Stephen Walton Photography Workshops

If you are looking to turn your photography into something more professional, lucrative or just recognisable then you should start off by ‘branding yourself’. I’m going to give you 5 tips on how to create the look of a photography brand and why it’s important.

1. Pick a Photography Business Name

Just like your own name, picking a photography business name is going to represent everything you stand for. Thinking about choosing a photography name that encapsulates how you feel about photography.

A lot of photographers stick with their own name for uniqueness and simplicity. Audiences do like the familiarity of knowing they’re dealing with an individual and not a big company. But that’s not to say you can’t be creative and choose a name that’s more conceptual, global and aspirational.

Take The VuePoint for example. I’ve operated under my own name for many years but when it came time for me to settle down and build a brand I decided to change…

How I Chose ‘The VuePoint’

The VuePoint comes from how I see photography – a simple point of view. All our views are different, much like photography. No time points of view are the same and I wanted to convey that my work was very individual.

There’s nothing wrong with sticking with your name as your photography business name, especially if it’s quite unique. But don’t be afraid to think outside the box too.

2. Design a Logo and Livery

Making yourself a logo for your photography business can be a fun part of creating a photography brand. You don’t need to have graphic design skills either.

You could hire a freelancer to come up with some ideas on sites like Fiverr. Alternatively, you could turn to places like Canva and pick out a template to customise to give yourself potential ideas.

Look a what colours could go into your livery too. I’d say to stick to the 3 colour rule when choosing hues for your photography brand. I, like my approach to photography, kept things simple when picking a livery. White and black are my base and secondary colours, and then a burnt orange tone acts as my accent colour.

Colour psychology is also important to think about. What do the colours you’ve chosen make people feel? Reds while being warm can also remind people of alarms.

Blues can be cold looking yet also professional. Don’t get the colours wrong or choose too many. The 3 colour rule will help with picking a good balance.

There are websites that will give you suggestions of colour palettes that work well together such as Coolors.

3. Make a Photography Website

You can’t 100% rely on making a photography brand just from social media. While it’s the go-to place for advertising these days the amount of misinformation puts doubt on the reliability of profiles and lack of thorough information.

Making yourself a photography website at least gives you the opportunity to expand where social media limits. Create a free account on WordPress, Wix, Weebly or SquareSpace to get started. You don’t need to have web design knowledge either. Most of these platforms are built on drag and drop formats so anyone can build one.

Put together a list of at least 5 pages covering;

– Portfolio (a collection of your best shots based around your work)
– Home Page / Services (what do you offer the world?)
– Pricing
– About
– Contact

You can put more pages together depending upon what your services are but these 5 pages should always be considered when building a photography website for your brand.

The website should carry your logo prominently on the home page and your chosen livery colours should be consistent across all pages. Have a look at some photography websites for inspiration.

4. Create Social Media Templates

To make yourself look like a professional and well-designed photography brand create a bunch of templates for social media.

It’s not as simple as posting photos to Instagram anymore. You need to use stories, reels, TikTok and Pinterest. All these platforms require different dimensions and parameters for posts to look their best. If you tried cropping 1 photo 5 different ways it’s going to look bad in some instances which is not suitable for your photography brand.

Sites like Canva and Adobe Express (formerly Adobe Spark) have different social media posts templates. All you need to do is colour them with your livery tones, add your photography logo and place your image on the template. This means your photo can stay on the template without having to be cropped and skewed.

You may need up to 10 different templates for all your social media. It’s a big job to be constantly keeping accounts up to date with regular posts. Consider this when you are deciding which ones to promote your photography brand on. The more platforms you have, the more work you’ll be doing.

And it’s not just photos you’ll need to post. Video is a huge part of content creation so be prepared to get your face on camera and show your fans what your photography brand is up to.

5. Find a Voice for Your Photography Business

My last tip on how to create a photography brand is all about what you say and do. While building the ‘look’ of your brand is important, how you communicate with your clients and followers is a continual thing, not something you should change over time (unless it’s not working).

Finding a voice for your brand means establishing how you chat with customers. Are you informal and friendly or do you want to keep it formal and professional?

What is the overriding mission of your photography business? Are you wanting to help out other businesses, appeal to young couples, families or other photographers?

Either way, whatever your values and aims you should create a set of words that represent your brand and drop these words regularly in virtual conversations and the copy text on your website too.

This way certain words and phrases become familiar with your brand and clients understand what you stand for.

Did You Enjoy This?

Have these 5 tips on how to create a photography brand helped you? Do you know what your business is missing? I’d love to hear from you and find out other ways brands can get stronger and appeal to your ideal client.