5 Reasons NOT to photograph your Brand Story...yourself!
Machaela Clark and Vivian Kvam, Mac & V Photography.
Back in 2020, with the world on lockdown, we braved shooting our own brand story photos. Why? Because we needed them and social distancing prevented us from hiring someone to shoot them for us! We organized the shoot from start to finish as if we hired ourselves, all of that was great! But then came shoot day...
Don’t try this at home! No for real, we don’t recommend shooting your own brand story, we’re speaking from experience here and we’re professionals at this.
What’s a Brand Story? Brand Story sessions are designed from start to finish to showcase your brand’s unique value, save time and deliver results. No more hunting for the right photos for your social media. Whether you are a creative, a maker, a professional coach, a public speaker, launching your podcast or starting up your first business, marketing through visual storytelling is the modern and strategic way to connect with your audience.
5 Reasons or things we learned shooting our own brand story
It’s hard. Shooting is our jam, but shooting our own photos to tell our story was complicated. It’s hard to get comfortable and really showcase our personalities when we are tweaking lights, composition, and all the things that go along with a professional photo.
You can’t use a self-timer! The self-timer works for certain situations but in this case, the self-timer won’t fire the lights. So queue the Canon Connect app! Notice we have an iPad or phone in most of these shots, that’s because it’s the only way to fire the camera.
3. Firing the camera takes time. We use a handy app called Canon Connect, mentioned in 2. it’s a great app! This app is great when collaborating with creative directions onset or in-studio headshots, but using it to shoot enough content to fill a month’s worth of social images is not ideal.
4. Limited to the tripod. It goes like this...set the tripod, check composition with one of us, check lighting with a test shot, looks good, ok let’s do the same thing with both of us. Set both of us in the shot, fire, look at the image, oh that looks weird. Start over. Moving a tripod around is time-consuming, it’s not a quick ready, set, go.
5. Sometimes a small change in a pose can make all the difference. See the photo below, it’s hard to know what to tweak when you can’t see yourself.
Most people would never know we shot these ourselves. Would we do it again? Hell yes! All the work was worth it, but next time we’re hiring a professional.
What can a brand story session do for you?
Engage your online audience with authentic story-driven images.
Save time - stop worrying about shooting and editing images (Or, let’s be real, not doing them at all!)
Have months of content at your fingertips
Shoots are strategically planned to give you peace of mind and high value
Work with a team who understands your goals not just a great photoshoot
Mac & V
Mac & V is a visual content studio that gives brands stopping power through photography. We create all-encompassing visual campaigns that capture the personality of a brand and inspire audiences to take action so that prospects become customers. Want to know more, head over to the About Us Page!