Are you ready for your next era? In today’s episode, I’m talking about what’s next for you and your business – and how to choose the best brand photographer to capture it all. Let’s dive into 7 key tips to consider when picking your brand photographer!

On Quianna Marie Weekly, we’re chatting about business growing pains, finding genuine connections, and celebrating wins of all sizes through the lens of a photographer at heart. Sprinkled throughout stories and interviews with past clients, photographers and other business owners this podcast is designed to help you step into your purpose and to truly create a life you’re proud of, a life worth photographing and sharing.

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Today’s episode is brought to you by The Green House, my resource garden for photographers! Let me help you AMPLIFY your heart online and in real life to turn bridesmaids into future brides through templates, workshops, and freebies!

Review The Show Notes:

Match The Vibe (4:20)

Experience With Brand Shoots (5:43)

They Ask The Best Questions (7:25)

Location, Location, Location (9:04)

They Capture B-Roll For You (11:05)

Check Their Reviews And Testimonials (13:40)

Do An Energy Check (15:06)

Mentioned In This Episode:

Ready To Book With Quianna?: quiannamarie.com/book

Lucky 13 Quarterly Content Creation: quiannamarie.com/13

Episode 153 6 Figure Launch with Felicia Romero: quiannamarieblog.com/2024/08/26/153-6-figure-launch-with-felicia-romero

Connect with Quianna:

Website: quiannamarie.com

Instagram: instagram.com/quiannamarie

Review the Transcript:

Before we dive in, I wanna pause and I wanna talk to you for a second. If you’ve been feeling that little nudge lately, like I know I’m good at what I do, I know I’m legit, I know my clients get results, and if we can let our inner child speak up, I bet she’s closed fist. Speaking with conviction, I know I’m the best at what I do.

You may be feeling that confidence, that focus and power behind those words, but your brand doesn’t fully show that yet. I want you to listen up real quick, okay? You are not behind, you are not being overlooked. You’re not starting over. You are leveling up. You’re investing in education every day. You’re learning from real life experiences.

You’re getting yourself in rooms that feel like you belong. This season feels different because you’ve built the foundations, you’ve done the work, you’ve earned the confidence, and now your business is asking for proof. Not in a performative like fake way, but in a visual, tangible, I know what the heck I’m doing kind of way, right.

A brand shoot isn’t about pretending to be something you’re not. It’s about documenting the growth that’s already happened. It’s about showing your audience the face behind the results, the energy behind your offers, the experience of working with you and what it really feels like to be your client.

Honestly, it’s also about accountability. It’s about saying, I’m ready to be seen and I’m trusted for this next era. So if you’re nodding your head and it feels like this is landing in your chest and it just feels like, yes, this is what I need right now, you’re in the right place, my love. This episode is for the business owners, photographers, healers, coaches, and entrepreneurs who already know their value and are ready for their brand to finally reflect that.

Because once your visuals catch up to your impact, oh my goodness, everything moves faster. Once you decide it’s crazy how quickly the universe conspires in your favor. Booking a brand shoot is perfect for your next launch, celebrating the new year building height for your next offer, and refreshing your content quarterly to stay top of mind and relevant for ever changing social media platforms.

So let’s talk about what’s next and how to choose the right brand photographer to capture this version of you. This entire episode is dedicated to you. I put my heart and soul into creating an intentional checklist to help you determine the best brand photographer for your next photo shoot. Of course, I’d be honored to be your photographer, but I also know it’s humanly impossible to work with each and every one of you around the world.

Grab your notebook and get cozy with your iced coffee. My goal with this episode is to help you feel prepared and maximize your next shoot. Whether it’s with me or your local favorite photographer, let’s get this party started!

Welcome to Quianna Marie Weekly, a podcast for creatives who love to celebrate wins bigger, small by dancing in the kitchen.

Photographers who are excited to. Serve their clients and friends who are ready to chase really, really big dreams. You can find all of the resources mentioned in this episode@kianamarie.com slash podcast. Join me as I share weekly motivation, chat about growing pains, finding genuine connections, and.

Celebrating your wins through the lens of a photographer at heart. Come join me for a dance party. Ready? Let’s go.

Alrighty. You know it’s time to book a photo shoot and celebrate This next era spring is just around the corner, perfect for new growth, launching new offers, and blooming your business. Before we talk about making that perfect match, I think it’s important to start brainstorming what type of brand session you’re looking for and what you’re feeling the excitement to book it for right now.

Do you have a launch coming up? Are you recording your next course? Have you pivoted recently added a new team member thinking about starting a membership or have mini sessions or a wedding season ahead to plan for? Have you expanded your business in any way? Do you need updates to fuel your business and social media content?

It’s important to start with a game plan, right? We have to start here first. If you’re free balling it and looking to book a brand photographer for headshot just to look pretty, girl, we need a better plan. Okay? Now, not all photographers are delivering the same experiences when it comes to branding sessions, so let’s crank out this list of seven key tips to consider to help find your dream branding photographer after you have a good starting point, motive, and game plan for this next brand session, let’s do a vibe check with your favorite local photographers.

1 – Match The Vibe

Okay, so number one, key tip Number one, match the vibe. You want someone whose visual style actually matches your brand vibe. It’s like music, right? Some photographers shoot, pop, some shoot jazz, some shoot. Rock and roll. I’m a country girl, right? But really all I mean with that is does their vibe match your business?

A very talented photographer will be able to match the vibe you’re looking for. Imagine a moody speakeasy lounge with dramatic lighting versus a kid’s pajama line with spring Easter colors in the natural daylight, right? Like those are very different. Just like wedding photographers, most photographers have a visual style of photography and build consistency with that style.

Dark and moody. True to color and light and airy, pretty much sum up the three most popular styles. Look at portfolios with intention, not just the Instagram homepage, but the whole body of work. You’re gonna want your brand to align with the work they’re already delivering for their past clients. Do they have experience photographing in studios at the beach or in dark spaces for a spa, right?

Like you need to insert your business, your brand, and your client experience into those photos. You need to be able to see yourself with that style of photography, do the research to find that style that matches your brand and vibe. You’re gonna find this by searching their social media, their websites, and their portfolio. We’re gonna start there.

2 – Experience With Branding Photography

Key tip number two. Your photographer’s gonna have experience with brand shoots, not just portraits and weddings. Okay, so do they actually understand brand photography, not just headshots or family portraits? Some photographers are amazing at capturing beautiful portraits, but brand shoots are different because we need photos that support your offers, your reels, captions, email campaigns, Pinterest, basically every part of your business ecosystem.

Do they show you how to repurpose that shoot into months of marketing assets? The photographer you choose should walk you through one brand session that can fuel Instagram posts, Instagram stories, highlights, right? All the things Instagram related, your Pinterest pins, tiktoks. Emails your website content, right?

Like are we updating our About Me page it? If it’s been a while, it’s probably time to update that. Any future ads that you’re planning to promote speaking promos, right? If you’re pitching yourself to speak on podcast, if you are pitching yourself for speaking events, right? Like what do those headshots look like?

And then of course, going back to Instagram, your reels, okay? Like any type of video, social media content, are they prepping you and fueling all that content? A good photographer will make you look your best, but the best photographers create visuals that do the selling for you as a photographer, I love asking where will these images live?

What offers are you promoting? What’s coming up in your business? If your photographer isn’t asking these questions, it’s not a big enough reason to run and book someone else, but check their experience. It’s important to me to help answer any of the questions you have about branding photographer, but I will also argue that it’s even more important for me to ask even more questions.

Which leads me to the next key tip.

3 – Prepping For Your Brand Session With Better Questions

Key tip number three, they ask the best questions. It’s kind of like dating, right? The best photographers ask better questions than your dusty high school boyfriend, right? So instead of what outfit are you planning to wear, I like to ask, or I should say, the best branding photographers like to ask, what are your dream clients pain points and desires?

What offers do you plan to launch after this shoot, and this is one of my favorites, where do you see your business in the next six months or in the next year? So I, I’m a dreamer. I love thinking really, really big and looking at the big picture. I’m talking like I’m always thinking about generations behind me and generations ahead of me, right?

And I think sometimes we can get lost in the big, big dreams without finding those. Like Stepladders or like those, like that staircase of steps to actually get there, right? They just take baby steps. But what does that look like, right? What is your six month plan and how can we take the images and the video content that fuels that vision, right?

Like, we need to plant you there now as if it’s already yours. When photographers ask those deeper questions, that’s when you know they value your business goals, not just photos, right? This is the difference between a $200 headshot and a three to $5,000 brand photographer. Remember, you’re not gonna know any of this unless you actually talk and vet a handful of photographers.

If you’re just scrolling Pinterest and Instagram, you’re missing out on a ton of information to help you make the best decision for your brand. This is your reminder to get on the phone book connection calls, and actually speak to photographers and interview them.

4 – Location, Location, Location

Great photographers think visually and strategically. They don’t just pick pretty studios and random locations. They pick locations that tell your story not theirs. Your branding photos should feel like a storybook, not a series of random moments and trendy hotspots. Right? Sorry, I’m like dating myself.

Trendy, hotspot. You know what I mean? Right. I want you to think back to your most recent shoot. It could have been last season or three years ago, whenever it was the last one, but I wanna ask you, were the visuals just pretty, or did you book those headshots because you have a new haircut? Right. Or did they match your messaging, your offers?

Did your audience resonate with them at all? Right. There’s nothing worse than investing a buttload of money in a photo shoot and then having your friends, your clients be like, who is that girl? And not in a, like, who has like, who’s that girl? Who has the audacity to wear that outfit type of energy? We’re not talking about that.

We’re talking about like, that’s not you energy. Right? Like and we know it, right? Like there’s a big difference between showing up, feeling elevated and powerful and, and feeling that next era of success versus just completely not being yourself. Right. That’s what I’m going after. I’m going after. Asking those questions, developing those intentional locations for you, not for me in my portfolio, right?

So good photographers will have a handful of location options for you, so don’t stress about the actual studio addresses. Instead, put your energy into the locations that make you feel something or mean something to you in your brand. Working with your photographer should feel like a collaboration, bouncing ideas, connecting the dots, and bringing your visuals to life.

Call me extra, but when I plan branding sessions, I get so wrapped up in the visions and lofty thoughts of my clients ideas that I literally feel like I’m co-creating with God. It’s that impactful and that deep, like it just, oh my gosh, it just feels so powerful. It’s so beautiful. Finding a photographer that’s just as passionate as you are about your business will make or break your shoot.

5 – Strategic B-Roll For Your Brand

Key tip number five B-roll. Listen, your photo gallery is everything and B-roll helps build that trust shares your personality and creates FOMO for your client experience even faster. Brand photographers who document the experience, the laughter, the process, the authentic moments give you so much more content than someone who just takes really pretty posed photos.

We need those. I am not disregarding those. I am not saying they are less than or not as equal. They are literally, this is what you’re invested in, right? Like this is the whole point, is getting those professional photos. And B-roll supplements that right it. It’s like putting gas on the fire. The fire being your photos and the gas being that B-roll that just makes it go crazy, right?

This is the kind of content that fuels reels, blogs, emails. And conversations. It helps build your community. It helps start conversations. Like it literally gets clients talking back to you and engaging in your reels, engaging in your comments, and DMing you, not just updating your website. Okay. Do you see why this is so important?

Call me biased over here, but I believe you need both. You need both photography and B-roll to fuel your marketing and making selling so much easier. Does the photographer, you’re looking into offer B-roll and behind the scene video, it could totally be an add-on, but do they even offer it not just as a line item for your branding package, but do they actively share B-roll on their own content?

Right? Like for their own stuff, like on their Instagram, on the photographers Instagram or any of their tiktoks or any of their social media, are they actively sharing behind the scenes? Can you picture yourself working with them? Can you see yourself in front of their camera? Can you hear their voice?

Like, can you actually hear their voice? Like you do know the sound of their voice based on the content they’re sharing. Do you feel the vibes in the energy? Have you spotted your biz besties or mentors working with them too? You see, even if B roll is included, do you actually have a taste of what kind of footage you’ll receive for your shoot?

The more photographers share B-roll, the more I trust them to actually remember to take some during my own shoots, right? Like. If they’re actively showing it, like to me, it’s a part of their system, it’s a part of their workflow to include B-roll. And if they’re doing it sporadically or they get in their car and rant, I didn’t take any B-roll today.

Like, ooh, like I’m hoping if I’m paying for an add-on that it is a priority, but for a lot of photographers it’s not. Right. At this point in the game, it’s a no-brainer to include B-roll for your next photo shoot. It builds hype and celebrates the fact that you’re literally investing in your business in real time.

6 – Testimonials and Results.

This is where a little stocking comes in. Check their reviews and check some receipts. Okay. Ask your photographer about the clients they’ve worked with and the results they’ve helped their clients achieve. Do their galleries help online coaches sell out their programs?

Where have they seen their work, right? Like, have they been on billboards? Have they been in commercials? Have their images gone viral on Facebook ads? Right? Like, I wanna know all the things. What is everyone else saying about their work and their experience of working with them? Take note of their experience and how they feel about the shoot.

This is a key tip. As you are looking through those reviews, if they don’t even mention the quality of the photos and share more about how much they love the experience as the bare minimum, you have a winner. Okay, so if this is sparking some curiosity for you, I need you to add Episode 153: Six Figure Launch with Felicia Romero to her playlist to share how a recent shoot with my business bestie Felicia Romero helped generate over six figures after our brand shoot, like a six figure launch, right?

Those are impressive numbers. Of course, I’m not taking any credit for her successful launch, but I am taking notes that she also happened to hit those numbers after updating her sales pages. Funnels and ads with updated photos from our brand. Shoot, those numbers don’t lie. Okay, so that’s Episode Number 153 on Quianna Marie weekly.

If you wanna learn more about that and hear more from Felicia, the last key tip before booking your next brand photographer.

7 – Energy Check

Okay, number seven, key tip number seven, energy check. Finally, I wanna pause and say this, your relationship with your photographer is part of the relationship. You should feel understood, seen, comfortable, excited, aligned, because if there’s tension or awkwardness, or weirdness in the session, it will show in the photos.

Your photographer should make you feel comfortable in your own skin, speak your language and help connect the dots in your head. Once again, you are only gonna get these vibes if you actually talk to them, right? If you have the opportunity to see them speak or get to bump into them at an event, even better.

Recently I had the opportunity to witness a photographer capture an event, and I was shocked to see how she spoke to vendors around her, the words she used to pose people and overall her energy was just off. Now, sure, it may have been a very stressful environment, but I’ve been following her for a long time and I’ve considered booking with her before.

But after that, after seeing her working under pressure, it’s a hard pass for me. Now, you may not have the opportunity to see your photographer capture an entire conference, local event, or even another photo shoot before you book, so I get that. This is why it’s important, at the very least, to book a zoom call with them to test your intuition and to do a vibe check.

You’re gonna wanna get your gallery back and feel like you not be overly directed, too. Posey, overly edited, right? Anything but yourself. All right, that wraps up our seven key tips. I’m gonna recap them real quick for you. So booking your next photographer sounds fun and not like another checklist with more on your plate.

Okay. So we’re gonna fire fire through these. Okay. Number one, match the vibe. Check their style of photography and research photographers that match the style lighting and look your attracted to. Number two experience. Do some research to see if your photographer is actually an intentional brand photographer or just book some randomly during the week for extra cash.

Sure, the photos may look nice, but brand photographers bring so much more to the table to amplify your messaging, bring your visions to life, and sell out your next offer. Number three, they ask better questions. Your brand new photographer will absolutely help answer any questions you may have to prepare for your shoot, but the best photographers ask you even more questions.

They wanna know the details to help all those deep, deep thoughts and inner wisdom come through you into the photos. Number four, location. Brand photographers will have a handful of locations they love, but the magic comes from when they can match your brand energy and vibes to vetted locations that actually tell your story, not just make their portfolio look more legit.

Number five B-roll. Imagine leaving your next brand shoot with dozens of reels ready to post sharing the behind the scenes of your client experience and documenting your history in the making. This is a must for me, and not all photographers offer this. Make sure to check, or if they don’t offer it, consider hiring an assistant to capture B-roll for you just in case.

Number six, testimonials and results. Ask for those receipts, baby. Okay? Like you have to do that research. Reach out to past clients that they have worked with and slide into their dms. Ask them, say, Hey, your photos are beautiful. Can you tell me more about your experience working with that photographer?

Number seven, vibe. Check before you sign that contract, make sure the vibes are in check. Do you feel comfortable speaking to them? Do they let you speak and share your brand story without cutting you off and inserting their own agenda or ideas? Can they not only see your vision, but also share visuals, songs, ideas, smells, or any of the senses to truly feel what you’re trying to create?

If you’re in the phase of researching, evaluating, choosing a brand photographer, use this checklist. It could be a gut check, it could be a reminder. Check the show notes so you have like a little checklist, right? All the things. And if you’re thinking, I want someone who actually gets my brand, my personality, my offers, what I’m selling now, and also what I’m looking forward to selling in the future.

Someone who can help me with strategy, content, guidance, and visuals that work for my business. You already know it’s me. Hello, it’s me. I would love to plan that with you. I would love to brainstorm with you. I would love to pop you in my ear as I walk around the backyard with Faith and Skye and my two German Shepherds, and we can go on a hot girl walk and just plan this out, like let’s hash it out.

Share your ideas. Share what’s ahead. I cannot wait to hear it all. So whether you want me here in Phoenix, in Scottsdale, here in the East Valley of Arizona for a studio session, or I fly to you, let’s plan a session that feels aligned with who you are and where you’re going. Ready to book. Head to the show notes or head to keana marie.com and let’s make your next year your most visible, abundant, and connected year.

Yet I am here for this energy. I am showing up. In fact, I have just recently signed up for the camera era with my bestie page major, so prepare to be sick of me in the best way. I am so excited. Oh, and before I go, I wanna invite you to my next Lucky 13 Content Day. These quarterly mini sessions are perfect for small business owners that need quick updates, fresh content, and a community touchpoint with other local business owners right here in the valley.

Head over to the show notes to get on the wait list for Lucky 13, or DM Me Lucky 13, and I’ll send the link over to share all the details. I would love to see you for that next mini session day. They happen quarterly and they’re just, they’re so much fun. I’m beyond grateful to be your photographer and would love the opportunity to work with you, to collaborate with you, and to bring your visions to life.

We’re both on a mission, my love, our callings are no longer whispers. They’re loud and undeniable. Let’s make it happen. Cheers to you, your brand, and the legacy you’re creating. Your dream. Clients are praying for you. They are looking for you. We need to help them find you, right? Let’s show up for them.

Keep on dancing, baby. I cannot wait to see you next week. Okay? Love you. Bye. That’s a wrap on another episode of Quianna Marie Weekly. Thank you so much for your listenership and support. You can find the resources and show notes for this episode and more at QuiannaMarie.com/podcast, I’d be honored if you’d show your support by leaving a review and rating on your favorite podcast app.

Until next time, keep on on dancing.

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