Creating epic visual storytelling photos that reflect your brand takes careful preparation and intention. As easy as we want it to be your brand shoot is not just a monetary investment - it's a culmination of all the hard work you've put into building your business.
After working with countless brands, I've come up with four mistakes you want to avoid when planning and preparing for your brand shoot.
#1 Unclear Direction, Look and Feel
My personal favorite way to help clients get super clear on the direction of their brand shoot is to create a mood board. Pinterest is my favorite way to do this, but you can use whatever works best for you.
Create a mood board titled 'My Brand Vision' and start pinning images related to your brand. Try not to restrict yourself; you want to gather as many pictures as you can. Once you have a fair amount of photos pinned on your mood board, you'll want to take a step back and check for consistency.
Are their photos that do not make sense? Does your mood board feel cohesive? You want to fine-tune your vision for the shoot so that the shoot has a coherent direction.
I always recommend creating two sections within your mood board POSES and VISION.
Sometimes we pin images because we like the pose, but nothing else about the photo relates to the brand. Creating a section just for poses ensures that the direction of the shoot stays on brand.
A little aside: As womxn we often feel pressured to show up in untrue ways to be successful. What a load of BS! You are worthy of a thriving business, just the way you are. All you need to discover is what that looks like for you. Creating a section for posing will help you better understand how you want to be seen in the world.
Once you've created your shoot mood board you can take it a step further and create a PDF guide using Canva that brings it all together.
Personally, this is my favorite because I LOVE seeing my vision neatly and beautifully presented like the image below.
This was a mood board I created for a rebrand shoot for a realtor.
And below is a look at some of the final photos we captured for her rebrand.