Good business branding photography starts with understanding how the company will use the images. Sarah Wilkins, marketing director at Skyline Transportation, hired me to create advertising photography for an upcoming recruiting campaign. The company had recently invested in a new fleet of trucks and wanted to attract potential drivers. Before discussing locations or lighting, I asked Sarah about the campaign. What did Skyline need to communicate? Where would the photographs appear? What images would she actually need? Those answers allowed us to plan the photography around Skyline’s business goals rather than simply creating attractive photographs and then figuring out how to use them afterward.
The final use should influence how we create each image. A vertical image may work well for a phone screen, magazine cover, brochure, or other portrait-oriented layout. A horizontal image may work better for a website, computer screen, or advertising layout with room for text. Sarah and I created a shot list based on the images she expected to use. We also planned to extract some trucks from their backgrounds afterward, giving her additional flexibility when creating the advertising. This planning is an important part of business photography. The goal isn’t simply to deliver good photographs. It’s to create useful visual assets that work where the client actually needs them.
Good planning also reduces disruption for the client. Skyline’s trucks and drivers are working assets, so scheduling the brand photography meant taking them away from their normal jobs. Several days of rain had also turned the available parking lot into a muddy area filled with visual distractions. We positioned the trucks near a washing bay so we could clean them as needed. Then we coordinated the schedule around the driver’s availability and the best light. Changing weather shifted the light and forced us to adjust our original start time by about an hour. Once everything was ready, the driver moved the trucks into position according to our shot list. Because we had already made the important decisions, we finished quickly and let everyone get back to work.
Post-production gave Skyline even more flexibility from its business branding photography. Back at my Knoxville office, I removed the distracting parking lot from selected photographs so Sarah could use the trucks more easily in different advertising layouts. Large vehicles naturally reflect their surroundings, so the paint still showed some reflections. Those reflections, however, didn’t distract from what the advertising needed to accomplish. Commercial brand photography isn’t about pursuing technical perfection simply for its own sake. It’s about understanding the client’s goals, restrictions, schedule, and intended uses, then solving the problems that stand between the client and useful images.
Useful photographs are the real goal of business branding photography. Every commercial assignment comes with different objectives, locations, schedules, restrictions, and final uses. Understanding those variables before photography begins helps us create images that support the client’s marketing instead of merely looking good. That’s one of the things I enjoy most about this work. If your East Tennessee business is planning a marketing or advertising campaign, think first about where and how you will use the photographs. Those answers can help determine what we should photograph long before I take the first picture.