A definitive guide to understanding what shots you need on your session

In this post, I’m going to be showing you the different types of images we can create on your personal branding session.

When we go through the process of working together, there will be a time where I’m creating your photography brief and I will ask you for a specific shot list.

This blog post will give you some ideas of image types that you might want on your session.

Visualise and Communicate

It’s really important to communicate exactly what you need to your photographer before your shoot. Take a look at your website and social content and try to envisage what kinds of images you’d like to put there. Do you need banner images? A headshot? Full body portraits? Take the time to do this visualisation exercise and it will be super clear communicating this to your photographer.

Image Types

Headshot

A headshot is typically taken of the subject from their chest/waist up in portrait orientation. The background is always nice and blurry to really focus on the subject. These work great as about me page images or profile photos for your social media accounts.

Portraits

Portraits to camera are the most common shots on a session. These are really engaging and it’s a chance to really show your personality. These images work really well on an ‘about me’ page or as social posts.

Action Shots

Action shots are designed to showcase what it is you do. Are you a coach, hairdresser, social media manager, jewellery designer, florist? These images need to show EXACTLY what it is you do so that there’s no confusion when a potential customer sees them.

Lifestyle Shots

Lifestyle shots are a great way to inject more of your personality into your shoot. This is where props and location come into play to help create a “set” if you like. Lifestyle photography is all about showcasing the version of yourself outside of work. These images could involve your hobbies, interests, pets, other half and pals too.

These images are meant to be fun, relatable and authentic to you.

Behind The Scenes

Behind the scenes images are a really great way to show your processes and how you do things within your business aside from the main thing. These types of shots could show you making your products, on a call with a client, packing up orders, recording your podcast, designing new items, updating your website – the list is endless.

Details

Details are a really nice thing to add into your image content. They work well on services pages and also make great social posts where you can create some great conversations. Props are a great way to add detail images to your content strategy. Also, shots of your workspace make great detail shots too.

Landscape & Portrait

It’s always good to know what orientation you want your images to be in. This means the positioning of the camera. Landscape images work well as banner images, in email marketing, on Facebook etc. Portrait images work well on about me pages, on Instagram, on Pinterest etc. The good news is you can have both! Just ask.

Website Header/Banner Images

Banner images can be designed in different ways. If you’re working with a web designer, it’s always useful to ask them what kind of content you’ll need for each page of the site.

Negative Space

Having images with negative space can be a really fun way to engage with your audience. Take this example below. Hollie knew she wanted to find a blank wall so we could capture some shots of her pointing so she could add text to her images afterwards. These work really well for launch content and for banner images too.

Hollie cropped the image so it was square for Instagram and added the text in something like Canva. This kind of image would also work well as a banner for the homepage of a website when left un-cropped.

Space For Text

Lauren brought a white foam board to her session so that she could add text to her images for launch content. You can buy white foam boards from somewhere like Hobbycraft and they are super cheap.

This is a great idea if you’re launching something soon and don’t want the text to interfere with the background you shoot against.

Ta Da!

And there we have it! My definitive personal branding shot list. I think I’ve covered it all! Hopefully now, you’ll have a better understand of the types of images you want to create and you’ll be able to relay this to your photographer so you’re both on the same page.

If you have any questions about anything please drop me an email!