You need photos and content for your website, for social, and for any media – you know that much is true… However, you struggle with a consistent and cohesive (& effective) social presence because you just don’t have custom photos – so hiring a photographer is the obvious answer!

You’ve finally found the right person, it’s the day of the shoot – now what? If you aren’t a personal brand, and don’t sell a physical product…. What are you even taking pictures of?!

We cannot stress enough the importance of the process of planning out a photoshoot before you actually show up to the shoot. Jessie Wyman, of Jessie Wyman Photography, maps everything out for you ahead of time, including a shot list and list of props. “I really try to work with my clients to get them the content they need for their brand or business. So, while I don’t claim to be a brand strategist, I aim to learn as much as I can about your brand – it’s personality (even non-personal brands have a personality), visual representation, who the brand/business serves, what the pain points you are addressing with your service or offer – all of these help me understand your brand both from a messaging point of view, but also visually.  Another question I ask my clients to consider is thinking about your upcoming content – what types of blog posts will you be writing about? What about social media posts? Any launches? Newsletters? Because these content outlets are visual mediums you should be using photographs that make it more interesting, engaging, and beautiful for your audience to digest. Finally, with all this out on the table (I ask all of this through my questionnaire) I then work with my clients to formulate that shot list and corresponding props so that it becomes super easy for you to prepare for the shoot. For personal brands this would likely involve several images of the ‘person behind the brand’, but for non-personal brands, this would result in a curated list of images that may not focus on a single person, but images that I like to call ‘branded stock imagery’ which can include a mix of flat lays, landscapes, still life photos and shots with humans that are more about conveying a feeling, rather than a personal connection with a specific person.”

At HDM, we started with our quarterly content strategy – a document our team uses to map out all of our intentions for the quarter, broken down into content pillars and content ideas. We then worked with Jessie to think about visuals that represented the ideas we would be talking about. We talk a lot about strategy – what’s more strategic than a game of chess? We now have a list of small flat lays and vignettes that will help us communicate our ideas through social content. 

Thinking about your brand/company in terms of important concepts can be difficult – this is where a creative professional can be helpful. Here are some examples of our process:

• We thought about what we were excited to talk about in terms of marketing (our industry) and how we might be able to convey some of that through a visual medium.
• We related what we wanted to talk about to parts of our life that everyone would be able to relate to. (Think brewing a cup of tea and how that ritual can be related to the ritual of the creative process.)
• We drew inspiration from a different era so that we could bring in props that conveyed the 70’s & early 90’s vibe we are currently loving.
• We made a mood board and thought about what the vibe we wanted to convey through the photos so that everyone involved in the shoot was on the same page.
• We spoke about any upcoming events, big projects, or new releases coming up that would need specific content created for it and how we could use a visual to represent that.