Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Amanda and in this Skillshare class, I'll teach you how to create a branded photo Prop box for your business. Taking the time to create a branded photo prop box will help you to stand out online. By creating cohesion through things that you've photographed, you'll be able to be easily recognized online. You'll stand out against your competitors and you'll attract your ideal audience. So if you want your photos to be easily recognized, if you want them to stand out online then I recommend creating a branded photo prop box for your business. Hi, I'm Amanda and I'm a photographer and web designer based in east Pennsylvania. In this Skillshare course, I will teach you how to create a branded photo prop box of your own. I'll share with you the exact process of how I choose the items to go into my prop box and then I'll share with you some tips on how to make this whole process easier and also how to create the cohesion that you'll need to be well branded online. You'll be able to use these photographs online, on your website, on social media, and wherever else you show up. By creating this photo prop box, you'll be able to create photographs really easily without having to scrounge around for ideas. By the end of this course, you'll have 12 items in your prop box that you can use in various photos. So let's get started.
2. Class Materials & Project: Let's talk about the things that you're going to need for this course. First of all, you're going to need some box or container that you can put your props inside. Any container will work. I like to use a box or a basket or one of those clear containers that you get from your Walmart or Target that you can see through. Those are really helpful if you want to be able to see what's inside if you store it away in a closet. The next thing that you're going to look for are things around your home that fit your brand personality. You'll want 12 items that you can easily photograph that also reflect your brand. We'll talk about that a bit more in the videos. Also, what you'll need is a backdrop, at least one if you want to try out different backdrops, I totally recommend it. I would recommend at least having one that you can photograph your props on. You'll also need a digital camera, so your smartphone or your DSLR, If you have one, or a point and shoot will work just fine. Lastly, what you'll need is pen and paper, or pencil and paper that you can use to sketch out some ideas. Now about the class project, this is the fun part. Basically what you're going to do is gather 12 items from around your home, your studio, your office, or if you want to purchase some items, if you have the budget for it, that's totally okay too. What you're going to do is you're going to put those things inside a photograph and take one picture, upload that to the class project and then we'll be able to communicate with you and share with you some suggestions or give you some feedback. If you're struggling to find things, we can talk about it a bit more in the class project area.
3. Your Brand Personality: When it comes to branding, basically what you want to do is you want to attract the right people to your brand and you want to repel the wrong people away. When you are thinking about the wrong people, they're just not the right fit for your brand. When you're thinking about the right people, those are the people who are going to connect with you. They're going to get your message. They're going to want what it is that you have to offer, and they're going to ultimately buy from you. Those are the people that you want to attract. They're going to be attracted to you based on your brand personality. Your brand personality just like your own personality, it's going to help you to connect to the right people. When you're thinking about your brand personality, you can think about the items that you're going to put in the photographs and think about how that connects to your customer. If your customer is someone who wants to hang beautiful artwork in their home, then you're going to think about what things that they would want to maybe see in a photograph. If your customer is someone who they want to work with a coach and you might choose items that are relevant for that. The first part of this is thinking about your messaging and thinking about your customer, who they are and how you can connect to them through the item set you choose. Another way to look at this is through the visual things that you do. Visually, how does your brand personality look? If you think about it visually, you're going to think about things like color, texture, pattern. You're going to think about symbols or icons that you might use at my reoccur in your brand. You're going to choose items based on these things. For instance, you might choose things that have a similar color to your brand. Colors that you have, that you've either chosen yourself or you've worked with a designer to come up with. You're going to think about how you can fulfill each of these categories. Look at each of these categories and check off which things fit. If they don't fit, maybe they're not going to go and your brand prop box. Sit down with a piece of paper, get out a pencil and write down color. Write down pattern and texture and symbols and icons, and thinking about the things that might potentially work. Write down your brand colors. If you have purple or blue, write those things down so that when you're searching for something, you can make sure that you're keeping your brand personality in mind.
4. Finding Inspiration: When it comes to finding inspiration for your props and for your photographs, you might want to consider looking at a few different places to draw inspiration. My favorite place to start out is Instagram. Now, I love to go into Instagram and I like to look through my feed, and then if I see something that I really love, I will store it away for later. Now you can also look at the photographs and see what they're doing and figure out where they're doing something that you might want to do and how you might want to change it up to make it your own. You never want to copy exactly what somebody else has done. You want to make sure that you put your own spin on it so that it is something that you've created and that you haven't just stolen somebody else's idea. Another place you might consider looking is Pinterest. Pinterest is a great place, full of beautiful photography and you can draw a lot of inspiration from this stuff there. Now what you can do is create a private board and you can start to put some pins on that private board to draw inspiration when you are lacking in that area. Something else you might consider doing is looking at stock photography websites. Again, you don't want to copy, but you might draw some inspiration from the photos that you find on the stock photography websites. My favorite is Creative Market. I love to look at the photography there and I know that it's good enough for them to sell, so that means that it's probably something that I can use as a frame of reference for my own inspiration. So I'll look there and I'll see what these people have already created, and I'll think about how I can make it my own. You always want to keep your brand personality in mind when you are looking for inspiration and make sure that you do put your own spin on things like I said, because you want to make sure that it's uniquely yours and that you haven't just copied somebody else's idea.
5. Finding Props In Your Home: When you go around your home and you start thinking about the items that you want to put in your prop box, what you want to do is you want to think about what makes you uniquely you. You'll want to grab things that represent who you are, and the reason I say this about your home is because your home is more about who you are and your office or your studio is more about what you create or what you make, what products you have or services you offer, it's more about those things. With your home, we want to really think about the things that make you who you are and how that relates to your customer. You can start thinking about things that you can add to your prop box that really represent who you are, the things you like, the foods you enjoy. Think about your brand personality when you're choosing items to put in your prop box though. If you're looking at mugs, for instance, try to grab the mug that would best represent your colors for your brand personality. Or if it has something on the front of the mug, you'll want to make sure that it represents your brand personality. You might also grab things that represent your hobbies. Start thinking about the things that you like to do when you're not at work, because people are interested in those things too. Start gathering the things that make sense to who you are, you don't have to necessarily edit yourself at this point if you don't want to, you can do an editing process later, where you can weed out some of the things that don't make as much sense, but maybe gathered those things and put them on a table for now and start thinking about, do these things really represent me? Is this thing an interesting thing about me that's different from somebody else? Start thinking about how these things all go together and start collecting. Now you'll want to go around and think about all of these different things and grab the items that you're most drawn to that you find the most interest in and put those inside your prop box or put them on the table for now in order to think about which things are going to stay and which things are going to go, and start building your prop box.
6. Finding Props In Your Studio or Office: Now when it comes to gathering things in your office or your studio, basically what you want to pay attention to are the tools that you use every single day. The things that you use to create your products or the things that you use to offer your services to your clients, whatever it is that you use every single day. Those are things that you should consider putting in your prop box. Now you might not want to put in your favorite paintbrush but you could look for one that hasn't been used or that maybe you've used and you just don't really want to use anymore, something that you can put right into that prop box so you can use it over and over again in your photos. Something else you might consider besides the tools is the things that represent you as a business owner. That can be things like your planner or an old planner. That could be things like your favorite books that you like to read that are business-related. It could be a bunch of things. Look around your studio or your office, find things that make sense to who you are as a business owner to the tools that you use every single day to things that people would want to see inside of your office.
7. Shopping For Props: Now you may not have everything that you need to go in your photo Dropbox, or you may find that something doesn't quite match up with your brand personality. That's where you decide that you want to maybe go shopping, make sure you have the budget for it before you go out and think about the things that you might want to purchase. Maybe you've discovered that you have some items that you'd like to include in your photos, but you don't have the right color, for instance, or you might want something with a different pattern. If that's the case, then write those things down on the list before you go out. When you're in this store, you'll want to think about the things that make sense to your brand. You can think about things that have a certain texture. You can think about things that might have a certain color. I like to go to a bunch of different places to shop for props for my brand. I'll start out in places like craft stores, I'll go to home good stores or unique novelty type shops. I like to go to thrift stores and yard sales and really anywhere that you could buy things that would make sense to your photos. Then go ahead and go to those places. You really want to keep in mind that you might be purchasing something that somebody else has purchased to put in their photos. Stay away from things that might be mass-produced. Instead, opt to go to places that you might not see these types of items in other people's photos. For instance, I went to an Amish market, since I live here in Pennsylvania and I found some cute unique things there at the Amish market to put in my photos. Think about how you can get outside of the box. When you're going through the store, I like to go slowly and look around for things that represent my brand personality.
8. Create a Storyboard: In this lesson, we're going to talk about a quick method that you can do that will help you to visualize what you might put in your photo prop box as well as what you might do with your photos when you take them. This method is called storyboarding and it's often used by people who create videos but that doesn't mean that you can't use it for photos as well. What you can do is grab a notebook or a sketchbook. You're just going to draw some squares, 12 of them across the page and then you'll take some time to sketch out some ideas or make a list of what you might want to go in each of the photographs that you're going to take with the different items that you're going to gather from your home or from your studio or from your office. This will help you to save some time. It will help you to narrow down your thoughts. It'll help you to visualize what the end result might be. You can focus on things like the feelings that you want people to have and you can also think about your brand personality by doing it this way. It's something that I do recommend that you do. If you do this method, I would love for you to take a picture and upload that to the class project.
9. Example Prop Box - Editor & Writing Instructor Brand: This is an example
of a prop box that I put together for a
dear friend of mine. For her brand. I gathered these items, although I do have
more for her brand. These are just the items that I wanted to put into the prop box. For this particular photo shoot. I wanted to show you a sampling of what would be in a prop box, what it could look like. And this is around 12 items, depends on if you count every single piece or if you group things together
like the pencils, I have a mechanical pencil
and a regular pencil. But in your prop box you can have more than 12
items if you'd like. That's just a good
starting place. I feel if you have at
least 12 items to start.
10. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] Thank you so much for taking this skill share course and for allowing me to be your teacher. I hope this course was super-helpful and that you learned a lot. If you would please leave a review so that other students can know that this was a great course and that you liked it, and also don't forget to upload your class project. I would love to see what you came up with and I would love for the rest of the class to get some inspiration. If you'd like to follow me, you can follow me on my website, amandacreekcreative.com. You can also follow me on Instagram at Amanda_Creek, or you can follow me on YouTube by searching Amanda Creek Creative.Once again, I am grateful for you taking this course with me and I wish you happy learning.
Amanda Creek, Photographer, Designer & Biz Coach ☕
