So you think you’re ready to invest in some personal branding photography?

Awesome! It really is one of the easiest things you can do to immediately raise the bar on your business! But hold on, there’s a few things you need to consider before you go for it.

1. Get clear

I know I sound like a broken record when I say this – the first thing you need to do when preparing for your photoshoot is get clear on your brand. Get clear on your values, your vision, where you want your business to go. Take that time, invest it. Maybe work on figuring out your why aswell. This will benefit your entire brand, not just the photoshoot, and it’s worth the time investment.

2. Find the right collaborator

The second thing that you need to do is find a suitable photographer. You may know a photographer and think ‘oh yeah, I’ll just hire them’ but, again, you need to invest the time and do your research. I know, I’ve said it before, people buy from people – but it has to be the right person! I know I’m not the right photographer for everybody. It depends on a few things. You need to think about the style that the photographer produces, the style of their finished images, but also the way that they work. Talk to at least three photographers and see who you get the best vibe from.

3. Communicate

When you identify and engage with your photographer, you need to communicate with them. Every photographer will have a different process, and you will have a way that you prefer to communicate – you need to figure that out between you. You need to talk about brands that you admire, where you want your brand and your business to go and then you need to plan the actual shoot – the locations and the shots.

4. Plan the shots

Ive seen a couple of articles talking about preparing a spreadsheet of shots. So you have columns with the shot number, the background, the props, the framing, the point of view etc and then you give that to your photographer. Honestly, if you are going to do that, to create a spreadsheet to micro-manage the shoot, then don’t hire a photographer, just hire a camera! You need to leave space for the collaboration and the creativity on both sides.

Re: Pinterest Boards

A lot of people would advise to create a Pinterest board – it’s not something I’ve worked with yet so I’m honestly not sure how it would affect the way I work. If you have the time and the inclination, then I would say go for it, but bear these three things in mind so that you don’t end up disappointed in your efforts to recreate images:

1) If you want your personality and your energy to shine through in your branding images then you can’t recreate an image of someone else. That’s them – and you’re not them!
2) Physically – body-shapes, locations, style, colouring; all of those things will impact the image and if you’re trying to recreate an image of someone who has a totally different style of dress or body-shape to you, it’s never going to be the same.
3) Plagiarism & copyright infringement. . You would never copy and paste the copy from someone else’s website so why would you copy their images?

5. Be someone else.

NOT! So many business owners feel that when they get in front of a camera that they have to be somebody else. They have to try to be this particular ‘image’ so that they can fit in – or maybe you’ve spent your whole life trying to fit in and it’s just something that you do. Forget about it! The success of your business depends on you standing out!

The success of your business depends on you standing out!

And the only way that you can stand out is by being yourself – you’re the only person who does what you do the way that you do it, so own it and that will help you in every aspect of your business but in particular in your photoshoot!