As a small business owner who wants to make the most polished and professional impression you can to establish a report with your potential customers, you know the importance of a consistent aesthetic that is recognizable and easily linked with your brand. You value consistency and brand recognition for your business whether you’re posting on social media, being featured in a publication, featuring a product or service in an advertisement or simply connecting one-on-one in person with your customers.

Keeping a consistent aesthetic to help your people connect with your brand is a detailed process. That’s why, when it comes to creating the most useful collection of brand photographs, we start with our 10 fundamental brand photographs that every small business needs and then build from there.

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1. Headshot

   Headshots are a great way to have an immediate, personal connection with the viewer. They can be used to introduce your team members on your website and social media platforms, letting your clients know who they are and their specialties.
   Headshots can also be a great option to have on hand to quickly send to a publication that may be writing a feature on a specific individual and their skills/contributions. Headshots are some of the most basic and versatile photographs you can use as a business owner.

Headshot created to capture the personal brand of Donna M, a local Publications Manager. | Winston-Salem Headshot and Brand Photographer | Jasper & Fern

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Staff portrait created during a headshot and branding session for local Winston-Salem small business Salem Law - including the very important office pet! | Winston-Salem Small Business Photographer | Jasper & Fern

2. Your Team

Portraits of your team and staff together are a great way to showcase the atmosphere of your company. The relationship between co-workers and between the company owner and their employees gives a customer valuable insight into how they may be treated and the general values of your company.

Some of our favorite ways to use these professional portraits are for your website About or Contact page, thank you cards and greeting cards, and for sharing news involving your whole team.

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Brand photograph for Pfafftown, NC small business, Riverside Farm and Garden, showcasing the friendly and informative atmosphere you can expect at their shop. | Winston-Salem Business and Brand Photogragraphy | Jasper & Fern

3. You and Your Team at Work

Another way to build a brand atmosphere for your potential clients is to showcase you and your team at work. A client can glean valuable insight like how important each project or client is to you or the attention that will be given to their need through witnessing your team work. These photographs give your Customer Care a chance to shine!

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Brand photograph for WO Designs, a Winston-Salem based Interior Design company, showcasing the layouts they create for clients when styling their spaces. | Winston-Salem Small Business and Brand Photographer | Jasper & Fern

4. Products & Services You Provide

Reinforcing your copy with attractive images depicting what you do can make you memorable to your potential clients. When they land on your website, advertisement or a social media post, they are receiving information about what you do visually as well as contextually. The more you can do to make yourself memorable the better - especially in a fast paced world that requires content to grab a person’s attention.

Use photographs like this to help tell the story of your process, give clarity on what you do and provide insight into your brand personality.

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5. Tools of Your Trade

Sometimes it can be difficult to explain to a potential client what it is you do - especially if your niche is so unique and unknown that everything you do is new information to your audience. Showcasing the tools you work with can help you stand out from your competition and be memorable. You can also use these types of brand photographs to provide you the opportunity to speak about a specific part of your process or share valuable educational information with your client.

Brand photograph created for Charlotte based doula, Mama Mpenzi Doula, showcasing her go-bag and essentials for meeting and caring for her expecting mothers at the hospital. | Winston-Salem Small Business and Brand Photographer | Jasper & Fern.

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Brand photograph created for Title Boxing in Clemmons, NC showcasing their boxing lessons. | Winston-Salem Small Business and Brand Photographer | Jasper & Fern

6. Working with Your Customer

When a customer can see what it looks like to work with you, that’s one more important step towards them paying for your services! Many people have apprehension about new experiences or services/products they are not familiar with. You can eliminate those fears by showing your customers not only what it looks like to work with you but also how it feels to work together.

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Brand photograph created for Cooper Counseling, a Mount Airy based counselor, showcasing an office atmosphere that attracts and helps their target client feel comfortable. | Winston-Salem Brand Photographer | Jasper & Fern

7. Your Brand Atmosphere & Location

A potential client can tell a lot about your business by how the atmosphere comes across. Just think about a dentist’s office that has dim lighting, grey carpets and white walls with a greenish hue and no magazines, friendly photographs or comfortable furniture to be seen. Would you feel relaxed walking into this office to have them poke around in your mouth with sharp tools? Likely not - unless your target audience is clinical people with nerves of steel, that is. That’s why you want your building, office or created space to appeal to your specific customer. (Don’t have an office or building but want to create a similar atmosphere? We have a skill for that! Just email us and let us know what you’re looking for.)

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Brand photograph for our own studio, Jasper & Fern, showcasing our work tools and notable personality items that capture the heart of our brand. | Winston-Salem Small Business and Brand Photographer | Jasper & Fern

8. Brand Details of What You Do & Your Brand Personality

Photographs that showcase your brand personality through details help round out a client’s impression of you and general experience with your brand. These photographs provide you an opportunity to share details, stories or experiences in a softer, more subtle way so that your audience doesn’t feel like you are constantly selling to them or promoting yourself.

Keeping a consistent aesthetic with your branded detail photographs gives a polished appeal to your business.

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9. Personality/Lifestyle Portrait

These days people don’t want to only see the traditional headshot when they are seeking out a business. They want to learn a brand’s story and invest in the personality and values behind a company. Having Personality/Lifestyle brand portraits is the perfect way to build this relationship - and there are a plethora of ways to do this!

Brand Portrait for small business Carla Day Consulting, a Winston-Salem based health inspector, showcasing the confident, firm and intense personality she has when she is advocating for a client. | Winston-Salem Branding Photographer | Jasper & Fern

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Brand photograph created for Yudy McGuinness Artistry, a Winston-Salem, NC small business, created as a hero image for advertisements and for a banner on her social media accounts. | Winston-Salem Business and Brand Photogragraphy | Jasper & Fern

10. The Hero Shot

Having a captivating photograph that brings all the elements of your business and brand - what you do, how you make people feel, etc - is pertinent to having well rounded brand aesthetics that appeal to your target market. This image should be recognizable and unique and used often. Ideally, this photograph will give you the platform to speak about any topic related to your brand or business.

“Your brand is unique to you and your business.”

— Alyson, Jasper & Fern Head Photographer

Your brand is unique to you and your business. I’m sure that statement’s not new to you - especially if you’re a small business owner. Even if you shared a city block with four of your competitors, I guarantee you still attract a very specific type of client that sets you apart from those surrounding you. So what is that secret ingredient and how can we be so confident to make such a bold statement? Well, click to jump to the recipe.

(Haha, okay, there’s not really a recipe here for a delicious dish, BUT there is a formula that can help you brand your business in a way that makes it stand out.)

Step 1.
What’s your brand’s secret ingredient? What helps you stand out from your competition and instigates your dream client’s long standing loyalty? Well, it’s simple. People eat with their eyes. Keeping your brand values, voice and personality front and center for all to see is a dish your target market simply can’t pass up. Don’t hold yourself back from showing what you really care about. Share why you do what you do, what you love about what you do and even why you love how you do things. (There really are a plethora of ways you can show up for your clients in your authentic brand voice!)

“People eat with their eyes and keeping your brand values, voice and personality front and center for all to see is a dish your target market simply can’t pass up.”

— Alyson, Head Photographer at Jasper & Fern

It’s important to recognize that every brand is different - personal even. Most businesses and brand have been created by a sole individual or a small tight nit group of people who had the same values. That enthusiasm - the purpose and heart that spurred those people to start a business in the first place and make a difference - is going to be evident in their brand. It’s their secret ingredient that their target market is going to get a taste of and want to chase until they can get some more!

Step 2.
Acknowledge that your brand and your business has that special something too!

The question you may be asking, however, is “how do I communicate my superpower with my customer?” (See Step 3)

Step 3.
Be intentional.

When you’re working to accelerate your brand (or start your brand new baby business off on the most powerful foot if you’re just getting up and running), you want to look at how you show up for people. This comes from your brand’s heart (aka, your “why”), and the personality and values you portray. Really get down to the nitty gritty of it all, absorbing every detail!

Knowing your brand inside and out will help you communicate clearly with your ideal client. Your written content will come easily and be on-point with your voice, personality and values. Pair this written content with brand photographs that tell your story?! Man, you’re golden! Beautiful images are going to drawn your ideal client into your world and have them wanting to set up camp.

Piquing your target market’s interest is the first step of building their loyalty - that’s just one of the most valuable lessons we’ve learned after working with over 100 small business owners and brands. You have to catch their eye with a pretty photograph and capture their attention with the story it’s telling.

“You have to catch [your target market’s] eye with a pretty photograph and capture their attention with the story it’s telling. ”

— Alyson, Jasper & Fern Head Photographer

Your brand has a story to tell, a unique motivation and a unique difference to make. It’s your secret ingredient! Your target market is going to love how your flavors sit with them and want more of it. Don’t let them get hangry!

I found myself writing a blog the other day, sharing a story that was personal but went hand-in-hand with my brand. In the post, I was explaining a moment I was experiencing. As I was writing, I excitedly realized that I had the perfect image to go with my story! This hasn’t always been the case though.

Many times at the beginning of my business I found myself wishing I had the perfect image to go with my story - especially one that showcased my branding and gave my content that extra impact and cohesiveness (aka - Brand Personality & Awareness). When I found myself in situations like these, I’d often want to create an image to go with the story. I’d try and try to capture the spirit of the moment I’d already written about - but it always felt flat. I quickly developed a strong distaste for this method, because it made my content feel contrived and inauthentic - something neither I nor my brand are. I knew that if I was feeling that way, it was going to come across that way when I shared it with my audience. (We small business owners all know how well that’s perceived!)

It became my mission to create branded photographs I was thrilled with sharing. I wanted images I loved so much that I could be excited when I had the opportunity to share them. Essentially, I wanted to have warm fuzzies over my images and that extra thrill of knowing my ideal client would get drawn in by those warm fuzzies too.

That’s when it all started to click for me. Brand photographs are more than just pretty pictures you post. They need to tell a story. They need to share the heart of the business. They need to communicate the atmosphere and attitude of the brand. They need to reflect the WHY and draw the audience into the world of the brand that the small business owner has poured their heart, soul and time into. Brand photographs need to move their audience.

Audiences buy into people. They invest in purposes and into movements. Sure, we all love a good product but if that product fulfills a piece of our ideal lifestyle? Woah - that’s a whole other level of loyalty and trust that can be built.

Take, for instance, two silk ribbon companies. They both use photographs of their products. They both have great customer service. They both are active on social media and have easy to use websites. They’ve checked off all the right boxes to be present in front of their audiences. But there’s one big difference.

Company A shares high quality, clear, color correct photographs of their ribbons. Every viewer gets to see a square that shows the texture, color, width, etc. It’s clear and concise and gets the job done well enough.

Company B shares photographs of a cascading bridal bouquet. Its luscious petals and greenery cradled softly in the arms of a bride as she sits on a deep velvet chaise looking out a window pensively, the ends of her veil mingling with the draping blossoms. Around the handle of the bouquet, the creamy silks of ribbon wrap the stems into place overflowing onto the lace of her gown. In her fingers, framed by the delicate texture of the ribbon, sits a necklace engraved with her initials given to her by her dad on her 18th birthday. A special sentiment she can hold with her on her wedding day in memory of him.

Those are two starkly different ways to showcase the exact same ribbon, right? There are two different narratives being told, two different values being presented. One company values the sentiment, thoughtfulness, creativity and mood their customers want while the other appeals to the customer who simply wants a particular color and style. It’s important to note which of these presentations you’re drawn to - and what your audience will be drawn to.

For me, as well as many of the small businesses and brands we work with, I like to be drawn into a story. I fall in love with brands that read like a good book. That’s why we dig in to what our clients’ stories are, what the heart behind their brand is. Every little nuance and detail creates an all encompassing understanding of what makes them tick.

It likely would have taken me a while to discover this key to successful brand photography, if not for having to take myself through my own brand journey. Now, instead of finding myself lacking for images that relate to my content and tell my brand story, I can dig into the bank that I’ve created and find exactly what I need. That’s what I want for all of my clients - to relieve the stress and frustration of not having an impactful image to pair with their intentional content, to help them post with confidence and give them beautiful photographs they are excited to share!