When I photographed Far North Spirits‘ Autumn/Winter rebrand, we planned every shot before shoot day. That single gallery became a full website refresh, a martini bar campaign, a live events strategy, AND social media content that’s still going strong nine months later.
But that didn’t happen by accident.
A successful shoot isn’t about getting more photos. It’s about having the right plan in place before you take any.
I still get inquiries in my inbox where the biggest concern is that their last photographer only gave them enough content for three weeks after the shoot.
Stressful? Yes. Avoidable? Also yes.
Here’s what I stopped letting my clients do before shoot day that got us to nine months of content:
#1 Hand me a Pinterest board and calling it a brief.
Pinterest tells me what you like - but it’s NOT a shot list.
A Pinterest board is inspiration.
A shot list is the strategy.
One shows what looks pretty, the other tells you what to shoot, why, AND who it’s for. Confuse the two and you walk into a shoot with a folder of screenshots. And you walk out with a gallery that doesn’t actually SAY anything.
#2 Describe your customer as “millennials who like nice things” instead of having a specific person in mind.
Demographics are a starting point, not a finish line. When you’re planning your next shoot, you need to get SO specific about who exactly it is that you’re targeting.
Even the details that seem so small - those are probably the most important.
It’s what sets your content apart. Instead of “Oh! That’s pretty,” it becomes, “Wow! That was made for me.”
#3 Ask for a shot list that’s really 40 variations of the same photo
That’s what’ll have you burn through a gallery in weeks, not months. I know we all love a beautiful photo, but I’m not going to give you 40 shots of basically the same frame. That doesn’t help you at all.
#4 Treat product shots and lifestyle shots like two separate jobs instead of a continuous story
Every shot should feel like it speaks with your brand voice - from internal sales decks to e-commerce to social media. They have separate jobs - but they’re still telling the same story for your brand, and there should ALWAYS be a golden thread connecting every single image together.
#5 Book a shoot with no plan for how to use the gallery after
This is where you end up with pretty photos instead of strategic assets - and I don’t want that for you. This is the shift that I move my clients towards. From “we’ll figure it out” to confidently walking into shoot day with a plan that carries them well into the next quarter, and sometimes, like Far North, well beyond it. From guessing what to shoot to knowing exactly what you need and why.
We plan exactly how the images will be used before they’re even created - and you won’t even know what a ghosted Dropbox folder feels like ever again.
If you want to walk into your next shoot day with a REAL plan and no guesswork, I created a step by step guide called The Anchor Point Method to help you. It’s the exact steps I take leading up to every client shoot - from campaign planning, to behind the scenes management.
You can grab it here.
With love,
