Make Up Artist Brand Photos: Feature Shoot
Why do you Need Brand Photos as a Make Up Artist?
It’s easy as a make up artist to rely on the photos from actual weddings or shoots you’ve worked on – but for your brand photos, your imagery should be consistent. In fact, cohesive brand imagery is key for any business. But when you regularly work alongside photographers, why would you question just using their images? You need a portfolio of work, and the shoots you work on absolutely reflect your expertise. However, when all of those photos, taken in different photographic styles, light and environments come together – that’s when your website or feed can suddenly start to look, well, a bit ‘off’. Consistency is key, and that same level of artistic consistency you uphold in your make up skills should be applied to your brand photos too. That’s the quandary that award winning make up artist, Amanda, knew she was facing when she upgraded her website.
Brand Photography for an Award Winning Make Up Artist
As a multiple award winning and highly skilled artist, she knew that she needed a cohesive and consistent set of brand photos to reflect this in her business online. Her stunning and always natural approach and down to earth nature needed to shine through. Her images also needed to reflect the different types and the stages of the services she offered too. Working together on her brand image, we decided to focus on demonstrating:
1) her wealth of experience
2) the customer experience
3) her particular services, products and offerings
4) behind the scenes and
5) (obviously) her personality and who she is. After all, it’s her business and when you buy from an independent business, the person delivering the services is the key to it all.
Behind the Scenes
As a make up artist, your brand photos should include the client experience but also the expertise and depth of knowledge involved in getting a particular look spot on. What we as business owners take for granted as the daily grind is actually an important part of demonstrating the processes involved. Which means that everything from taking down client details to the research and preparation that goes into a session is part of what goes on behind the scenes of your business. It’s all part of the story that you can tell with your brand photos in your social feed or describe on your about page.
The Experience
Your clients can see the end result so easily from your portfolio – and that’s primarily why they select you. What seals the deal is knowing that you’re the right person for them. Allowing them into what the whole experience feels like is a really effective way of doing just that. Let your clients imagine themselves in the make-up artist’s chair or going through the consultation process. It’s far harder to sell something that you cannot yet see yourself doing. Showing the initial meeting stages, the client consultation as well as the actual make-up sessions was a big part of what we photographed in the shoot.
The Tools of your Trade
How many brushes do you have in your case? Hundreds and thousands more than your typical client – that’s how many! The tools of your trade are the key to you being able to work your magic. While they might seem as commonplace as a camera does to me, they still make your clients look on in awe. Your tools – in any business – are also a key giveaway to what you do in an instant. Sometimes it’s really important to show things as simply and instantly recognisable as the services you offer.
Who you are
Personality is key to any freelancer business – once you’ve demonstrated the magic of what makes you excel, your persona clinches it. So we needed not only portraits that reflect how approachable she is, but Amanda in action, behind the scenes and having a bit of fun – all to inject the essence of her personality into her online presence.
