Personal branding photography is sometimes called branding photos, personal brand photos, service brand photos, lifestyle brand photos, or even commercial photos. The difference between personal branding photos and regular, everyday business photos can vary by a wide margin. “Business photos” usually refers to group and individual headshots to update the business website or LinkedIn page. The main goal of headshots is for networking and documenting and are important but limited in their use.
On the other hand, Personal Branding Photos are images used to build a relationship with an audience, showcase the owner behind the business, a process and/or product, and create imagery that can be used to educate and market on social media, websites, etc. These photos are often created so that the business owner(s) will have beautiful and professional images ready to post at a moment’s notice, for planned events, and important seasonal announcements. Entrepreneurs have many different roles that they are trying to fill whether that be marketing, designing, editing, building, networking, arranging, financial planning, managing, and networking to name a few. Not many of them want to add “professional photographer” to the growing list of their long to-do list. By outsourcing this area, entrepreneurs can focus on their main calling and mission of performing a service with excellence or selling quality products to their audience. When a brand photographer knows how to strategically tell stories through brand images, the products sell more easily and business growth is exponential. In addition, people buy products and services from entrepreneurs that are known, relatable, and liked. When an entrepreneur is busy taking photos of their business, they are not IN the photos. People want to see the real, behind-the-scenes life of what it means to run a business and create products or perform expertise. It’s much more interesting to show the half eaten cinnamon roll and fluffy cat on your desk while editing on your computer than just rolling out the polished and perfect product after the fact. People crave experiences and being around people who are real. Those two things will connect with people faster than 100 images of a finished and perfect product.
Now that we’ve discussed what Personal Branding is and why it’s crucial, let’s see an example of how a bakery just outside of Columbus, Ohio used their shoot to tell a story. The Flour Barn Bakery was created by Lily & Ellen, two sisters who LOVE all things homesteading. The bakery itself is a new barn that was built on their parent’s farm in Marysville. The sisters grew up learning early how to bake, sew, paint, and farm. Their dream began with a casual goal of selling cinnamon rolls on Saturday mornings only (the secret recipe was created by Ellen in high school.) Their Saturday morning only plan quickly blew up as the local farming community fell in love with this family and their baked goods. Now the Flour Barn offers cookie kits to use with your children at home, hot chocolate bombs, fresh crescents, wedding cakes, classes on how to bake your own bread, and much, much more. In addition, their entire family is involved. Their mom teaches baking classes, their dad is part of the cinnamon roll process, and another sister hand paints notecards that are sold at their bakery.
Our goal with these photos was to capture the step-by-step process they go through to create their signature cinnamon rolls, some fun photos showing the sister’s relationship both as owners and as sisters, several flat lays (product photos) of their baked goods for their square ordering site, the flour barn as a location so that the audience knows what the bakery looks like when driving there, and at least one photo of their father’s hands while Todd helps them create cinnamon rolls since he isn’t fond of being in photos. In addition, they wanted a photo of their logo in real-life so we arranged a Kitchen Aid mixer with a colorful bouquet from their aunt’s local nursery, Scheiderer Farms. They also wanted some photos of a Valentines Day shoot to introduce new items that would be available so they could market for the upcoming holiday.
