How to Brief a School Marketing Photographer
A few years ago I turned up to shoot a full marketing day at an international school in Singapore. Great school, lovely people with genuinely impressive facilities. The brief I'd been given was three lines long and basically said "get some nice shots of the kids learning."
I made it work, experience always helps with that. But I've thought about that day quite a bit since, because with a proper brief it would have been a completely different set of images and a different story. Images that actually matched what the marketing team were trying to say about the school, rather than what I'd guessed they were trying to say.
A good brief isn't about paperwork. It's about giving me enough context to make decisions on your behalf when I'm in the room and you're not standing next to me.
This is what works to get you the maximum bang for your marketing buck.
Tell me who you are as a school
Not the line from the prospectus. I mean the real flavour of the place. Are you warm and community-focused? Academic and ambitious? A bit of both? I'm going to be making hundreds of small decisions on the day. Which moment to capture, which to let go, how close to get, what to leave out of frame. All of those decisions are easier when I understand what you're trying to say about your school.
What are the school’s inspiration words? If you have brand guidelines, share them. If you don't, show me a handful of images you love and a couple you really don't. Just a ten minute conversation changes everything.
Tell me what you actually need
There's a difference between "some outdoor shots would be nice" and "we're redesigning the homepage and we need something warm and aspirational, Year 4 or 5 age range, preferably the new outdoor learning space." The second one I can go and get. The first one I'm going to interpret, and I might get it wrong.
I also need to know about restrictions. Students who shouldn't be photographed, spaces that are off limits, a member of staff who's camera shy. It saves us time and a potentially difficult conversation later.
Where are the images going to be used?
This can really affect how I shoot. A hero image for a website homepage needs to be composed completely differently to a square crop for Instagram. Do you use more verticals than horizontals? A double-page spread in a printed prospectus needs headroom and breathing space for text that a sidebar thumbnail doesn't. If I know where something's going before I make the image, I can build that into the frame from the start.
The shape of the day
A quick look at the timetable before I arrive saves a lot of improvising on the day. I want to know where different year groups are when, which spaces have good light at which times, and whether there's anything happening that I should make sure to catch. School days have a rhythm to them and the best shoots work with that rather than fighting against it. The worst shoots are the ones where I'm being escorted from one thing to the next without any sense of what's coming.
Your deadline
If you're going to press in five days, I need to know that before the shoot, not the morning after. I can turn things around quickly when I need to, and I can pull out a handful of priority images for social media faster than the full edit if that's what's needed. But I need to know in advance.
Safeguarding and consent
Every school handles this slightly differently and I work within your procedures, not mine. Before I photograph anyone I need a quick summary of your consent setup. It doesn't need to be complicated, just make sure it's part of the briefing conversation rather than something we're sorting out on the morning of the shoot.
None of this needs to be in a formal document. Most of my best shoots have started with a phone call, or a coffee, where the marketing manager talks me through what they're trying to achieve and what's been keeping them up at night. That conversation is worth more than any written brief.
If you're planning a shoot and want to talk it through,get in touch. I'm always happy (indeed, want) to have that conversation before anything is booked.
