When choosing a location for a brand shoot, the first place I tell my clients to look is their own home! And for Kylie, I’m so glad she took a chance on using a few corners of home as the backdrop for her brand photographs! Between her home office, living room, an empty bedroom, and a corner of her kitchen, we had more than enough spots with ample natural light to create the variety of photos she needed to both launch her new website and keep up a consistent presence on social media!
Photographing photographers is such a cool experience. It’s both a joy and an honor to come along someone who shares the same craft and create for them in a way that emphasizes the incredible experience they provide for their clients! Kylie is an incredible wedding photographer with a huge heart for her couples! And it didn’t take me long to pin point either of those things in our pre-shoot meetings.
One of our main goals for Kylie’s shoot was to create images that showcased the human side of her and how that makes her stand out as a wedding photographer. She had a whole host of headshots that showed her face, but none that went deeper and communicated who she is as a person. It can be tempting to portray something like this by simply selecting a few of her favorite items and utilizing them as props during the shoot. However, we wanted the photos to have even more depth than that.
Three of the main ways we accomplished this were:
- Using her home as the backdrop
- Asking the question: “what do your days look like?”
- Including her husband & pups
That began by settling on her home as the backdrop. It made the photos not only feel more like her because it was literally her house, but it also allowed her to feel immediately more comfortable and genuine in front of the camera. Which always helps the photos to exude that human-ness we were aiming for.
The other way we ushered in depth to her shoot was by literally asking the question: “what do your days look like?” Her answers to that question fueled a lot of the storyline and concept decisions we made. It told us exactly how to pull back the curtain and let her clients see behind the scenes of the experience she walks them through. As well as tell inform which little snippets of her everyday life we should focus on. If it’s not something she actually does in her real life or an example of the process she walks her clients through, then why would it make sense to include it in a brand shoot?
Things like her settling into the chair in her living room for a mug of coffee before work.
Referencing her cork board to-do list before jumping into a client project.
Setting up her custom backdrop for bridal portraits on a wedding day.
Playing with their pups in the living room.
All of these photo ideas stemmed from asking that one question. That’s why I whole-heartedly believe that brand photography isn’t a “one-sized-fits-all” kind of solution. It takes deep work to create deep photos. And I’m so glad that Kylie trusted me throughout the Brand Experience so we could create photos like these for her brand that empower her to make those genuine connections with her clients that fuel her as a wedding photographer! And obviously fill her website with new brand photographs!
Been thinking about custom brand photographs like Kylie’s for your own business? Let’s set up a time to dream through this together and find out if it’s the right investment for you! — INQUIRE HERE
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