and I’m talking to you and I can see you, but I’m just ignoring you a little bit. So just make sure that you are speaking to the people that you’re actually connected to. Thanks again so much for watching this video. I really hope those three tips helped. So just again, those tips are “Lights”, make sure you’re facing a window, “Camera”, get that camera out of your nose hairs, and three is “Action”. Make sure that you’re polite, and actually looking at people in the eye. So again, really thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed.
