3 Pro Tips for Building Your Brand as a Photographer
Looking to build up your brand as a photographer? Here’s an inspiring 15-minute discussion with well-known photographers Chase Jarvis and Ben Von Wong that’s filled with advice on how you can do so.
Fast forward 5 years, and now Von Wong is all over social media feeds (he has hundreds of thousands of social media followers) and his images are continuously going viral. Jarvis invited Von Wong onto his channel for this enlightening chat where he revealed 3 of his top tips.
#1 Design your portfolio around your goals
The first of Von Wong’s tips is to only put work in your portfolio that you actually want to get hired to shoot.
If you feel limited by not being able to afford luxury cars to develop a good portfolio as a car photographer, for example, being able to utilize your resources and make those contacts necessary to make it happen will impress brands.
“No one is going to hire you to do something they haven’t seen you do before,” says Von Wong.
“No one is going to take a chance,” adds Jarvis.
#2 Create a project with a headline in mind
Thinking about the headline to your project is really important if you want to get noticed.
“If you want people to talk about what you do, they need to be able to do so in a really concise manner,” says Von Wong. “That needs to be shareable.”
With so many people commenting on social media articles without actually reading them, it’s important that your headline shows exactly what you’re trying to achieve.
#3 Design the life you want to have
In a similar way to shooting a portfolio with your future goals in mind, design your life in a similar way.
“Don’t try and be a social influencer if you don’t want to be on social media,” says Von Wong. He assures that there are always a number of ways to do anything, and it doesn’t have to revolve around social media if you don’t want your life to be centered around that should you be successful in the end.
“We’re ultimately creating for an audience. You have to understand what the audience is like, and pay attention to it,” Von Wong says.
When Von Wong first met Jarvis, had was given a golden piece of advice: “You need to figure out what the one thing in the world is that you can do better than anyone.”
Von Wong took Jarvis’ words to heart and decided he wanted to work out what makes him best at being himself. He took those positives and negatives and turned them into marketing examples. Now he communicates well and develops projects around world problems.
“We’re all asked to take pictures 1000 people before us have taken, but what’s the thing that you can put on there that’s different, not just better,” Jarvis says.
Watch out the full video above for the full discussion. You can also find more of Jarvis’ videos on his YouTube channel.
(via Chase Jarvis via ISO 1200)
