Creating Images That Brand You — Pushing Toward the Iconic
What do I mean by creating photographs that brand you?
Photographing for your brand is photographing with “intent.” I call it deliberate portfolio preparation.
That means making images that have a reason to be made, continuity, and stylistic connection to the images that are already a part of your lexicon — that body of work that is to become your iconic images.
Now, I am not talking about iconic images in the sense of the incredible photographs that are globally or even internationally known.
Those may come around in a photographer’s career so rarely that we cannot actually plan them.
Avedon’s “Dovina with the Elephant”, Paul Fusco’s “Robert F. Kennedy's Funeral Train”, Eddie Adam’s photograph of a Vietcong soldier being executed, Armstrong on the moon, Annie’s shot of John Lennon and Yoko Ono in bed for the cover of “Rolling Stone” magazine… these are images that are iconic of a time and place that can be shared throughout cultures and even generations.
They are rare. They are precious. They can be powerful. They can change a country’s attitude toward culture, fashion, and even war.
I am talking more about the iconic shots we do for ourselves. Those shots help us define what we are about. Photographs that reveal our style better than others in our portfolio may show. Photographs with real or imagined intent — on display and hopefully remembered — help viewers understand more about what our photographic mission is.
Photographs with intent.
In the commercial world, images may have very easy-to-understand intents. We want the image to convey something about the product or service that it is showcasing, hoping to sell more.
If something is new or innovative, the photography may intend to show how it feels to the user, or how the user feels when they have one.
In advertising, there is a demand to create in the viewer a decidedly positive relationship between the ownership and use of what is being advertised. The intent — the reason for the image — is to drive sales or interest through the visual and emotional response to the photograph.
Photographing for your brand is photographing with intent.
When you are shooting for your book, you are shooting for your brand.
When you are testing, you are shooting for your brand.
When you are shooting for fun or just because you want to see what stuff looks like when it is photographed, you are shooting for your brand.
Making images that are as distinctly yours as possible means that everything you are working on is moving you toward that body of work that is vitally important. Each and every image that gets recorded is part of your work experience.
There are rare great ones, a few good ones, and a vast amount of ‘meh’ stuff we all do. And we ALL must make a lot of ‘meh’ work to get those good and, hopefully, rare great images.
It’s called working.
It’s the way we get to something good… we practice and practice.
“Practice makes perfect,” some say.
And they are wrong.
Practicing “perfectly” makes perfect. If all that was required was practice, then perfection would be a mechanical and easily attainable goal. But there are additional needs that have to be included.
The knowledge of the basics, the desire for more skills, good coaching, and brutal self-evaluation.
Metrics. We call them METRICS.
I am learning to play the saxophone. I practice (not as much as I need to, but I am not a sax player) with the goal of learning the saxophone.
Practicing scales, runs, blues scales, breath control, alternate fingerings… it is done with deliberateness.
I do it with the knowledge that I want to work within traditional music paradigms (rhythm, scales, modes of western music)
If I simply bought a saxophone and started ‘practicing’ without knowing what I was doing, it would not be a recipe for success. The squawks and squeals and scary sounds that would result may be ‘playing the saxophone’ but not within the definitions that I — or my listeners — demand.
In photography, it is no different. You know what you want to achieve, then you work toward achieving it. Having that goal in mind makes the work become intentional, and that helps with the execution.
In advertising, we have the brief, an AD, Brand Manager, and a team of folks that help guide the intent. In editorial, there will be a reason for the image to be made, and that reason is within the article it is made to illustrate.
This image by Dan Winters is one of my favorites. Nolan Ryan is a legendary pitcher who has been lionized and loved by baseball fans the world over. Now there is a question over whether he will be able to pull the new team he bought out of a terrible financial position. Winter’s photograph is both a loving portrait of a great baseball player, in the sun, in the place where his fame was achieved, and there is a shadow moving across him.
The ‘shadow of failure’ perhaps? Is Ryan emerging or is the shadow beginning to cover him? I don’t know, but I know that there is a great deal of ‘intent’ in that image. That is one of the reasons Winters is such a wonderful photographer. It isn’t an image of a guy, it is an image of a guy who is in danger of being swallowed by terrible financial and other challenges… his ‘day in the sun’ being overshadowed by the complexity of the economics of baseball.
At least that is the way I see it, and reading the article leads me to believe I have read the image correctly. And that image is a wonderful representative of the ‘brand’ — Dan Winters.
Does that high level of ‘intent’ transfer over to every image we do? Probably not, sometimes we simply have to get a great shot of Mr. Smith, a real estate investor, that will be used on his brochure. Our intent may be simply to make Smith look good for his brochure.
Such is the nature of commercial photography.
The ability to make those images — bland, but clean and useable — is another part of your brand as a photographer. The pragmatic approach gets the shot that is needed, and with the intent of the user, or client, in mind. As it should be.
When we are working on our own stuff, we may have to fabricate some intent. Make up the reason for the image… then shoot it with that deliberate intention in mind.
Our work must reflect our intentional choices for making the image. Everything we do is involved — the composition, lighting, styling, angle, gesture, expression, emotion, color, lens, and camera… these are choices we make — with deliberateness — as we are shooting. And when these choices begin to develop into a pattern, with results that are interesting and images that we like, we may be on track to creating our style, our ‘brand’ of imagery.
There is a moment when you are shooting when you know you are doing something that is working for you. It may be while a shoot is in progress, and you start to see how the elements are coming to you without less interference than before. It may be when a shot pops into your head one morning, and you instinctively know how to make it. It may be when you are looking at a bunch of images in your ‘possibilities’ folder and a set of images begins to come together to form a cohesive set.
This work may start to represent your brand, your style. And it may form the basis of an ever-growing “body of work” that will become a stronger and more powerful portfolio.
That is a pretty cool moment, photographically, and one you may have several times in your career. We sit for a moment and reflect that we may have hit a nice place in our creative journey. Cool. Enjoy it while you can, more work follows as we begin new challenges.
I am a photographer, designer, and photo editor. You can find me at my self-named website or at Project 52 Pro System (enrollment begins January 6, 2023) where I teach commercial photography online. This is our tenth year of teaching, and it is the most unique online class you will find anywhere.
You can find my books on Amazon, and I have taught two classes at CREATIVELIVE.
