Brand Photography: 86th + Trend

When you’re looking for a photographer for your business, you don’t only want beautiful images, but you want to know that the images are actually going to fit with your brand, that they’ll represent your values.

What good are pretty images that have nothing to do with you?

So I want to begin sharing more of the process behind how we reach that final gallery of images. Let’s begin with our recent project with Rachelle, a web designer running her own business, 86th & Trend.

Brand Photography at The Society Hotel Rooftop Cafe in Portland

Step 1: start the conversation

First thing after hearing from Rachelle, we scheduled a coffee date so I could hear all the details! I asked questions like:

  • What do you offer and what do you love about what you do?

  • What have been some of your favorite projects to date?

  • Who is your dream client? What are their demographics, lifestyle preferences, concerns?

  • What adjectives best describe how you want your business to make people feel?

  • What are some important values in your business?

  • What are some topics or interests you connect personally with your clients on?

And then, since Rachelle was in the process of redesigning her own website, we got into the nitty gritty of exactly which type of images she needed for each page of her website. Of course, her final images were going to be used all throughout her business – including social media, headshot images, and much more – but it’s so important to the web design process to have images that tell your story seamlessly!

Brand Photography Mood Board Evernew

Step 2: Research + Development

After our initial conversation, I took a few days to research her brand more thoroughly, her competition, her brand colors and styles, and developed a custom proposal that cast a vision for the content that we’d create together.

The proposal included the vision board (to the right) that we worked off for our shoot, along with:

  • Our Goal:
    To develop a library of images for a fresh website and for repurposing on social media that represent Rachelle and her web design work as 86th and Trend as approachable, bright, modern, and reliable. 

  • Rachelle’s Connecting Points with her clients that we wanted to supply images to fuel those conversations on social media:
    - Life as an entrepreneurial mom
    - Health + strength
    - Fueled by good coffee
    - Travel + adventure
    - Beautiful aesthetics + interiors

  • The Scenes we would shoot to develop those 5 connecting points and supply images for her website (We ended up finding an Airbnb that allowed us to group the Home + Studio scenes into one location):
    - Home: curled up on couch, maps of places you’ve lived, working from home, life as a mom + business owner
    - Coffee Shop: activity, meetings with clients, working remotely
    - Studio: working at a desk, details and flat lays, headshot portraits

  • Our basic shot list to ensure we captured the pivotal images for her site:
    - header images with white space
    - about page portrait image
    - contact page portrait image (coffee shop)
    - services page working image
    - flat lays + details as an extra bonus

  • And lastly her pricing options + contract to seal the deal! Her pricing covered not only our creative fee, but also the cost of the Airbnb location and a small budget for props and supplies which we used to get a mug that perfectly matched her primary brand color and of course coffee to complete the coffee shop scene!

Brand Photography at Airbnb in Portland

Step 3: Shoot + Refine + implement

On our session day, we texted a bit about outfits and location details and then just enjoyed our time creating together!

Within two weeks, she had a gallery of over 100 images for her to select from for her new website and begin publishing immediately to social media.

The implementation process is actually really key here. We really hope you enjoy your images, but we especially want to help in any way we can as you begin to put them to use. Currently, Rachelle is still working hard to implement the full vision for these images as she finishes work on her site. And we can’t wait to see them integrated throughout her business!

We hope to not only deliver images and sign off, but to truly set you up for success through the final stage of this process.

So without further ado, take a look at a sample of her gallery!

We would love to hear what you think!
What adjectives come to mind when you look at her images?
Do you have a sense of some of the things Rachelle values and enjoys?

PhotographyLauren EdmondsPortland Brand Photography, Portland Entrepreneurs, Canby Photographer, Commercial Photography, Personal Brand PhotographyComment