>> Let's talk about artists working with photographers
and making sure that your brand identity
translates to still image.
What's the process of coaching
an artist to have their brand translate to photograph?
>> So much of what you retain or people retain is visual.
Photographs are one of
the first things that you do when you
start making your brand come to life.
It's [NOISE] right to the visual work,
and photography is usually one of those first steps.
It's important that you just
don't fall into the pattern of like,
"Let's just go and get some shots,
my friend has an iPhone."
Working with a photographer that matches your brand,
I think is a nice place to start.
You find a photographer whose work is reflective
of the type of vision you have for your brand.
You can even do that keyword
mapping exercise on the photographer.
If it's a good match, then you do that.
>> Okay.
>> It's playing matchmaker first,
a photographer whose natural instincts
are going to be a good alignment for
whatever you're trying to capture.
I think what's more common these days is people are doing
photoshoots for a specific song.
I see a lot more of this these days
where a whole shoot is dedicated
to a specific track or specifically to the EP.
Sometimes it's like a general artist photo type
of situation,
but it's about trying to capture the essence of
your brand specifically if
we're going to get into brand identity.
This is so much of how you show up
even on set for a photography session.
I work with a lot of different photographers who are
very well-schooled in personal branding,
but also hero branding,
and character branding because
I've worked with them on that.
Specifically, we'll create a lookbook
based on the concept for the artist
and we'll go back and forth on it
so that the photographer understands the vision.
I think coming to a photographer with
a vision is really helpful, otherwise,
you just dump it on
them to come up with the vision and then
they may or may not hit
it because they don't have the context yet.
I've gone as far as having artists share
their mission statement, resonant frequency,
origin story, music, all of
that with the photographer ahead of time.
Like writing for another artist,
you want to learn about
that person so you can write a song for them.
Photography is the same.
For a photographer, they want to learn about
the artist who they're shooting.
They want to really understand who they are.
I play matchmaker with
a photographer who is the right style,
and then it's about working with the artist to create
a vision that's born from
their brand identity that's either
related to the song we're going to be promoting,
or a particular record,
or just the overall new branded
concept for the next 18 months for them.
It's some theme that we're going to be going for.
We'll create some lookbook, a vision board,
or a full branding guide; I've done that too,
and just dump the whole thing to a photographer
so they have an enormous amount of context going in.
That helps the photographer know the artist
better so that when they meet and get together,
they know how to disarm them.
They've got a good understanding of their tone.
They have some emotional context of them so they
can get them comfortable a little quicker,
and then it becomes a focus on specific details.
Location is really important,
a lot of people just go out and get
[LAUGHTER] shots on train tracks,
or against the wall, or a city skyline,
or a rooftop without any thought.
The location really matters,
or it can tell a story.
Distance to camera is
a big thing, and you see this a lot.
If you take a look at, let's
say someone like Adele; an iconic artist,
her last few rounds of
photos that are related to her releases
are all probably chest up; really close.
So the distance to camera is close,
black and white or a little bit of a hue to it.
That stuff is on purpose,
and it's also on brand.
When you get shots of someone close to the camera,
that creates a sense of vulnerability or intimacy.
>> It's because her songs are right up here too.
>> Right.
>> Right in your face. Emotionally, yeah.
>> They're right there. One of her promotional cycles,
her main photo was basically a head shot,
but it was her staring right into
the camera and it was striking.
If you were to do a keyword map on that photo,
you'd say powerful, beautiful,
raw, vulnerable,
stunning, and everything you'd associate with Adele.
It's very on-brand, and the black
and white makes people think quality.
Often when you think of black and white,
there's some timelessness to that and
quality which you'd also associate with Adele.
>> Yeah.
>> All these things factor in,
so the way you get
your shots should say something about your overall brand.
If somebody comes across it,
they're doing that keyword
mapping whether they know it or not.
They're just doing it really quick in the background.
But if you're thinking about these things before you get
your shoot done and then the shoot
captures the essence of this, your brand is
going to be really consistent and clear going out,
and then the people who value
things like quality, timelessness,
vulnerability, raw, honest, a little edgy, beautiful.
People who value those qualities are going to pick up
on that in a photo and respond to it,
and maybe even that will trigger them to look deeper.
>> I wish that, that every artist got to have
this conversation with you [LAUGHTER]
before they took their pictures.
I struggled, I'm not a visual person and a lot of
people who make music are more
aurally focused than visually focused.
Everything you said is so valuable,
and I hope that whatever pictures people are taking
from this moment on are coming from
that place of identity.
>> It's practical to do it that way.
It just makes the work more focused,
and you end up coming back from a shoot with
more usable content than if you just go randomly,
walk around, and shoot.
But this applies across the board,
you can be whatever you want.
If you're a storyteller or your brand is all
about just being honest and being relatable,
then shots that are more
candid and less posed would be on-brand.
>> Yeah.
>> It goes into things like that too.
If your personality is to be more
behind the scenes, or vulnerable,
or just quiet in nature,
then posed pictures would be pretty off-brand.
I think it's about capturing
who you are and that's why we do all this work,
so it informs a photoshoot.
It makes the execution clear.