How Food Brands can prepare for a remote photo shoot
Fail to plan and you can plan on failing…we’ve all heard it before, but when you’re doing a remote photoshoot for your food brand you need to remember that it isn’t just you that will fail, it’s an entire company.
Once you have found a photographer to do a remote photoshoot you need to go over quite a bit of information with them to ensure the shoot goes well and your food brand is represented correctly.
Your photographer will need a few pieces of information to make sure they know what your expectations are and how to meet them.
Brand Style Guide - this will detail what your brand colors are, what the story is behind your brand, what your product does and how it should be used, the way you want your audience to feel in response to your marketing materials, etc. This could be extremely helpful to the photographer to know if you like things with soft lighting, edgy lighting, natural lighting, earthy props, a certain audience in mind (feminine vs. masculine).
Project Expectations - this tells the photographer what your food brand is expecting to have delivered and how it will be used, what your goal is with the project. They will need to know how the content they create will be used for marketing (reels, social media, web page content, printed advertising, etc). This will tell them what formats and file sizes, crops, and export settings they need to use when they deliver the content
Food Product Details - What product are you sending and what quantity are you sending (more than one is always appreciated in case anything gets broken or they use one to create the images and need another to be in the images with full packaging, etc), if you need packaging images, how the product is supposed to be used, if you specifically want it used a certain way if there is anything that you absolutely can’t have in images (if you are a vegan food brand you wouldn’t want anything in the images that aren’t in line with a vegan lifestyle, if your food brand has a certain religious affiliation and there are nutrition and dietary guidelines that need to be followed)
Types of Images/Videos - the photographer will need to know if you want to have action shots, still life shots, the product in use, only the product as it arrives, and things like that to make sure they capture everything you need.
Examples - if you have examples that you would like to draw style motivation from, send them to the photographer. This can be very helpful when you aren’t in the photography field, you may not know what all it takes to get a certain shot that you are expecting, or you may not know how to communicate exactly what you’re looking for, but you know a certain image or video fits the description.
Overthink every detail of your project, because when you get to the marketing materials these images and videos will be the foundation of every other decision, so you need to make sure the needs of the food brand are communicated clearly to have the best outcome.
Always Plan Ahead
Make sure you build in time for shipping your food product, having the photos added to a schedule, getting the editing done, and having the images delivered to you. The timeline needs to be agreed on by everyone involved and realistically achievable.
You should be thinking and planning at least 3-6 months ahead for your marketing needs, especially when food is a very seasonal product, certain times of year specific foods are very popular and these teams that work in the food industry have busy seasons. You need to be prepared for this and able to work within those timelines professionally so that your food brand doesn’t suffer the consequences of poor planning.
Your photographer or creative team handling the remote photoshoot should be professional and know how to do this type of work. Make sure you are hiring the right fit for the project. If you are looking to have a recipe created and get the rights to use it and also have content created with that you need to make sure that is in the scope of work that this person delivers. If it isn’t and you can’t find someone that fits each part of your project you may need to re-work the timeline and the deliverables and work with more than one contact for your needs.
Many food photographers can complete this type of project if it is requested by a food brand, and would love the opportunity to create beautiful on-brand images that also have a recipe included in the images and package delivery. You may be able to take what the food photographer creates and hire a food videographer to fulfill the video portion, especially if the recipe is already created. Once again, there are people who can deliver on both photo and video and create the recipe if needed, you just have to find these creative unicorns and understand they will be very busy.
The biggest things to remember to have a successful remote photoshoot for your food brand are:
Flexibility
Professionalism
Realistic expectations
Clear and frequent communication
Plan and schedule everything appropriately and ahead of time
Following these guidelines should ensure a great outcome on all sides and some wonderful connections in your professional network.
