Your own branding imagery.

It’s funny how as photographers a lot of times we neglect to pay attention to our own advertising and branding. In the advertising world, we are constantly creating branding imagery for our clients, so why don’t we ever think to create branding imagery for our own photography business. After all, we are in the business of selling our specific vision and style to potential clients. I’ve always been an advocator of shooting your own work all the time for many reasons. (see ABS theory) The best reason is to create branding images that resonate with your personal photographic vision. Images that convey who you are, what you shoot, and how you shoot it that you can put out into the world to tell them how they should be seeing your brand. Branding is constantly conveying a message to the viewers on how you want them to see you. Perception is reality, so its our job to create and control that perception.

How much are you willing to invest? We invest in gear, graphic designers, promos etc. Investing into producing our own photographic vision is just as important. (Sometimes you can convince a client to fund your personal creations. We did that with our Santi project with Nike.) Or, sometimes you get a job that is exactly your creative vision, but usually you don’t get those unless your creative vision is strong, and that happens when you’re showing the work that you want to be shooting… And to do that, you have to be shooting it yourself.