"Why am I speaking in front of a plain wall?"
While it may seem strange to speak directly to a camera in front of a wall…
…there is a reason for the weirdness.
One of the keys to a successful branded lifestyle portrait session is creating as much visual variety as possible.
While that involves traditional headshots, wider portraits and lifestyle portrait components, there are other pieces to the puzzle, as well.
One of them involves speaking - but, not on a stage or from the front of the room…
…those are essential, too, but that’s not what I’m referencing.
I’m talking about a speaker standing in front of a plain wall, locking eyes with the camera, and delivering a portion of their keynote or other presentations.
No audience. No slides. Just them and their speaker A Game.
When I first offered this option during a session 5 years ago, the client looked dumbfounded.
“Why am I speaking in front of a plain wall?”
And I can understand the apprehension as it seems a bit odd for someone used to performing in front of people to adjust to an audience made up of one camera.
But, these types of visual assets pack quite a valuable punch.
It all starts with emotion.
When speakers are on stage, their storytelling is punctuated by changes in their body language and facial expression. And this type of energy and emotion is the juice that can be captured and leveraged as they perform for an audience of one camera.
How?
When you compliment your words with strong visuals, you’ve created a more impactful piece of online content.
Yeah, but can’t you capture the same thing with photos taken during an actual presentation?
Sure…but recreating the talk in front of an audience of one camera offers some creative flexibility that’s not present in real-life presentation photos.
Whereas an actual presentation involves staging, lighting, slides and people, these photos have a completely open and bare background…for a reason.
Take a look at this speaking image I took of Mike:
He was really feeling it in this moment, and when we looked back at the photos, he was into it, so we kept it.
While that photo sat for months in his portfolio unused, the opportunity to put it into play came up when he created a post titled:
“I wonder what I could screw up today!”
When looking at this asset, notice two things:
One, the emotional sentiment conveyed by his facial expression and body language visually punctuates the sentiment of that statement.
And two, the plain wall allowed his marketing team to add text that’s easy to read in the open space on the left side of the photo.
Again, this type of a quote post asset can be created with photos of speakers on stages, but this option is WAY easier to work with. And it’s a cleaner, more streamlined presentation thats void of any clunky stage and lighting elements found in actual stage photos.
Whereas stage photos are meant to highlight the types of rooms in which the speaker speaks, this image is all about leveraging the speaking itself.
While adding text into the open space is one way to leverage these plain wall, speaking shots, it’s certainly not the only one.
Let’s take this speaking photo of Lillian:
As you can see, it has the same look and feel as the one with Mike.
The difference is that Lillian’s team leveraged this shot in a different way:
Rather than add text and branding into the open space of the photo, Lillian’s team completely cut her out of the original image, shrunk her down in size, and pasted her onto a pre-built graphic that introduced a topic she explained in the caption beneath the image.
Offering your team an option to cut you out of a photo to create a completely different graphic is an extremely valuable avenue to explore in terms of producing unique and eye-catching online content.
Again, this can be done with a photo of a speaker on stage or in front of the room, but placing the subject on a plain wall makes the post-production process easier.
Since producing high-quality content with a sense of urgency is the name of the game, why not make life easier for the people charged with the task, right?
If you are someone who is paid to speak, keep this speaking in front of a plain wall option in mind the next time you book a photo session.
It can be a huge benefit to your image content portfolio…
…which will keep your team happy with all the options they have at their disposal!
If you’re curious to learn more about the types of photos captured during a branded lifestyle portrait session, set up a time to chat with me about it.