Brand Photography: Why You Should Have Professional Images Before You Launch
If you missed it, over the last few weeks my friend Cari and I have been doing a collaborative blog series all about taking your brand concept from an idea to ready to launch to the world. We kicked the series off with a Q&A all about conceptualizing your brand and laying a foundation to build on. Then over the next two weeks Cari wrote two fabulous articles about designing your brand and your website. Today I am going to be sharing about how brand photography can take your brand launch to the next level!
First, let’s talk about why should you have brand photography done before you launch.
I have a whole list of reasons why it’s important to have brand photography right from the start of your business. Here are a few:
example of a lifestyle headshot from a personal branding photoshoot
Professional brand photography legitimizes your brand. When you’re just opening your business you’re the new kid on the block. Nobody knows or trusts your brand yet. Having professional brand photography of your product or service (or simply of you) will help you look (and feel) legit! It shows that you care enough about your brand image to take the time and spend the resources to get photos done. It shows that you’re not going anywhere, your brand is here to stay. It shows quality. It builds trust.
Professional brand photography sets you apart from your competition. Not everyone takes the time to show off their product with well-curated, professional photography and it makes such a difference! When a shopper is scrolling through an e-commerce site looking for a product, your photos will catch their eye because they are well lit. When they are scrolling Instagram, your photos will stand out because they are styled nicely. When they go to your website they will want to buy from you because your photos make your product or service look so amazing that they cannot picture living without it any longer.
Professional brand photography helps to give your brand a vibe. Cari talked a bit in one of her posts about how your brand is somewhat defined by the perception of your audience, and their gut feeling about it; but she also talked about how there are ways to guide your audience into having a certain feeling about it through branding elements like your logo and color palette. Photography is a huge way to do this too! Your brand imagery will give your brand a vibe. It will set the tone and help your audience identify your brand with a feeling.
So now that we’ve determined how important professional brand photography is right from the launch of your brand, let’s talk about some details of how it all works!
After you have a solid business concept and you’ve got your basic brand design in place, you should start to think about brand photography. I recommend talking to a website designer first as well, and getting your wireframes in place before having your brand photoshoot completed. That way you have an idea of what images need to go where on your website before the shoot and make sure to get that content tailor-made.
I love it when my clients come to me with a full branding guide and wireframes to show me because then I can help them brainstorm out the perfect shoot for their brand, but it’s not a make or break, I can take versatile images with extra space to make them fit where they need to go later too.
example of a behind-the-scenes type lifestyle brand image
example of a headshot
When a client contacts me for brand photography I like to get an idea of the scope of their project and if the type of photography they like lines up with what I do before booking. From there, I typically create a personalized proposal detailing my clients’ needs, a rough plan for the shoot, some examples of my work, and what the cost to get this work completed would be.
From there they book a date with me and we schedule a pre-shoot consultation on zoom to talk through the nitty-gritty details of their brand and plan their shoot together. Sometimes my clients decide to book a studio or Airbnb for the shoot, sometimes we do it in their workspace, or sometimes they just drop ship me product, it just depends on the type of photoshoot we are planning and the type of brand that they are launching. I make sure to walk through all of that with each client and make sure their needs are met appropriately.
After the pre-shoot consultation, I make a detailed shot list and a prop list, and we find inspiration images to go along with it. All of these details go together into a little shoot prep PDF that helps the actual shoot day go super smoothly!
Shoot day is all kinds of fun and then about two weeks later you’ll receive your gallery of high-quality images from me via email. The whole process of planning and executing a brand shoot typically takes about a month, so keep this in mind for scheduling and getting your images back in time to plug them all in before launch!
example of a lifestyle brand image
example of a styled product image
example of a styled brand image
A few other places you’ll also want to use your images other than your website include, on your social media, email list, any freebies you have, and any other promotions you plan to do (we’ll be talking about some of these pieces of launching a brand in the coming weeks so stay tuned). Keep this in mind when planning your brand photoshoot to make sure you get plenty of unique content for your brand launch!
Many small businesses like to have some combination of these types of shots before launch: lifestyle headshots, “behind-the-scenes” process style images, product shots for e-commerce pages, styled product shots, and lifestyle images of your products being used. Each brand is unique and may require a different combination of these image types, so I recommend contacting a brand photographer you know of to talk through what your brand will do and your vision for it to get an idea of what direction you should take your brand photography.