In the online world of sleep consulting, using unique photography will set you apart from the rest. We try to provide imagery that shows environments and families using safe sleep practices. I can’t tell you how many times I grab an image from Canva or some other image platform and the crib has blankets in it, and babies are lying on the tummies or sleeping in a bed with mom or dad. It’s so frustrating! Do you feel frustrated too??
We know you NEED more unique imagery for your business and we want to provide you just that! Let’s talk about our latest photoshoot. Here are the details and some important goals for this session.
Our Photoshoot Goals
Using a professional photographer
We do all of our branding photoshoots with our very own photographer, Laurelyn at My Brand Photographer. She gives us all the rights to use the photos for commercial use where we can give them to you for your own business. We work with her during the photoshoots to make sure they will work well for marketing purposes.
Capturing toddlers in their bedtime routines
Our goal was to capture toddlers ages 2-5. I know from personal experience that this is a really tricky, and exhausting age. It is SO important to have great naptime and bedtime routines. The hope is to get your toddlers to sleep all through the night and wait for the green light in the morning, right?!
Having diversity is IMPORTANT
We want to make sure that we don’t just show white babies because our sleep consultants live all over the world and they serve families of all races. We want to be inclusive to all backgrounds in our business and help you serve your families, whatever their ethnicity may be.
Real life is not all rainbows and butterflies
We really strive to get our models in situations that are real and relatable. The kid is crying? Great! Kids cry, and whine and protest. It’s normal, and we want to capture it. We don’t plan our photoshoots with perfectly placed props or having families posed together and smiling.. because that’s just not what it looks like. We want parents to envision themselves in their rooms with their own kids.
Our process for the photoshoot
1. We reached out to families in our community
I reached out to the families in my son’s daycare if they would be interested in being models for our photoshoot. And we had 3 families who wanted to do it! Unfortunately, one of the families dropped out, but we had 2 great families join us.
2. We made a Mood board
What’s a mood board you ask?! We curated some imagery that resembles what we want to get out of our photoshoot. We added pictures of other toddlers, a crib, coloring, lighting, and anything else we wanted to include. It gives our photographer a general “vibe” of the direction of the photoshoot.
3. We gave each family pajamas for the little kids to wear
We scoured the internet for some super cute and relatively simple pajamas for the kids. We like to keep in mind what colors our sleep consultants like to use (blues, yellows, purples).
4. We made a list of items/props to bring and booked our location spot
We have now accumulated a lot of props for our branding sessions. We have a crib, books, coffee mugs, night lights, sound machines and SO MUCH MORE. We like to be prepared and make sure we can get all the images we need that relate to safe sleep. For the location, we found this adorable house in Milwaukee, WI that had some adorable bedrooms.
5. We had a backup plan!
It’s always good to have a plan B. We were originally going to have 3 families, but we ended up with 2. We had a good 45 minutes in between families on that day so we did a mini branding session where we took new headshots of ourselves. Never miss an opportunity to get a refresh on your own branding. We saw the opportunity, and we took it! Check out these cute pictures of us.
Finally – We didn’t take ourselves too seriously
Yes, it’s chaos and it’s stressful putting together a branding photoshoot. But at the end of the day, we had fun doing it! We got to work with an amazing photographer and two amazing and sweet families who hopefully get to walk away with some sweet moments of their own.
We didn’t get all of the shots we wanted either, but we also know that with every session we do, we learn something for the future.
Now for the fun part, let’s take a look at some of our pictures from the photoshoot
Bonus! Here is a picture of me (Jenna) and one of our toddlers!
Isn’t she sweet?!
We will plan on releasing these images throughout the rest of the year, so make sure you are a subscriber of our shop! If you sign up to be a yearly subscriber, you have access to ALL of the images we have released since September 2022 (over 70 images!) or you can be a monthly subscriber where you get 5 new photos every month.
Have any suggestions on who/what we should photograph next?!
Email us at theshop@marketstcreative.com and give us your input on what you would like to see for our image gallery.