You know when you land on a website and everything just feels like it belongs together?

The colors. The copy. The photos. It all feels like the same brand. That doesn’t happen by accident.

Consistent photography is a big part of what makes a brand feel recognizable and put together. That doesn’t mean every photo needs to look exactly the same, it means your photos should feel like they belong to the same organization.

This spring, I spent two full days photographing Germantown Academy, a school that is literally older than the United States itself. We covered A LOT of ground bouncing around campus—six miles a day, if my pedometer is to be believed—and looking back through the full photo library, I’m not sure how we managed to fit so much into just two shoot days.

Before someone reaches out, schedules an appointment, or fills out a contact form, they’ve probably already spent time on your website forming an opinion about you and your organization. And whether we realize it or not, a huge part of that first impression comes from the photos. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

I headed out to Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania a couple times this spring to visit Messiah University for some marketing work. It had been a few years since their last campus shoot, so we had a wide variety of subjects on the shot list. Of course plenty of photos of campus and active classroom shots, as well as time to find all the quiet little nooks Messiah has to offer. The healthy mix of formal and candid shots gave the final gallery a really nice range that the University will be able to use in a mix of marketing spaces for years to come.

Back in the winter, I got the opportunity to run around Manayunk and capture small businesses for an article they wrote, “Power Couples of Manayunk,” how fun is that?!

Hiring a photographer isn’t just about booking a date and getting a few headshots. The right photographer should help you create images that actually support your brand, strengthen your messaging, and give you content you can use across your website, social, and marketing campaigns.

There’s nothing wrong with stock photos (she says, side-eyeing the multicultural handshake). They’re bright. They’re polished. They’re easy. And they’re usually ridiculous. They’re also completely forgettable. If you’ve ever scrolled a website and felt a serious sense of déjà vu, congrats — you’ve discovered the “copy + paste but make it branding” era of the internet.

If there’s one word that sums up my time with Ballinger, it’s collaboration. The Ballinger team operates with an impressive sync—designers, architects, and strategists working seamlessly across the many (many) layers of each project. Each turn down a new hallway revealed a different group deep in conversation: brainstorming, sketching, problem-solving, and building ideas together in real time.

Sometimes, photoshoots get treated like a box to check: schedule a shoot, get the images back, update the website, post a few times on social media, and move on. 

Brand photography isn’t meant to be one-and-done, well planned and executed photography is meant to last.

Photos have the ability to shape how people perceive your brand, build a level of trust between your brand and consumers, and in the end, play a part in whether or not someone engages with your content over time.