How to brief a photoshoot: the one page that saves two days

The two days are not the shoot day. The shoot day almost always goes fine.

The two days are the reshoot, and the fortnight of circulating images before someone senior says that is not what I had in mind. That is where budgets go. Not on the day rate, but on the second day rate, and on the six weeks the launch slipped while everyone worked out what they actually wanted.

Nearly all of it comes from the same place. The brief described the shoot instead of the decision.

What a brief is for

A brief is not a description of what will be photographed. It is a record of decisions taken before anyone is standing in a room with the light going.

On a shoot, decisions get made constantly and fast. Is this the angle. Does she stand or sit. Do we wait forty minutes for the sun to come round or take it now. Somebody makes each of those calls. If the brief settled them, the photographer makes them and they are right. If it did not, they get made by whoever is most senior in the room, in a hurry, and get revisited later by someone who was not there.

Every line in a good brief is a decision that will not have to be made twice.

The eight things

1. What the audience has to believe

Not what the images should show. What someone should think after seeing them.

That this scheme is finished and occupied, not a building site. That this firm is not intimidating. That these students are happy without looking staged.

One sentence. It is the only line in the brief that determines everything else, and it is the one most briefs skip.

2. Where the images will end up

List the places. Homepage hero, portal listing, brochure spread, LinkedIn, hoarding, investor deck.

This is not admin. It sets the shape of the shot. A homepage hero is wide with empty space for a headline. A portal thumbnail is a tight crop that has to work at the size of a stamp. A brochure spread needs the gutter accounted for. The same subject shot for one of those does not work for the others, and nobody discovers this until layout.

It also sets your licensing, which is a whole separate conversation worth having up front.

3. The shot list, ranked

Every shot you want, in order of importance.

Ranked is the operative word. Weather turns, a contractor overruns, a room is not ready. Something on the list will not happen. Ranking decides in advance which one, rather than at four in the afternoon by whoever is loudest.

Ten to fifteen shots is a realistic day for interiors. Twenty-five is not, and a brief asking for twenty-five gets you twenty-five mediocre frames instead of twelve good ones.

4. The one shot the day fails without

Name it. Circle it. One shot.

If the day produced only this frame, would it have been worth doing. There is always an answer, and writing it down changes how the whole day is run. That shot gets the best light, the most time and a backup plan, and everything else works around it.

5. People

Who is in the shots, by name where you can. Who arranges them. Whether they know.

Then the practical layer: what they wear, what time they arrive, how long you have them for, who signs the release. Senior people give you twenty minutes and are late for it. Plan for twenty minutes.

If you need people who look like residents or students rather than actual residents or students, say so early. Casting is not a same-week job.

6. Access, timing and light

Which spaces, who holds the keys, when the building is empty, whether there is a lift, whether the site manager knows.

Then light. South-facing rooms are photographed in the morning. West-facing terraces are photographed at the end of the day. Exteriors that need to look warm need the hour after sunrise or before sunset, and there is only one of each per day. If the brief wants a golden-hour exterior and six interiors, the brief wants two days.

This is where most schedules quietly break. Ninety seconds spent working out which way the building faces prevents it.

7. Who signs off, and when

Name the person. One person.

Then say when they see it. Contact sheet within three days, selects back within a week, finals a week after that. Sign-off with no deadline attached expands to fill whatever time the project has, which is how a January shoot goes live in April.

And be honest about whether the person who signs off is the person who wrote the brief. If not, they need to see it beforehand. Their opinion is going to arrive either way. Earlier is cheaper.

8. When the images are genuinely needed

Not the launch date. The date the designer needs files in hand to hit the launch date.

Work backwards from there. It is usually two to three weeks earlier than people assume, and it is the difference between a considered shoot and a scramble.

What to leave out

A mood board instead of a decision. Reference images are useful for showing tone. They are not useful as a substitute for saying what the shot is. Fifteen pins from other people's campaigns tells a photographer that you like photographs.

Make it pop. Also premium, aspirational, and clean but warm. These describe a feeling without describing anything anyone can point a camera at. If you catch yourself writing one, replace it with what the audience has to believe.

Everything. A brief listing every possible shot is not thorough, it is undecided. The value is in the ranking.

The test

If two people on the shoot could read the brief and disagree about what to do next, the brief is not finished.

That is the whole quality check. Read it as someone who was not in the meeting. Every place where you would have to ask a question is a decision that will otherwise get made badly, on the day, by someone guessing.

The template

One page, eight fields. Fill it in before you book anyone.

It is deliberately short. If it takes more than twenty minutes it is because the decisions have not been made, and finding that out at a desk is a great deal cheaper than finding it out on site.

---

We write the brief with clients as part of every shoot, and we push back when a line is doing no work. Send us what you are launching and we will come back with what we would make and what it costs.