Product Marketing: Creating Compelling Brand Imagery

1. Introduction: Hey, what's up, this is Jeff Staple, founder, Staple design, Reed Space. Today, we're going to be going over marketing elements. So, hopefully by now you've got a product, you have got a design conceived, you have it actually in your hands now, something that you can actually sell, but before the selling happens, what's really important is the marketing aspect of it. So, that is everything that you can do to showcase to a potential customer or a potential buyer. What your product is about? And why they want to have it? So, that's what we're going to go over today all of those elements, particularly, with photographs and how to properly shoot, do a look book, and all the logistical elements that go into making your product visually beautiful and desirable. Back in the day when we were doing look books, we had the luxury of being able to make an actual book or a magazine. Nowadays because everything is so digital, the power of photography over the power of words has completely become outweighed now and now with social media, even the time that a potential customer or consumer is looking at your photography, is even less. So, maybe now you only have one to three seconds to capture someone's attention with a photograph. So, the ability for you to be able to pull off like a photo that makes someone stop their thumb and be like, ''Wow, what is this? Let me take a look," and then they investigate.'' Like the threshold to be able to do that is so much higher now than before where you put a printed book down in front of somebody, they flip through, they get to read all the copy, nowadays it's like when you have like three seconds to stop someone's attention would be able to get that action to do something, hopefully buy something. As a creator, and as someone who is very passionate about your ideas, you want that to be as crystal clear and as straight to your vision as possible. But it is very important to have the flexibility to be able to shift and move at any given time and you'll see that when you're dealing with multiple people on a set, so there's you as the creative director, there's the photographer, there's the model, there's typically a stylist onset as well, hair and makeup someone who's making sure like the model actually looks good. So, those are five or six individuals that each unfortunately for better or for worse, have their own vision of what they want the shoot to look like, right. So, you've got five or six people that each have their own vision, it's your brand, it's your vision, but you have to use their assets to be able to pull this off. So, it's a bit of a give-and-take where you got to sort of make everybody happy, but not lose your vision and get everyone to still do the job and deliver, and that is just a constant quarterbacking and massaging of different personalities and egos in order to make that happen. So, in this class, what we're going to go over is the pre, the during, and the post. We're going to talk about prior to actually executing on a photo shoot. All the different things that you need to think about, check off your to-do list and make sure you're accountable for. Then we're going to go over what happens on the set of a shoot. You're actually going to follow me along, we're going to go to a photo shoot for Staple, and you're going to see what goes in and out of our minds. Out of our minds literally, but we're going to go bird's eye view on what happens during an actual photo shoot and then post. So, after everything has been shot, we've got all the images, now what happens? How do we get all those hundreds of images that were shot into a cohesive looking collection and look book? So, by the end of this class, ideally, you've already got your product, you're going to be able to execute on a really beautiful marketing campaign based around your product. Basically, the end goal of this is for you to be able to take your product and tell somebody, ''Look at this image and buy this product.'' I'm going to show you how we do it at Staple using a photo shoot, that photo shoot can be anything you want, it can look like anything you want, but at the end of this, what I want to see is a great photo shoot, promoting, marketing, and making me want to buy your product. 2. Planning: You're thinking about doing a photoshoot. We're talking about how you're going to be able to capture this product that you're doing, this collection that you're doing in great photography. The first thing you have to do, I'm going to start from very, very 30,000 foot and then we're going to drill all the way down to the ground level. So, at the very top level, it's all about vision. So, you got to think really broad stroke here. "Do I want it by the sea or I want it in the desert or I want it in the city or I want it in the jungle like super broad stroke stuff. Or you have a theme, you have a specific story that you want to do, maybe I'm trying to capture a love story or something like that with two models. So you're doing something that many film directors, movie directors, and television directors do, which is almost like storyboarding this concept of a photoshoot in your head. Essentially, if you think about it, what a great lookbook shoot is, is like one section of a movie almost, like if you took a really great movie and pulled out five minutes of it like a scene of it, that should be as beautiful as like a lookbook. So, that's what you're trying to capture here. So the first thing you want to do is have that vision totally set in your mind of how you want it to be because everybody that you work with all the way from the photographer down to the stylist and the makeup artist has to be signed up for that same theme so that they understand what page you're on. Going down from there, if you yourself are not a photographer and you need a photographer, that is the next step. So, the photographers that I work with are basically my eyes. When I'm doing a photoshoot because I don't have the ability to pick up a camera and do all the technical doodads that are required and shooting with a professional camera, I need somebody to help me do that. But I need them to be my eyes. So I've got the vision in my head, I need the photographer to be able to execute visually what's in my head, meaning I have to be able to tell them, show them what it is that I want. One way to do that is what's called pulling tears which is basically going on Google image search and finding images that paint the picture of what's going on in your brain so that you can now show the photographer, this is what I'm feeling, this is what I'm going for, and so, he or she gets an idea of that. Finding a photographer is pretty easy nowadays because of Instagram. So, I look up my favorite photographers and I hit them up and see if they want to do a shoot, and it's important to do a pre-production meeting with your photographer. Meaning, you sit down with them in a face to face meeting and you discuss what it is that you want to go through. Sometimes, you'll find that the photographer you actually want is not an expert at what it is that you're trying to pull off. I'll give you an example, like for instance, one of my favorite photographers is an incredible studio photographer. So, I look at her Instagram and it's all beautiful instudio shots, seamless white backdrops, controlled lighting, everything. Now, I want do a photoshoot that's on a boat outside, outside on a boat, random conditions, waves, it could be sunny, it could be cloudy, it could be raining. So after we brainstorm, I realized that she might not be the right person for the shoot because she needs controlled setting. So photographers are like that, they have expertises in certain fields and you definitely want to find a photographer that matches up with the vision that you're trying to pull off otherwise on shoot day you're going realize that, "Oh, snap", like this person can't handle the conditions that are being thrown at them. Sometimes, I realize in the beginning stages of forming your brand, you don't have a huge budget for photography, so you can't pay a photographer $5, $10,000, but what I've found is that a lot of young aspiring photographers, they just want to fill their book up and what I mean by that is they have a portfolio either online or as a physical portfolio and they want to show more examples of their shoot. Quite honestly, for a photographer it's actually quite challenging to just fabricate a shoot on their own. It's quite hard for photography to be like, "I'm just going to make a lookbook and get samples on a model of everything." So, if you're able to provide all of that asset for them and just hand them a lookbook photoshoot so that they have great assets to put into their book, that's actually a huge winning advantage for a photographer. So, it's a win-win. You want to get photos for your lookbook, they want to get new shots to show off their ability and trade for gear, buying some clothes, buy them dinner, you could get away with not paying thousands of dollars for a photoshoot. The other thing about when you're finding a photographer is personality matching. I've been on photoshoots where the photographer has straight up sabotaged the entire shoot and not deliberately, just the personality clashing made the shoot go up in flames essentially. What you have to realize is that when you and the photographer are onset together, you almost have to be like a working duo like Batman and Robin, you guys should be a tandem tag team whose job it is to complete this photoshoot to the best of you guy's ability and just kill it and really make it look amazing. If you have a clashing ego with a photographer, and if you two are not jelling on the day of the shoot, it's could have ruined the shoot for everyone else, the models feel it, the stylists feels it, the hair makeup feels it, everyone feels it, and it comes through in the photos, it's so weird and I don't want to sound like some New Age Hippie, but really, when you're doing a photoshoot there is so much spirituality flowing between the camera, the lens, the photographer, the model and the directors that you guys have to be jelling, you guys have to be happy and positive and on the same level and if you're not, man it just feels like a cold wind is flying through that photoshoot and everyone's just like really stiff and rigid and it comes through in the photos. Sometimes people wonder why certain photographers are really good and some aren't good and why they take thousands of pictures, you'll see it when you're doing the photo editing how, I mean two photos could look almost identical, but one is just the winner and the other one's not the winner, and my thought is because that one's got the spirit in it and the other one doesn't have the spirit in it. How do you quantify that? You can't. But what you can do on a shoot is try to manifest as much goodwill as possible by making sure that at the very least, you and the photographer or jelling. 3. Finding Locations: So, after the photographers set, the second most important thing that now you have to figure out is location. The actual scene, where you're shooting it, the environment is more important than the model. They are one of the key characters to this look book that you're trying to do. Not only that, but the location also will determine almost everything else for the shoot. So, it will determine what kind of models you use, what kind of hair and makeup you use, and it also determines the schedule. So, oftentimes, the location, if you're shooting indoors particularly, you can't just say I want to shoot any old time I want. You have to book the time, book the day, book the hours, and you have a set amount of time to be able to shoot in that location. Even if it's outdoors. If you're doing a forest mountain whatever shoot, you have to have certain amount of daylight hours, right? So, you have to shoot from 11 to four because at five O'clock, the sun sets and then you've got no more light. Or you have to check the weather forecast, you can't shoot if it's rain is in the forecast. One of the ways that you go about doing locations is a thing called location scouting. So, that is, again, matching up your vision of what you want to do to all the different options and possibilities you have for creating the environment to set up that vision. So, if I want to do an indoor shoot, for example, and I have some examples here of a shoot that we've recently done. We want to do is shoot where the vision is, the model is just lounging in their home. So, we want to do an in-home shoot,. One way that we do that pretty often, this is a cool trick, is actually Airbnb. So, as you guys might know, Airbnb is the home sharing platform that people use to rent out their homes or rooms, and oftentimes, we use Airbnb to find studios. Because if you rent a photo studio, it's blank. It's a complete white box and you have to fill it yourself. But when you do an Airbnb, there's furniture, it looks like people live there, there's cabinets, bed, sheets, so you don't have to do any of that. You can create a really nice natural looking environment by using people's homes. 4. Selecting Models: Next up, probably the next most important thing is the models. So, just to recap, you've got your vision, you've got your photographer, now you've got your location. Now, who's going to stand in that location and represent your brand, and these are the models. The word model can be used very loosely, especially in my field. I find using super professional models isn't always a good thing. Sometimes models are just very much like they're are too structured, and I want something more natural, and more organic, and more authentic. So, oftentimes, finding people on the street, friends, just everyday round the way homies, actually comes off looking a lot better than having blue-steel, chiseled, models. Because models are beautiful people, but they're also not reality. People in real life don't look like that. If you want your collection to represent the everyday man authenticity, you want every Tom to carry Jane, to be able to envision themselves in your clothing, you might want to cast models that reflect that. Similarly, you could just look on Instagram, and look up your friends, look up your friends of friends, friends of friends of friends, and I'm sure you can very easily find the model that you're looking for. The other important thing about casting a model, and this is something that to this day I still forget, is the fit. Typically, when you have a collection, you're not going to have every size made, because you're probably still in making samples. So, you want a model that fits the actual clothes that you're gonna put on them. Sometimes I love a model's face, and character, so much and then they come on the day of the shoot, and it's oh shit they can't fit into this clothes, or the clothes looks massive on them. So, you got to figure out height, weight, build of the model that you're wearing, if you've got shoes make sure they fit into the shoes. So, these are different aspects to think about when you're casting the model. The other thing is, if you want your model to bring or wear certain other items from their own collection, now's the time to find that as well. Sometimes if you have a collection, and let's say you don't make bottoms, and you don't make shoes, you should tell the model, hey wear dark denim, nondescript pants, Vans, simple shoes, or whatever it is, or maybe if it's a hiking shoe, maybe you tell them to wear Timberlands, things like that. You don't want to be caught off guard where you decide you want to do a hiking theme shoe, and then the guy comes in skate Vans, and you're like, "Do you have Timberlands?" And he's like, "No, you're in the middle of the forest, you can't get a pair of Timberland." So, try to figure out the whole head to toe thing of how it's going to look like. And typically models don't have a problem with bringing some of their own clothes, a little bit, not too much. But, for the most part they're fine with bringing a few things of their own to wear. 5. Hair, Makeup and Styling: So, we've got theme, we've got photographer, we've got the location, we've got the models now. Okay, next up is hair and makeup. Hair and makeup is pretty granular in terms of a photo shoot. Oftentimes, at Staple, we do photo shoots that don't have a hair and makeup artist. So, it's not a necessity, but it's also one of those things that if not handled and considered can ruin a shoot. Most models have the ability to make themselves look somewhat presentable, they are models after all. But if you want to be a little bit more cautious, it might help to invest a couple of bucks or a trade or a meal to have somebody on set that knows how to do really basic things. For the most part, makeup is more about making sure that the skin looks good with lighting. Powdering the face properly so that you're not reflecting sweat. Doing the hair in a certain way so that it looks more interesting, little bit of makeup. Unless you're doing a thematic shoot where it's really all about extreme makeup, you probably don't need that much makeup on the model's face. You just need more touch up so that it looks normal in photo shoots. That's really it for hair and makeup. You don't really need that much. The other aspect is styling. Styling is kind of helpful. Basically, what a stylist does is while you're shooting, the stylist does two things that are important to me. One is making sure that everything that the model is wearing looks good, folds all right, things are steamed, things don't have creases in them, things aren't tucked in weird places, just keeping an eye on that because you as the creative director are thinking big picture, right? You're thinking, "Is the photographer good? Is the set good. Is the model looking right?" Then you forgot that this thing is bunched up or it's wrinkled. You forget that a tag is sticking out of a neck because you can't catch everything. So, a stylist's main job is to make sure that all of these little details with the actual clothing were done right. The other thing that a stylist does is while you're shooting this look number one, they're looking at what the next setup is going to be. They're saying like, "All right, this top is going to go with this bottom and I'm going to steam it to make sure everything looks good." That's another thing that a good stylists does because otherwise, if you don't have the stylist, then it's your job to do that and it kills the momentum of the shoot potentially. So, that's where a stylist can come in handy. But again, stylist, hair and makeup, these are sort of luxuries that I think when you get to a more advanced level of look book photo shoots, you can start contracting them. I've done them for years without and I still sometimes do it without a stylist and a makeup artist. So, just keep that in mind if you're trying to do it on the low and save your money. 6. Making Your Call Sheet: So you've got your vision, your creative vision, of what you want to do, you've got your photographer, you've got your models, you've got your location, you've got hair makeup if you need it and you've get a stylist. Now, the last thing you wanna do, is just cross your fingers and hope all these people show up on time that day and they know where to go, because that will never happen. That will never ever happen. What you need to wrangle all of these different parties together is called a call sheet, C-A-L-L sheet. I'm gonna show you how to go through a call sheet. So, my call sheets at Staple look like super official government documents. They're very, very detailed because we want every single thing covered and what a call sheet is essentially the instruction manual for how this shoot is going to go down, and it has every single aspect that you want on it. So, it has the date and time of where this thing is happening. It's got the name of the shoot and who the shoot is for. It's got the address of where everyone's got to go to. It's even got the nearest hospital where the shoot is going to happen in case someone gets hurt. It's got the photographer. It's got all the other people, so if like if there's lighting people, if there are sound people if you're doing video. It's got everyone's phone numbers, everyone's e-mail addresses, everyone's first and last name, it's got all the models that are coming, their contact information, their sizes, what time they're supposed to come, you could also put the general shoot schedule, so for example, 10:00 to 11:00 make up,11:00 to 12:00 fitting, 12:00 shoot begins, two O'clock lunch, just to keep a schedule so everybody knows where they're supposed to be and what. I even put the weather on there, I put sunrise, sunset. So, that way, everyone knows how much time they have for daylight, it's got every single aspect that you could possibly think of that has to go with this photo shoot on this one piece of paper. Then once you've got this all done, you email this to the entire team so that everyone knows what the game plan is and this is the most important thing. As you keep updating this, and it will be updated throughout, you keep updating it and you keep resending it. This is really the contract almost so that the model doesn't show up an hour later and says like, "I didn't know I thought it was ten O'clock." You are like, "No, it was on the call sheet. It was nine O'clock and you're an hour late." So, this is really the Bible. You really got to have a call sheet for all of your photo shoots. It's really, really important. All right, so you're getting closer and closer to the shoot date now. A couple of things to prepare yourself and understand. One of the things most important is have have the collection ready. I've been to shoots where they're like, "Okay, we're ready to shoot." Then they pull all their clothes out of like the smallest backpack on earth and everything's crunched into a ball, and then they take the clothes out there like, "Here, put this on," Then you've got like wrinkles and fold lines all over the place. So everything has to be ironed, steamed, on hangers, on a rack, just waiting and ready to go. Then as it gets closer and closer to the day of shooting, you really have to get into like this Zen character mode of the fact that as a brand owner, as a guy or a girl who's got their own brand in their own vision, you're about to be controlling a small army of people that will hopefully execute on that vision. So, you need to be like a benevolent tyrant, I call it. You have to be strong-handed enough to get your vision through without being so much of a jerk that everyone hates being on this photo shoot. That requires a lot of patients, requires a lot of flexibility, but it also requires a lot of confidence and firmness. So you have to know the balance of what to say to people in order to get things done, but not be so rude about it that everyone hates you. So, we've got some real special that's going to happen now. It's time for Staple to shoot some great images for our upcoming Holiday 15 collection. So, we need to get some images for that, and we already know the end result of what these images are going to be used for. So, for the most part they're going to be used for social, so they're going to be done on Instagram, Twitter, social media. They're not going to be used for print for the most part, and I already know what the vision of our Holiday line looks like or Holiday collection is split into two parts. One is very sport athletic inspired by Basketball and the other one is very nature outdoors driven. So, we've already got those two looks and so now you're going to follow me along while I plan for this photo shoot and we're going to see how this entire thing unravels. So, this is quite a small shoot its not so big, and I wanted to be able to have the Skillshare team on the ground with me as we're going through this so you can really see everything that's visually happening in front of me, but also I'm going to be "miced" up so you can see what's happening inside of my brain as well as I talk you through things. One of my favorite photographer she's a real hustler, she's actually got to class on Skillshare, her name is Tasha Bleu. I met her via Instagram and we've done a lot of great projects together ever since. So, I've got her shooting my stuff, I love her because, of course, she's a great photographer. But there's a lot of great photographers. The reason why I really love Tasha is because she's great to work with. She's very accommodable to what we wanna do, she's got ideas, I've got ideas, she's not a diva, she not strong handed in terms of like getting your ideas through, she's willing to work with my ideas and vice a versa. The other thing I love about Tasha is that she's willing to get down and dirty and really get in the murk and get the shot. In the model, we've got a great model named Jamad. He shot with Tasha before. This is the other thing I think that's really interesting is when you cast the model, it's very good if the model and the photographer have worked together before. They already have a great working relationship. They've got a similar language. They know what they're doing. So, I love that, and I want to take advantage of that, because oftentimes models, photographers and creative directors, when they get together it's like a blind date, like if they don't know each other, you're all like- before you can even make great work, you've got to get along first. So, there's this like you got to spend an hour of like, "Hey, who are you? What do you do?" Then shake hands and become BFF'S and then you could go make great work together. But if the photographer and the model are already great, if me and the photographer already great and we've already got this symmetry going and this jelly that's happening, so we could just get right on and start doing the shoots. So, we're already going to shoot. You guys are to come along with me, and you're going to hear everything that goes on in my head as the shoot happens. 7. Executing the Shoot: What's up, guys. This is Jeff Staple, founder of Staple Design and Reed Space. I've taught you a bunch of classes now on how to develop your brand, develop your product, bring that to fruition and bring it to life. What I'm going to go through today is the ever so important aspect of the photo shoot as one of the major marketing campaigns that you're going to be doing. photo shoots, at least good ones, they don't just transpire automatically. They take a lot of pre-preparation, pre-production, pre-work and then post work as well in order to get that money shot, that game-changing shot that really defines your entire brand and your entire product. So, today I'm going to walk you through how to try to pull off one of these photo shoots and we're going to do it live. You're going to be a fly on the wall as I go through one of these photo shoots. We are on a beautiful rooftop here in New York City at the Skillshare headquarters. It's nice to have friends who have beautiful rooftops that are accessible in New York City. It's a rarity. So, we got a beautiful day here. We're going to shoot on the rooftop here. We've got a photographer that's a great friend of mine and someone I really respect, Tasha Blue. She's back there. She's ready to shoot. We've got the model, Chmod. So, I'm going to walk you through everything that's going on in my head, everything that's going on in Natasha's head and you're going to see that the photography and the photo shoot process is very, very collaborative. You've got, in this case, this is the smallest team you could possibly have basically. It's a creative director, a model, and a photographer. This is as tight as it gets and you're going to see how even just with three brains, you're going to see how three different things are going to be happening but they have to gel at the very end in order to make the photo magic happen. So, follow along let'. S go. So, first look is that we're going to do this on the basketball court and then we're going to do four total looks. The second will be this, top and bottom. Third look will be this, and the fourth look will be this. Then we've got our limited edition Penfield release that we're doing. We'll just put that probably over this piece or something like that and that'll be like the four and a half look. In terms of location, we'll probably do a basketball set. We'll do, that's a nice one, rooftop. I think the concrete jungle of the fire escape would be cool too. We have all the space that we can do something, maybe more clean like using the wood slats. Actually, in there, I'm thinking we could get him squatting in there with the industrial shit looking almost very Detroit. If he's here, you are here and then we get the metal grading. I don't want this necessarily look like a rooftop.It should look more industrial. The first one will be basketball and then I want to get a mix of super specific product stuff where you can really see the product. But then I also want to get something like moody more environmentally kind of like- you don't have to see the product so much. It could just be like him moving and it's just shapes and stuff like that. Yes, so a little bit of both. So, basically, what I just did was I just told Tasha very broadly like 30,000 foot what I want to see and what I want to achieve out of this and then it's really important for the creative director now to take a step back. As you can see, I physically now just said, "All right. You do your thing." Because you don't want to end up micromanaging this shit because then, everyone's paralyzed. The model is paralyzed, the photographer is paralyzed, and everyone is just like, "I'm not going to do anything until Jeff says so." And I don't want that type of shoot to happen. I hired Tasha and this model because I like what they bring to the table. So, it's really important to be able to step aside now, let them do their thing and then when I feel like they need me, I'll step back in. You know what might be nice actually? Is if you put your right knee on the ground. Put your right knee down. No, the upper side of your left knee, my bad. Put your left knee down, yes, then yes and then put your Jordan So, put the ball on the other side of your shoe. Now, tie your shoe maybe. Perfect. The hood is perfect. Oftentimes in a photo shoot, I'm just trying to let opportunity happen. You can't direct it way too much. You got to let these things fall into place. So, we're not even really right now trying to get any sort of detailed- You want to stand right here? See, I always stand on the spot where the photographer needs to be. Right now we're just trying to capture the mood and I'm trying to just let the opportunity open itself up. Right now I'm not even trying to get the detail like money shot of like a logo or a hit. It's still our first shoot. So, I'm actually trying to get them to gel. There's a bit of chemistry that needs to happen between everybody right now. I know what it feels like to be on the other side of the camera too and I know what it feels like to be a model that doesn't know if he's doing a good job or not. It's important to get that confidence going in the model so that he's like, "Yes, I'm killing this. I'm killing this look." Let's try to figure out the right angle so that, I don't know if it's going work but if you're standing here shooting up like this and then go up for a lay-up right now or like a finger role. Actually, you know what's going to be better? Let me see if the lighting on this side, it's better. Yes, this side's better because all the logos are on this side. Go up for a real- yes. Try to tap the backboard. The other thing that's really important is even though I'm fully engulfed in this particular setup, it's important for the producer and the director to know what's going to come up next. So, one part of my brain is always thinking about what the next look, what the next location is going to be. Because the last thing you want is to take the positive momentum that's happening like the good flow and then pausing it for like 30 minutes while you figure out what the next shoot is going to be. One part of my brain is like, what's the next outfit? What's the next look? So we can hop right into it and keep the rhythm going. Nice. We're good. Let's get some details now. So, now we're getting more detailed specific shots and just trying to show off the details of the clothing. I wonder if we can get the 75 out of this shadow. All right, we're good. Change. Nice. So, you know what? The next one we we'll do is either on those stairs. Okay. Or on that deck. Okay. So, you start figuring out the angles you want and I'll get him changed into the outfit. Okay. Okay. How are your feet if you're barefoot? Couple of motion and then maybe be okay. You want to give it a chance? I haven't seen them in a while. Okay. You haven't seen them in a while. I have not seen my feet in a while. Get it back. Okay. What size are you? What size are you? Oh, yeah? Can we try? I think that a little better than the Jordans. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. All right. That looks a lot better with those shoes. So, have a seat on one of these steps. Yeah. Are you sure you want to be a seat though? Because you don't want to get the pants. All right? I don't want to get the pants. If you just stay there, but a little bit higher, or a little lower, I'm sorry, right there. Yeah. Yeah, right there. We will just line you up with the World Trade Center. Yeah, get him lined up. Yeah, that's good, look at me. Okay, am I out of the shot? Yeah. Okay, how is it if you lean forward now and talk to me, yeah. No, no, just talk to me, though, don't pose. Yeah, yeah. That's good, now your angle is good. Yes, that. We are trying to get something where we get the scenery of the World T0rade Center, and then him trying to look comfortable on a fire escape, and we're trying to get the angle right where you can see his face. The front like the logo, but where he looks natural. So, right now it's kind of a Rubik's cube of trying to figure out those combinations of see the logo, see his face, get the lighting right, and make them look natural all in the same time. That's great. [inaudible] , but don't be so awkward with it. It's not bad, yeah. Sometimes I feel like when you get it really quick, you almost feel like you just have to keep shooting because you feel like you didn't get it, but sometimes you did just get it in 20 shots. So, I think we got it. Yeah. Look down here. We're like, oh yeah, this is great. Look at the angle. But, I want to get this PK stitching like that. Oh, that's great. Yeah, but I like that, with the shadow hitting. So, look towards Tosh. Yeah, there you go. Look down. Down, your eye down. Yeah. I think we got it. All right, let's go with this one. Just take your eyeballs and look at Tosh, Yeah. You can tilt your head up a little bit if you need. Yeah. Let's try to get the other side of the label now. So, just turn 180 yeah, go the other way. Keep going, rotate, rotate, yeah, and then try to get that label detail. Okay. No, it's okay for now. This label right here. Yeah, I don't know if you need more light, right? Yeah. Oh, here. Like that? Hold it right there in between. Yeah. Do over here with your hands up. Yeah. Put your hand back in the corner. Yes. That was really nice. Okay. All right, let's do a change. So now, we're improvising here. We're in the back of the industrial units of the air conditioning system of the building. Tosh is on top of a radiator. Jamat's about to get electrocuted if he takes one step to the left. My god. Big like the big on-off valve right there, but no, it's creating scenes from nothing. We went from the rooftop where it was very expansive, sporty skyline. Now, you just look to your right and take 20 steps over and we are in this sort of post apocalyptic Detroit sort of future Blade Runner style environment. You just got to make use of what your environments give you. Yeah, that looks dope. Yes, this is nice. You stay, let her get the angle now. Yeah. Just pose your body a little more. Let us see this. Pose a little more, let us see the bird. Hold that, okay. Put the other arm down now. Put both arms down. No, just like that, yeah. I want to style, just hold on. Keep the position. Okay. Yeah, great. I love that. Okay. I think we're good. I think we're good too. Nice job. Good shoot guys. All right. So, we just finished up the photoshoot today. We got a lot of great shots. I was really trying to capture the moment and the feeling of this rooftop shoot. We got a little bit industrial jungle stuff as well, and then I made sure that Tosh and I got a lot of detail shots. All the while I was art directing and almost choreographing Jamat here and he was great, just doing all the actions, making sure he looked natural, and not too forced. We always want to keep something authentic and he did a great job as well. You got to see a lot of behind the scenes stuff, about how sometimes even when the clothing doesn't fit, the pants don't fit, it's all like the magic of cinema. So, behind the scenes it looks like a complete shit show in a mess, but hopefully we'll see that when the final photos come out. It's going to be looking really stunning. So now, we're going to go see everything that Tosh has shot and we're going to begin the editing phase. So, let's go do that. 8. Making Selects: So, we finished the photo shoot a couple of days ago, and now Tasha is going through and edit. We're going to go through the whole editing process now and show you how I go about selecting these photographs with the photographer here for our lookbook shoot. I think first of all, what I asked Tasha to usually do is to essentially skin off the fat of the first wave of edits by eliminating all the stuff that are just obvious mistakes; out f focus, bad lighting, test shots. Blurs. Blurs, models making weird faces, stuff like that. That's usually a good 20 percent of the photos are just eliminated off for that, which is great. In this process, what we want to do is eliminate. How many shots would you say you took for this? About 893, I believe. Yeah, okay. So, almost 900 shots you took for this. We're not making a 900 page lookbook, we're making probably 12. We want 12 good images. So, we're trying to get the edit down. The other thing that I do as a trick is I try to treat each look as its own editing phase. So, I'm not looking at the entire thing right now, I just want to see one look, eliminate, get it down to the ones that we want and then move on to the next look. Then the other couple of things that I'm looking for now is either images that capture the environment, or the vibe and the atmosphere of the brand well, or images that capture the product really well. I think a winning image is one that captures both at the same time. You see great clothing, it makes you want to buy the clothing, and it gives you a great picture of what's going on, like it paints a picture of the brand. Sometimes you're going to get shots that are just great product shots, and sometimes you're going to get shots that are just great environment shots, but the really good ones are the ones that boil it all together. So, let's start editing. We're now using Lightroom. You're using Lightroom to edit, which is fine. You don't really you could use Photoshop. You could sometimes even use Adobe Preview to edit. It's totally fine. Right now, you're really just trying to get it down. These are unretouched unedited raw photos. So, Tasha hasn't had a chance to color correct, sharpen, tweak any of these yet. What we're trying to avoid, as I'm sympathetic to most photographers, is we're trying to avoid Tasha editing and color correcting 900 images. Yes. Then me saying "I just want these 12." Ideally, we get it down to like a dozen or two, so that you only have to color correct those. Even sometimes after she color corrects those last two dozen, you still get eliminate some, but at least you didn't color correct 900. Yeah. So, we're trying to eliminate right now. So, let's go through the first set real quick. So, this is the first setup. This is the basketball theme one. So, the two themes we had going here we're an athletic basketball story, and then more of like an outdoorsy vegetation green story. So, this is the basketball story, so let's go through this. You want me to do it? Yes. So, what I'm looking for here is just, this is where it really becomes art. What I was telling them before, and it's like there's no real way of calculating what is a winning image, it's really gut feeling as point. Yeah. So, you're just going through these, and looking, and like, "I'm just waiting for that moment." So, what I'll do now is, basically I'm just scanning the entire look. It's important to listen to yourself here. If someone makes a jump, listen to that. Oh, that actually came up pretty good. So, sometimes the posing in real life looks corny, but then in a photo, this looks like he just lost his dribble and re-picked it up. This is nice. Yeah. Something interesting there for sure. So, now if something's interesting, we'll usually market in some way. In Lightroom, we could just star it. Oh, yeah, these are great. So, I was talking about the balance between product photography, and environmental photography, and these are, to me, are too product-based. Again, this comes down to the the founder of the brand and the vision. Some brands might want super producty shots like this, but I want once you pull back on his face, it starts to mean more. See, now like emotion comes through immediately. Yes, it's true. So now, I've skimmed through the first pass of this entire look. Now I'm going back. These are great, but the logo's obstructed, so that eliminates that. These are getting interesting here. I'm doing this right now. I'm thinking Instagram right now, so I'm cropping this into a square in my head. What do you think of this? Yes. It's pretty powerful. This one's pretty dope. Going back to these now, these to me automatically take bronze and silver medal in terms of, I feel like those were so much stronger than we got. So, most of these can be eliminated in my opinion. I think we've got our selects. So, what we've done now is we've gone through first pass, second pass of just the first look, the first outfit. I've stared the ones that I've liked. Tasha was looking as well to see if we missed anything. So now, what I'd like to do is basically sweep away all the ones that have eliminated and let's just look at the ones that we've stared now. So, Lightroom allows you to do that fairly easily, as Tasha demonstrated. There you go. Boom! So, we've now starred six, which sounds like, well, how did you just eliminate all those photos down to six. But six is still a lot, because we have four looks. So, even if we did six times four looks, that's 25 shots we still done. We're still trying to narrow down. So, this is quite a lot. But let's see how this is looking now. So, these are our six finalists. Pretty awesome. We've got some good detail shots. We've got some great product photography, lifestyle. Doesn't really see the product, but you can see it's inspired by Basketball inspired by sport sneaker culture. The reason why I love this shot is because it encompasses ball, sport, sneaker, and product. You see everything in this. You get the feeling and you get the image that you want to buy this. Yeah. So, we've got the six. So, good. So, let's go back and let's now start looking at the second look. Okay. So, I was interested on this. I remember Jamal was really uncomfortable. Trying to get the model comfortable is so key. I'm into that. Me too. Do like that? His look like this where he's super casual, or do you more this where like swagging? I think the swagging look. Yeah. Yeah. Not that, but maybe this. That is like, when we start somebody's. Again, let's now go back. So we've done the second look now. I want to sweep away all the edits. So, let's look at the one starred again just to see where we're at. One, two, three, four, five, I did six again. I wasn't even doing that on purpose, I swear, but we just eliminate it down to six again. There's something about editing fatigue that sets in too. I wouldn't necessarily go back and now go from six to three. We've done a really great job at first we've been editing. Now let's leave this and come back, and then we'll look at it with fresh eyes. There a term called fresh eyes, which is really important. Yes. You get editing fatigue, you just look at the same thing and you don't even know what you're looking at anymore. You need to step away, erase, and then take a nap, take a walk, see different shit, come back in and you see all different things when you come back. All right, so let's look at the third look now. Okay, let's do it. This is the buttoned down shirt. Yeah. Nice detail shot there. Money. I love this. Yeah. Its very natural. Okay. I think we're good with that. So, let's go and check out the one selects on this now. So, this is one we have. Five. Now we're going to the next one. So, these first shots the jackets looking really tight on him, because it doesn't fit him so well. But when you backed up and shot through the fence like this, now it's looking much more natural. These are way better, in fact I'm going to star those right now. At first I wasn't sure if we should keep that shirt on under but it looks really good. Yeah. It just adds a little bit of perspective. Let's see, we have those. What do we have so far now? Oh, okay. Let's go to the next look. This is the last look. Yeah, this is the last look. Great. We moved into a new environment here. Yeah. So, every time you move into a new environment, both the photographer and the model have to get reacclimated to this new thing now. You just have to be cognizant of that, when you're looking at photos. I think here we started to find pose and position. Oh, these are interesting. You're right. I was doubting you on this. I remember I was saying isn't there too back light, but it's actually pretty good. Yeah. That's a great shot. This one, I love this one. It just needs to be brightened up, but the lens flare. You don't know where it is, no one would have guessed that were behind an air conditioning unit. I like this. I like the blur of the trees. His pose is good. I think that's it for this. Let's go back and see what we edited now. So, we've got 26. So, we've narrowed it down from 900, almost 900 to 26. It's still quite a lot for the amount of looks that we want. But this is really good. So, do you feel comfortable in color correcting these 26 now? Okay. So, good. I've just saved Tasha about five years worth of color editing time. Guys, we're down from 900 to 26 photos. So, now the next step is, Tasha is going to put her eye color correcting, focusing, cropping. Sharpening. Yup, sharpening, and making them as well polished as possible, and then sending it back to me. Then I think what's going to happen now is we'll probably eliminate some of these from 26 down to probably 15 to 20, and then we should be good to go. That's how you go from a huge photo shoot, lots of images, all the way down to something that's usable, and that's engaging, that tells the story of your brand, but also sells the product that you're trying to make as well. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Yeah. 9. Conclusion: Alright. This is Jeff Staple founder Staple Design read space. We're back and I have seen Tasha's final images, they are looking great. We did the edit, we narrowed it down to about 20 some odd shots. She's done the color correction, the clarity, the sharpness, cropping, retouching. She's done a great job these are looking amazing now. So, we've got everything that I hoped for out of the shots. Tasha did a really incredible job at this and I hope you can see now how what seems like a simple photo took a lot of pre-planning, a lot of strategy, a lot of thinking and a lot of teamwork to pull off. So, you figure you're done right? No, you're not done. Now, you got to get these shots out to the world and trust me I've been on a lot of photo-shoot situations where like you do this great planning, great execution, the photos come out great and then the photos never see the light of day. They never come out because they didn't have a strategy on how to release them to the world. So, now I'm going to talk a little bit about how to release these photos now that you've got these done. As I mentioned before, one of the first things that you should consider is how you want to promote your brand, how you want to promote these out there. Do you want to make a print catalog, do you want to put them in the magazine, hell, do you want to buy a billboard, do you want to plaster the side of Madison Square Garden with them, do you want to make an oversized banner that covers a whole building or do you want it to just live on Instagram and Tumbler? This is your decision. There's a million and one different ways that you can promote these images. For this particular shoot we're going with social media for the most part and blogging for this. So, knowing that, I can now instruct Tasha that in terms of the resolution she doesn't have to give me super-duper high res images for this. They can be low res because as you might know, the medium of social media and blogging and digital requires only around 72 to 150 dpi for the images. They don't have to be massive. When you're determining who you want to send it to, obviously you want to send it to magazines and blog outlets that you're a fan of. So, places that you want to see your stuff posted on you should start with that. Now, it's easier said than done to just want to do it and then to try to get them to do it. So, how do you get somebody at some magazine that you don't know anybody, yeah, how do you get them to post your image? One thing that I try to avoid doing is just cold emailing the contact at or info at email address. It usually doesn't go anywhere and nobody really checks that. What you want to do is use things like Linked-in or something like that. Some sort of networking reference that lists people in different positions at the magazine and you want to try to get in with the style editor or fashion editor. It's really key to be able to pinpoint the right position. You don't want to send it to the founder and CEO and chairman of the board of this magazine. They're going to be like I don't know what to do with this, like I don't even know. You also don't necessarily want to send it to the intern or the mailroom clerk either. They're not going to know what to do with it. You want to send it to the person that actually has control of the branding product or fashion side of things if you have a brand. So, for me because I want to promote my fashion brand, I'm going to try to find the style editor or the fashion editor and you'd be surprised how receptive they are when you get it into the right person's hands. Because these people's jobs are to put out products, and put out, highlight new stories. So, they're actually looking for new brands to break and they want to be the first magazine or first press outlet to make a discovery. So, if your stuff is decent and good, you actually have a really good chance of getting a reply from that person, to be like yeah this is really interesting I want to use the story. If you put yourself in the shoes of an editor, essentially what an editor has is every day the editor probably has x number of slots he needs to fill out whether it's like I need to do 12 blog posts a day or I need to write four articles a day. He has a quota generally that he needs to fulfill. So, he's just looking for things to put into those buckets, those empty buckets and of all of a sudden you have a well-crafted respectful email that has really simple to follow Dropbox link instructions, resolutions all right, you're not sending like again a 500 gigabyte file to the dude. Everything it's just clear cut, makes lot of sense, there is an attached PDF that tells about your entire brand and in one click you could just get everything, he's going to be like yeah, I'm going to run the story it takes one thing away from my plate that I need to do, it's an interesting story and it's easy to manage, I'm going to do this. So, half the battle is just showing up professionally. We always say that but half the battle was literally just presenting yourself in a respectful professional manner that's convenient for everybody. The other thing to also think about while you're doing this is photo distribution. So, often at times what you'll have is one shot of a piece and you might have three to five or so different angles of that same image essentially. So, you might have this one jacket but you might have shot it this way, this way, and this way. What I usually like to do is when I start sending them out to different media outlets and different blogs for example, I'll send set A to blog A, set B to blog B and set C to blog C. So, that way when all three of those blogs are posting, they're not all posting the exact same images and it looks really boring. Every press outlet is getting their own set of custom photography and that not only makes it more interesting for the viewer, but that also makes it more special for the editors of these blogs, that they feel like they're getting their own set of photography which they are. So, we often do that as well, it takes a little bit more work but that extra effort goes a long way. All right. So, that wraps this up. This class was all about marketing elements. So, hopefully we got your brand and at this point you're ready to market it which is how you're going to sell to the world, how you're going to tell the entire world that they should buy your brand or buy your product. I've taken you from the pre photo-shoot set up, how you're going to go about planning, strategizing and making a vision for your log book and your catalog, then go into the actual shoot itself, all the details that go into it. I've allowed you to follow me along into an actual photo-shoot so you can see what actually happens there. Post photo-shoot, we actually sat down with a photographer and went to the editing phases to show you really good efficient ways on how to edit the photos down that you've shot, in our case we went all the way from 900 photos shot all the way down to a matter of a couple of dozens. So, that was really effective and then from there after you've got your final shots, distributing them and executing on how you're going to deliver these shots to the world. Whether it's digital, whether it's traditional, whether it's old school, new school, whatever it is, getting the word out there and tips on how to do that. So, basically it's A to Z on how to get your stuff marketed and I hope this class was really helpful for you. I can't wait to see what you guys do. I can't wait to see your products but more importantly for this class, I can't wait to see how you market to them and I want to learn from you guys. I want to see what innovative things you guys have to do for marketing strategies. Looking forward to seeing everything you guys submit. Thanks a lot.