UPGRADE Your Headshots with This SIMPLE Tip

if all the headshots basically on your website look the same and sort of convey the same sort of generic look you're not doing your job as a creative your job as a creative is to solve people's problems [Music] hey everyone this is my friend Jessica and colleague as well uh just Collins a digital marketing agency in Toronto and I do a lot of photography for her company what I want to talk about today what we're going to talk about today is uh it's fine she's making room for my fat but just shooting sort of a standard headshot on white gray or black doesn't cut it when it comes to working with Brands it's true I think um Brands really separate you from competitors and I think part of our job working with law firms and our clients is to identify what really their brand identity is and making sure that comes across whether it be in in the writing and or the year photos and I think you know people hire lawyers because they want to work with that person so it's so important that we get the right image as it relates to their their headshots because a lot of times that's going to be their first point of contact and actually seeing their client and it's interesting that within just the vertical of lawyers you find so many different approaches to the brand the last shoot we worked on together the lawyers wanted to be the one of the words that they used was badass and so they wanted to look badass and so how do you convey badass in a photo of a headshot of lawyers if you're just doing a standard three light setup or you know one or two lights set up and creating headshots that look like every other lawyer every other law firm or just like every other headshot that you do if you're just shooting the same generic headshot you're making yourself into a technician and not a creative the job of a creative is to serve the client and and the client's needs often that comes in the form of uh brand guidelines and you will get those brand guidelines in a PDF if you search for a company that that you know of and if you go into Google and search that company's name and then brand guidelines you will probably find a PDF document that contains uh all their colors their Pantone colors their hex colors that they use on their website words and language that they use to describe the voice that their copy is to be written in and there will also be a set of photographic standards hopefully if there isn't then it's your job to help them Define that within the context of their brand it's really important for us because we're marketing our clients to make sure that their photo is going to match who their clients are going to come and meet right when they come into the office right aligning with that brand identity figuring out what that is because I know a lot of our clients will talk about who they want to be versus who they are and I think there's you know having that that sweet spot um between those two and ensuring that's what's coming across in their photos right we actually just did uh photos for a criminal defense attorney in the Toronto area who is trying to elevate his brand and take take on clients with a much higher income level and when we were shooting we wanted to make sure that the images that we were getting represented that intention if we shot for who he was currently we would not achieve the results of taking his brand to that next level where he's trying to get to I have also had to create lighting diagrams and create the photographic brand for a number of companies including McMaster University here in Hamilton where I helped with their new brand Define sort of the approach to taking the images that would work within the context of their brands and how all of their images within their brand end up being duotoned so we had to be able to like create an image that could convert very well to black and white which could then convert to a duotone to match the brand that's I think it's important that consistency as well right so as your job and you've done it for me is creating those brand snares as it relates to the images so that that's something that they can continue on um even doing in-house in terms of their images right the forensics company that I shoot for in Canada here while in this area they have they have investigators working all across the country but they're not going to fly me out to Winnipeg or Vancouver or Halifax facts to do those photos they will hire photographers in those areas who will shoot to my brand specifications and then those raw files come to me for the retouching part to make sure that there is consistency in the finished image as well I think we identify with Brands and that's the important part of making sure it aligns with what kind of clients you're after in terms of what your your images and if there's an alignment um you know that that helps our job as the marketer so what we're going to start off doing is I'm going to photograph Jessica in sort of generic white gray and black looks that you might see these are fine looks they're good but they are generic and we're going to start there so let's take a look at that [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] so for this next shoot what we've decided to do is come up with a fictional brand called Goldenrod so tell us about Goldenrod um I've been a graphic designer for 15 years I'm going on my own and I'm really interested in clients who want to think out of the box who want to be seen out of the box and are just vibrant and full of life so what are the what are the words that you use to describe the voice that your company writes its copy in and and speaks to clients in okay vibrant energetic youthful playful as well all right playful okay great so you see how that's do like that's not something that we could really easily do on just like a plain white plain gray or plain black backdrop it's not really going to serve the client as as well as we would like so we're going to now produce headshots that will serve that look foreign okay so we're set up with Jessica here in the back uh we're gonna do the brand shoot we we've got her dressed in uh sort of that yellow that Golden Rod color we've got a yellow backdrop um because that is the brand identity so remember the keywords were vibrant playful energetic and Youthful so we want to convey that in this shot so the light we're using is a Westcott 48 inch OCTA box normally this light I would use with both diffusion panels in but I have taken both diffusion panels out so we're going to have a very hard light as if I was just using a seven inch reflector on the light coming and lighting our subject because remember the brand identity is vibrant so we want it to be like hard poppy vibrant shots we don't want to soften the look we want to make this look energetic and and fun as if we're it's the sun shining directly down on our subject so I've taken both diffusion panels out so we're going to have that Central hard light but because we're in a in a 48 inch silver OCTA box the light is also going to bounce around and create some extra specular fill and these shots are going to look fantastic let's take a look [Music] thank you [Music] hey [Music] um it's been a couple of months since we shot that video and uh I didn't when we shot it I was I was pretty busy we had the studio sublet for uh a month I've since moved into my own studio and uh I didn't have the we're just really busy and I wasn't able to wrap it up properly so I want to do that now in short think about what it is that you can do to offer more value to your clients when when someone reaches out to you for headshots the first question you should ask them is what is your brand tell me about your brand instead of just like oh I can do that I can execute that and then just shooting you know standard white standard gray um you know typical headshots bring value to the table bring more to the table as a as a creative your value will increase and people will come to you because they'll understand that you understand their business and their values and their brand and their brand voice and their brand style here are a couple photos of a client of mine named Vanessa her company is called Green content she's a copywriter she writes copy for people she wanted the photos to reflect her brand and her brand colors which are obviously green and so we did that we shot it on on green seamless and then I tweaked the colors a bit but it produced a result that she was exceptionally happy with that she wouldn't have gotten from someone who's just shooting photos on black white or gray increase your value add value to your clients and they'll come to you because they know that you understand their brand needs and their brand requirements thank you for tuning in please hit subscribe if you haven't already and I'll see you in the next one take care