Aim for visual variety in your branded lifestyle portraits
Visual variety is an essential component to an image content portfolio
Sometimes, you have to improvise a bit to achieve that goal…
When you’re creating an image content portfolio of branded lifestyle portraits, it’s important to capture visual variety and diversity from lifestyle scene to lifestyle scene.
Regardless of the space in which you conduct your session, allow your photographer to get creative and use every corner of the room in order to create that visual variety from shot-to-shot.
If everything looks the same, then you run the risk of boring the hell out of your audience…
...and yourself.
But, what happens when the space in which you shoot your branded lifestyle portrait session is limited in interesting nooks and crannies?
Well, that’s when you have to get a lil’ creative…
…and make chicken salad out of chicken shit, :)
Speaking of that scenario, I recently worked with a client, Nancy, a graphic designer who serves her clients by designing websites and .pdf infographics.
During our pre-session strategy call, we spoke at length about her need to have images that capture her creative process, which not only involved work on her computer, but also manual drafting and sketching.
You see, most people assume that creatives today simply work on a computer and that’s it.
But, with process-driven images that involve paper and pen, Nancy is able to provide her audience a unique perspective on how the sausage is really made.
While we had a clear plan in place to capture all these images - she planned to bring her drafting pens/pencils, ruler and sketch pads to the session - we had one fundamental problem:
Where the hell was she supposed to draw in the space we rented for the session?
The Breather space that she reserved had only one table, and that table was earmarked for all the computer work that we needed to capture to reflect other aspects of her business and life.
So, that’s when I had to improvise and make shit happen, :)
In the corner of the space, there was a long, white cabinet that had a smooth top. The counter space was just wide enough to double as a drafting table, and it was easy to reposition. You can see the cabinet in this image:
Looks like we found ourselves a second table, after all, :)
Now that we had the table, it was my goal to shoot these lifestyle photos in a way that didn’t reveal the cabinet faces, which added a new set of challenges to the mix.
Can you tell from these images that this is a storage cabinet?
Nancy was impressed and pleased with these images and mentioned how they really helped add a unique-to-her dimension to her image content portfolio.
I was happy that we didn’t shoot everything that required a tabletop on one tabletop because that’s visually boring, and we can’t have visually boring, ever, in a set of branded lifestyle portraits.
Keep that in mind when you’re looking to refresh your image content portfolio.
Don’t settle for boring - aim for compelling and unique from scene-to-scene.
And don’t worry, the juice, ultimately, is worth the squeeze, :)
Did this article raise any questions in your mind leading up to your next branded lifestyle portraits session?
If so, set up a time to chat with me and we can talk about it.
PS - For those of you who aren’t in the know, I mail out these blogs 3x a week, and lemme tell you, they’re a real party, so, if you’d like to get in on this, sign up for it here and I’ll throw in a free gift for you, because I care, :)