You’ve been told countless times that you need branding photos for your business. But it can still seem like an intimidating task to take on. If you go into your branding shoot fully prepared, you’ll get the most bang for your buck and best results.

Here are 5 tips to help prepare your business for branding photos. Disclaimer: You don’t necessarily need to have all these things completed before your shoot. However, If you have these things down pat, you’ll have 100% confidence in having a successful photoshoot experience.

1. Define Your Brand Identity

Your brand identity refers to elements that influence your brand’s personality and overall perception. This includes visual and non-visual elements like your logos, brand fonts, brand colours, and brand voice. While it’s not required to complete 100% of your brand identity before your branding shoot, it will be beneficial. At the very minimum you should have a good idea of the direction and aesthetic themes of your business. For example, if you have already a set brand colour palette, then we will be able to include those in your images. If you’ve defined your brand identity to be young, fun, and vibrant we will compliment that in your photos. At the end of the day it comes down to this: the more parts of your brand identity you have defined, the more guided and strategic your photos will be. If you have not yet completed your brand identity but are still set on having a branding photoshoot, we will likely aim to have your photos be more neutral & versatile.

If you need help with your brand identity, we have services to help you! At Hiraya Creative Co., Alex will work with you to craft logos, a brand colour palette, brand font kit, and other graphic elements to compliment your business.

2. Understand Your Why

If you’ve been following me for a while you’ve heard me talk about your “why”. Your “why” is essentially the reason your business exists and what impact you aim to have. Things like your mission and vision statements are also part of your “why”. I highly encourage you to write out those for your business if you haven’t already!

When you know and understand your “why” you will have a good idea of who you want to target with your brands messaging and social media content. When we know who the target audience is, we can tailor your branding photos to resonate with them.

3. Know the Goals and Objectives For Your Photos

This may seem obvious, but it is VERY important that you know the goals for your images. Specifically, what your photos will be used for, where they will be used, and when they will be used. Do you need branding photos to put on your website? If this is the case, I will make sure that we are getting enough photos shot in a landscape orientation for page banners. Are you planning on using photos for making announcements or ads? If yes, then I will put extra effort to take some photos with negative space. This will let text and other graphics fit cohesively in the photo.

I’ve done branding shoots many times for clients who were just starting out. They didn’t yet have a concrete idea of all the goals and objectives for the photos. Despite this I am always still able to provide a broad and versatile library of images that work well for many applications. But I will say that when I do a branding photoshoot for a client that has clearly defined goals and objectives, we are always able to get intentional and purposeful images.

4. Have a Marketing Plan

This point ties closely with the previous, but I’d like to talk more specifically about timing and frequency. It’s important to know how often you plan to post certain types of content. That way you can accurately estimate how many photos you’ll be needing out of your branding shoot. A business that heavily utilizes social media and posts multiple photos per week will need more images from a large branding shoot. Alternatively they can invest in smaller, more frequent photoshoots. If the latter applies to you, I would suggest doing a mini session every few months. A mini session is a 30-45 minute branding shoot with a lower investment cost. I do mini session days about once a quarter. To get notified when my next mini session day will be held you can subscribe to my newsletter.

5. Connect With Your Branding Photographer

Lastly, you’ll want to connect with your branding photographer. We’ll go through an initial consultation so I can understand your goals. After chatting, I’ll have an idea of the scale of the photoshoot we’ll need. We’ll get you officially booked and put a solid date into our calendars. For photoshoots that require in-depth planning and often times a studio booking I recommend at least to book 1 month in advance (however in my peak season I usually book out 3-4 months in advance). This will give us adequate time to plan for the shoot. I have an in-depth planning process that allows us to dive deep into your business goals. Don’t worry if there are certain things you haven’t figured out yet, I’m here to help! I will send you questionnaires to fill out and resources to help you prepare. Then once your photoshoot day arrives we’ll make magic!

Ready For Your Branding Shoot?

If you haven’t yet fully completed everything in this list don’t worry! A lot of businesses I work with are just starting out. They don’t yet have everything totally figured out yet but know that a branding shoot is something they need. If this is you then don’t be scared to reach out! We’ll discuss your vision together and decide on the best course of action: whether that be a full brand story experience or a smaller session. Can’t wait to chat!