Telling the whole story when there are many chapters
When your company has a lot of different facets that you want to showcase, it might take a few separate photo sessions to accomplish this. Like this woodshop (yes, it’s my husband’s woodshop Coppersmith Customs). He does a lot of different things, and none of them happen on the same day, let alone the same month sometimes. When this happens, we have to do a bit of pre-planning.
Decide Where to Start
When deciding what you want to showcase, start with creating a list of EVERYTHING you want to showcase. From here we can divide and conquer the list by separating all the items into an order of importance and availability of photoshoot opportunities. Things that will help determine the order are things like: when are things happening, what do you want to show first, easiest to hardest, if we need additional people we find out when they are available, budget usage……
Once we have laid out all the items we want to photograph, when the best opportunity to photograph those things is, we can then plan dates on a calendar to accomplish the task.
All The Details
My job as an editorial photographer is to also think outside of the box when we are on location for photos. I’m always looking to see what other little details may be handy in a companies marketing. Don’t disregard those strange shots of a random object, a close-up detail, or an image with a lot of empty space. These images are extremely useful in marketing! They serve as a great way to post an image with text incorporated into it and can also be used as a way to visually elevate your website without cluttering it up at the same time. In the case of our woodworker, they served as a way to showcase the little details of his work.
Tell Your Story
Telling your story is important. This story will include you, but it’s also not ALL about you. People like to see themselves in stories to be able to relate and understand whatever it is you are storytelling about. What does this mean? It means that when we start to think about what sort of photos we will need, we need to think about all angles, and not just camera angles. It’s the ‘Who-What-Where-When-Why-How’ of your company. Showing off yourself and your employees is important. Showcasing your product and how it’s created and used is important. There are so many angles and things we can photograph that you may never have thought about.
