10 Ways To Improve Your Branding + Live Event Shoots

Being a professional branding and live event photographer isn't just a job, it's a magical journey.

But, truth be told, it's tough to stand out.

To build an easy-to-refer business, you've got to deliver work that's nothing short of incomparable. This is how you stand out in a crowded market of other photographers looking to book the same clients.

When you overdeliver, your clients become your biggest advocates, enthusiastically referring you to others who could benefit from the work you two just did together.

So, how exactly do you achieve this level of work? Here are 10 ways to deliver incomparable work:

1. Strategy is key

Stop flying blind into a session and force yourself to figure it out in the moment. This leads to mixed results - and a healthy serving of anxiety and uncertainty on your part. Not a good headspace to be in before a branding or event shoot. Instead, conduct a strategy call beforehand to understand who they are, how they solve their clients problems, and how they plan to leverage these images. Based on their answers, create an itemized shot sheet that becomes your roadmap for the entire session. This will guide your creative choices during the shoot and in post-production, which will lead to a more valuable image portfolio you deliver to them.

2. Understand your playspace

Familiarizing yourself with the space for a branding session or the venue for a live event helps you visualize where and how to create the specific photos on the shot sheet that you created during the strategy call. This reconnaissance mission is critical to anticipate lighting, identify captivating backdrops, and foresee potential challenges. The more familiar you become with the space and place you’re shooting, the easier it will be to navigate around potential variables that pop up unexpectedly.

3. Ignore other photographers and develop your own style

In the sea of photographers, your style is your signature. It’s about experimenting, breaking away from what others are doing in order to find a rhythm and look that feels natural to you. This individuality is what makes your work instantly recognizable and sought after. During a brand session or live event, when searching for the right angle and vantage point, listen to your intuition and lean into how you feel is the best way to capture the moment, regardless if you’ve never seen a photographer in your space deliver work like this before. Make your work YOURS.

4. Create unique compositions

Each shot composition, whether wide, medium, or close-up, paints a different stroke in your story. It's about creating a visual symphony that captures the essence of the event or portrait. When you find a spot that places the subject in a positive light, don’t be satisfied with one composition - zoom in and out from the same spot to create that variety. That will offer clients more variety from which to choose when in need of images for specific marketing and promotional projects.

5. Explore different vantage points from high and low

Every new angle offers a fresh perspective and provides your clients and their marketing teams a unique visual narrative. Shooting from above can capture the grandeur or layout of an event, while low angles can add a dramatic, inspiring presence or spotlight a specific element. Jump on a chair or roll around on the floor - unique angles generate visual variety from shot-to-shot, which is exactly what your clients need. Providing them photos from the same vantage points is not only boring and repetitive, but it’s also a waste of their investment.

6. Own your expertise

Confidence behind the camera translates to magic in the photos. It’s about guiding your clients with assurance, providing clear direction, and making decisive choices that enhance the shoot's outcome. You are in the driver's seat when that camera is in your hand - act accordingly. If you don't, you will lose your client's trust that you can deliver on your promise, and that doubt will be written all over their face, which will render the photos you create useless.

7. Have an unquenchable thirst for better

Every click of the shutter is a chance to surpass your previous best. It’s a relentless pursuit of improvement, a journey where each shot is an opportunity to push your creative boundaries. Even if you feel like you've crushed it, keep pushing to crush it some more. Overwhelm them with a wealth of visual asset options in order to overdeliver on your promise.

8. Be focused

In the fast-paced world of event and branding photography, distractions are your nemesis. Staying focused and immersed in the environment ensures you’re always ready to capture fleeting moments. What does that mean? Number 1 - stay off your damn phone! Number 2 - keep the chit-chat with participants in the room to a minimum. You have a job to do, so do it!

9. Deliver a portfolio that dances

The work doesn’t end when the camera goes back into the bag and you go home. Next step - cull the mountain of photos you created. Once that's done, rather than simply slap on a color treatment, add some noise reduction and sharpening and call it a day, challenge yourself to add to the visual variety that is inherent in these photos. Play with cropping the images to increase the dynamic quality of the moment you captured. Explore with desaturating specific images that would enhance the emotive quality they possess. When you add these two variables into the post-production mix, that enhances the visual variety from shot-to-shot, which creates opportunities for your clients to leverage more of the photos you delivered to them.

10. Monday morning quarterback the delivered portfolio

The work isn’t done once the image portfolio is delivered. Take time to sit down and critically review every single photo you sent to the client. Assess the technical and creative choices you made that went into producing that image. What worked well? What needs improvement for next time? Take notes and implement what you’ve learned into your next shoot.

Delivering incomparable work is a journey that takes time, effort and commitment to produce on repeat.

It also results in a far more intense experience when you're behind the camera. But, at the end of the day, the results that you deliver based on that effort are what ultimately fills up your calendar.

That’s how you stand out from other branding and live event photographers, and earn the right to charge premium rates.

Own it, and watch as your calendar becomes as incomparable as your work.