How to Prepare for a Branding Photo Shoot
If you are a small business owner, then you know that your website photos can make or break your profit margin. A website with less than stellar images will attract fewer customers and you could lose the social media game as well. Preparing for a branding photo shoot is therefore one of the biggest challenges in a small business owner’s schedule. In today’s blog post, I’ll take you behind the scenes and show you how to prepare for a branding photo shoot with help from one of my recent clients. From the questions you should ask before you step in front of the camera to thinking ahead towards video, I’ll help you get ready so that you are set up for success.
What is Branding Photography?
In short, branding photos are professional images that capture the story of your business. These images can be either formal or informal portraits of people who work within the company, documentary-style images of people working, or detail images of things such as logos or architecture.
Where is Branding Imagery Used?
Branding imagery can be used in a number of different locations, including your website, social media, and marketing materials. The best branding photography is curated so that it has a consistent style throughout and tells the same story with the same tone from image to image.
What ‘Story’ Should Your Branding Photos Tell?
Someone viewing a branding photo from your website should easily understand what it is like to work with your company. The goal of your photographer is thus to accurately portray your message through these photos.
Questions You Should Ask Before Your Branding Photo Shoot
To get the best images possible, your photographer first needs to ask some basic questions. Here is a list of the questions I always ask my clients:
Where Will These Photos Be Used?
Will the images land on your website? How many images will be used for social media? Are these images going into an annual report? The end use for these images largely determines the tone, and even the layout for the images. Annual report images may need to be more formal, while social media images can usually have a much higher energy level.
What Are the Technical Requirements for the Images?
For any images that are being published in a specific format, it’s important that your photographer know of any specific technical requirements before the shoot begins.
For instance, in the case of my recent photo shoot with Chris, I asked if his website designer had any requests for my shot list. While the designer needed a relative mix of horizontal and vertical shots, she also requested several photos with the subject moved to the side so that text could be placed on the opposite side of the image. As a result, I made sure to focus less on imagery where the subject was completely centered.
Are There Any Specific Events Coming Up That You Would Like Photographed?
You may simply want a typical day at the office captured. But you might have a special company event coming up to use as a focus for your branding photography. For instance, Studio Simpatico brought me in to photograph one of their quarterly company meetings.
In another recent example, I photographed the annual Family Focused Treatment Association Board of Directors meeting. During the session, the group hired me to not only photograph the event, but to also photograph new headshots for the board of directors. Two photo sessions; one event.
Will the Photos Be Used for Advertising?
One thing you need to consider is whether these images will be used for advertising. Most businesses will use their branding photos for in-house editorial use: that is, website, social media, and marketing materials only. But if you plan to use the images to create an advertisement, then you should know that most photographers require additional licensing fees.
These licensing fees depend upon how the images are used, where the advertisement is placed, and how long the image will be displayed. It pays to have this discussion upfront with your photographer if advertising is your end goal.
What About Video?
Video has become such a daily part of our lives that most still photographers are no longer simply standing still, myself included. I am now trying to incorporate a bit of videography into every photo shoot I do for the sake of a client’s social media.
While more in-depth videography requires a team of professionals and significant audio equipment, if you’re looking for basic clips for a website or your social media, most still photographers can handle this. It makes sense to plan ahead and request that some motion be captured during your photo shoot.
Your Branding Photo Shoot: Step-By-Step Decisions
Choose Who Will Be in the Photo
Choosing who to include in your branding photo shoot might seem obvious if you have a small company with a handful of employees. The answer is that if it’s possible, include everyone. In this case, it’s just a matter of trying to coordinate schedules so that everyone will be present on the same day.
What To Do If You Are a Sole Proprietor
But what if you have a company of one? In the case of Chris, he is a one-man shop. While I could have taken several photos of him sitting behind a computer doing Zoom calls with his clients, this would not have accurately given a sense of what it’s like to do business with Chris.
In order to convey the warmth of Chris’s personality and how he goes above and beyond to make people feel comfortable in his job as a career coach, we chose to bring in a friend of his as a model client. His friend, Ayako, kindly agreed to be part of the photo shoot. These photos of Chris interacting with Ayako make clear that he is a people person and give a glimpse of the customer service he provides.
Working With Models
If you are a solo business owner, I would recommend the same tactic for your photo shoot. While photos of you working alone may offer a more accurate perspective of your daily routine, these images do not convey the whole picture. Getting a friend to act as your client, or even hiring a model to act as a client can visually make the point that you are more than a simple Zoom call.
If you are looking to hire models, local avenues include Model Mayhem and Backstage.com. For a simple one-hour shoot, you can expect to pay at least $150.
Choose Your Location
Your location conveys to your audience just as much as the people in your branding photos. Like Chris, you probably work in a small home office. While I did include photos taken in Chris’s actual home office, to have focused the entire shoot in this one location would have presented a very small world to viewers.
Instead, we chose the nearby Walt Disney Concert Hall as the main location for our photo shoot. The Blue Ribbon Garden, located on the roof of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, is a beautiful space. Not only is the venue well landscaped, but the contrast with the surrounding modern architecture offers a number of different background options. Even better, the location does not require filing a photo permit request through FilmLA.
The lesson here is to try to expand your world where at all possible. While you want to convey the reality of where you conduct your business, you also want to portray the mood and feelings associated with that business that extend beyond its four walls.
Choose Your Props
Sometimes to help tell a story, you need props to illustrate the message. For your photo shoot, consider if you need to bring anything with you that will be a visual cue to your clients.
In the case of Chris’s photo shoot, we were venturing outside his usual office space where he normally sits behind a computer. In order to make his meetings seem relevant, we brought in his laptop as a prop for his seated photos with Ayako. Realistically, if Chris was meeting with a client, he would have a laptop with him taking notes, so this prop made sense in the photo.
Other props you might consider include coffee mugs for both subjects (as if you were sitting down for a cup of joe), or a pen and paper, as if you were taking notes. If you are being photographed alone, then a cell phone or laptop also work for individual images.
Choose What to Wear
‘What do I wear?’ is the question I get asked most often for branding photo shoots. The bottom line is that you want to reflect the taste of your customers. If your customers expect to see you dressed up, then you need to be wearing a jacket and tie. If you are in a more casual industry, then dress down accordingly.
No matter what industry you work in, however, your clothing should always be well kept, clean, and as wrinkle-free as possible. Avoid logos, busy patterns, and the color white if at all possible. From a photographer’s perspective, wrinkles and flyaway hair are the worst thing to have to clean up in Photoshop. (For a full list of my executive headshot clothing tips, drop me a line, and I will be happy to send it to you.)
Basically, you need to look at yourself in the mirror and decide if you would buy something from a person wearing what you are wearing. You are selling yourself in these photos, so come to the photo shoot dressed to impress.
A Los Angeles Branding Photo Shoot: The Results
So, here are the details for the actual shoot: I photographed Chris for a three-hour session starting at 8:00 a.m. on August 26th. There were three total locations: the Blue Ribbon Garden on the roof of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the lounge area of Chris’s apartment building, and his home office. I edited and delivered 310 images and three videos on August 27th. To view the entire client gallery, please go to this link. The cost for the branding portrait session was $1,800, and you may view a full list of my branding photography pricing on my website, KellyWilliamsCorporate.com.
The photos will be used for Chris’s new website, which is still a work in progress. In the meantime, you can find out more about his company through his current website here.
Final Thoughts
As they say, you never get another chance to make a first impression. The images you use to tell the story of your brand can very well be the deciding factor in your business’s future.
This is why it is so important that you prepare yourself thoroughly before you ever step foot into the arena with your photographer. From asking the right questions, to bringing the right props, it’s important that you have a game plan at the forefront of your photographer’s shot list. The goal is to tell a story that has been well edited and thoroughly curated ahead of time. The stakes are too high for any on-set rewrites.
Enjoy the images, and as always, I’ll have more photo adventures for you next week!
_________________________________________________________________
If you found this article on ‘How to Prepare for a Branding Photo Shoot’ useful, then check out my equally interesting articles here:
Are you a Los Angeles business owner looking to revamp your online image? Drop me a line and let’s chat about how I can help you tell your company’s story.
To view more images from my corporate portfolio, please visit my website –KellyWilliamsCorporate.com.
