Branding Photography

A library, not a photograph

Branding photography produces a set built to be drawn on for a year: people, place, product and detail, all shot to one visual direction so anything pulled from it sits alongside anything else.

The value is in the coverage. Running out of images three months after a shoot is the usual complaint, and it is a planning problem rather than a photography one.

Planned around where the images will live

A website hero needs space for text. A social grid needs squares. A deck needs horizontals. A print piece needs resolution most screen images do not have.

Working from that list produces a shot plan, and the shot plan is what makes the difference between a day's photography and a usable library.

What tends to be under-shot

• Detail frames — hands working, materials, tools. They fill layouts that a portrait cannot.
• Empty space. Photographs with room in them are the ones designers can actually use.
• The unglamorous parts of the process, which are often the most convincing thing you have.