Did you know great photography elevates a brand's image immensely in the digital world? Yes, a brand, apart from colours, logos, text your brand can establish itself through photos. These photos can be anything from your products, services, process, space or just about anything unique to your brand that voices and fits well with your brand identity.

While stock photos may come in handy, they scream of generic content. The last thing any brand wants is to be associated with the same images used by other brands too. The tell-tale stock images come in the form of blown-up reactions of models, men and women in formal attire who are standing and reacting in an organized manner. Sometime, these stock photos could be images in low resolutions. But with that said, stock images can be used in a brand, but they need to be selectively curated.

Ruling out stock photos, how can you make most of the brand photos?

One of the underestimated and overlooked element is to put together a photography-style even as the brand guidelines. This makes conversations with photographers and marketing team easy. More importantly, it makes the brand imagery stay consistent over time.

What difference can a style guide make?

Style guides can suggest ideas of how the image needs to be composed. It can be involving patterns, textures, overlays amongst others. This would make the brand identified with a look at the photo used.

Starbucks's style guide gives details to food stylist and the photographer involved in the shoot. These instructions are simple and direct. It increases standard and the aesthetics involved in composing. Starbucks also specify what they would not recommend showing as a part of their brand image.

#101 Going Candid

Think of a brand image that got stuck on your head, now analyse why you remember that particular picture? Most often you would note it would be a candid photo, the one which you could resonate with, connect to, innately.

#102 Beware of attention derailers

Say no to group images

An image of a single shoe that belongs to a kid in the middle of earthquake debris strikes hard. Similarly, images for branding work better with one person in the frame. This guarantees undivided attention and focuses on the brand more.

Say no to clutter

'The more, the merrier', never work in brand photography. Chaos and clutter results in confusion. There is always a chance that the story might get interpreted in multiple ways. This often does not toy well with the story that the brand wants to convey.

Watchful of other brands

It might be something as simple as a watch in an electronics photo shoot. It can take away the attention, the effort and the focus from the electronic brand. This can sometimes be extremely subtle. Being mindful of the surroundings is important.

#103 Be relevant and current

Be up to date on world happenings is important to create current images. Staying relevant to trends particular to the industry can draw attention very quickly. It is important to keep in mind that the processing time from the shoot until the final process and capitalize on trends on time.

#104 Having the digital sense

Of the many things that can make a brand photo go bad, low-resolution images almost always top the list. One has to be mindful of the dimensions to ensure fit as well. Being that colours used in print and digital can vary, the design team needs to prepare mindfully.

Brand photography is a great tool to get the right attention from the right audience. Good brand photography can make a brand memorable and making it sing in a visual-friendly world. As we move to consume content increasingly through our eyes, the need and the relevance is ever increasing.