Choosing a location for your brand photography

Choosing a location for your brand photography can initially feel confusing and a decision you’d rather leave to your photographer. After all, they’ve done that job a few times before so they should know all the good places, right? Well, while that’s true, if you’ve budgeted for your business photography then you deserve a set of brand photos that reflect your own image, not a generic off the peg set. Here are a few things to think about when planning the locations, or at least types of location, for your brand photography shoot.

Five questions to help you choose your ideal photoshoot location 

1. Is your business a venue? 

This is obviously a no brainer if your business is for example a cafe, hotel or flower farm. Even here though, lifestyle behind the scenes photos are a great way of showing the care you take in preparing what you sell, so you might want to consider where has similarly lit or well lit space to showcase this. 

    2. Can you tidy up your home office or workshop? 

If you work from home or from a perhaps messy workshop, what can you do to clear and pretty up your workspace? Thinking of light and space in particular, is it suitable? If so, do a tidy and spruce it up. Thinking of your clients, what do they want to imagine, and does – or can – your space currently reflect that? There are many ways to style an aesthetic, but generally a good declutter of the workspace is a good rule of thumb visually. 

3. What kind of location reflects your brand? 

You should think about the kind of place your clients would see as synonymous with your brand image, line of work or they would like to see themselves in. Ask yourself: 

• Where you would normally meet clients?
• Where do you go to do your planning? 
• Where or what inspires you?
• What kind of location would your clients frequent/ aspire to? 
• What kind of place do you want to be in in a few years time, when all your marketing efforts have paid off? 

4. Is hyper local important to you?

Include local landmarks in your shoot. A lifestyle shoot might take in a walk in your neighbourhood for your brand photoshoot. Or you could pick a recognisable location (café, hotel or park) that your ideal clients might identify as a local landmark. Just make sure that you ask permission beforehand.

5. Where do you imagine your products being used? 

Product based businesses could use a desirable venue (like a kitchen for a food company) for the behind the scenes story telling, but when it comes to showing off your products, sometimes a small studio setup is all that’s needed to showcase your products styled. Maybe your, a friend’s or a hired living room space shows off where clients will be drinking your organic teas. 

6. Hire a venue

Lastly, hiring a venue for a photo shoot that reflects the brand identity you want to create is always an option. If you don’t have the ideal space, but you have the budget, there are a good variety of photoshoot venues for hire. They range from studio spaces (I use my own home studio for photoshoots) to entire houses, kitchens, gardens and office spaces.

So there are plenty of options to consider when choosing a location for your brand photography. The question you should be asking yourself is, where best reflects your brand identity?