Get a sec? Give me some quick feedback on this post.

There are a lot of resorts with a solid game when it comes to photography, for good reason. Photography is often the key ingredient required for marketing campaigns in a day where quality visuals are easier than ever and people do things because of the visual experience.

Even more, virtually every campaign on every channel can be enhanced by a beautiful photo. The best resort website design will look awful if it doesn’t have equally amazing photos to work with. Photos are still one of the most engaging content types on many social channels. And even things like email templates will have that extra bit of polish if there’s a glossy photo to illustrate the written content.

With great visuals being more accessible than ever, it can sometimes be hard to stand out. Sunday River, however, has done exactly that this season. Their photo game is dialed.

Here are a few examples (and possible reasons why from very my limited photography knowledge).

First, the way they’re using light and color is beautiful. In this photo, for example, they’re getting the classic yellow sun through the snowmaking plume, but they’re also shooting early enough so some of the mist isn’t in the sun to get a lot of. There’s also the rich green from the evergreens and this angle even captures a few fall leaves.

That photo earned a cool 5,500 likes on Instagram.

Another example that illustrates some similar things is this one. They’ve perfectly captured that beautiful, soft pink morning light but they’re also letting the resort only fill part of the frame so they can add more of that color/sky and what I believe is Mt Washington in the background (though I could be off). I’ve seen this angle used a few times and the results are incredible.

The set of photos this was part of snagged 5,100 likes.

Yes, Sunday River has some incredible views to work with but even the coverage of their fall festival showed the same angles (getting slightly above a crowd for a slight change of perspective) and composition and quality that gives all of their images a level of polish and professionalism I’m not seeing many other resorts reach.

Again, the benefit of great photography is not just a well-told story and algorithm-feeding engagement today, it’s an asset library that can make all of their future campaigns and assets better going forward.

Nice work, Sunday River team.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.