This week, Marcus is talking to Heike Delmore, while Sam ison a break, so not part of the show. Heike is a branding photographer. She started in marketing both in Germany and Canada. About 13 years ago, she married her photography and marketing skills together and made her brand photographybusiness. She says many customers don’t know what brand photography is. Many of them come for a headshot, but they don’t want this. They want brand photos but don’talways know how to verbalise this.

Heike learned in her marketing while in Germany howmarketing in Europe is quite different to the US. What would be considered great in the US is often considered over the top and unrealistic in Europe.
As with many photographers, Heike was photographing from an early age, and enjoyed looking at Vogue and other magazines to see the photography. She found herphotoshoot ended up turning into a consultation about people's business, where it wanted to go and what message it wanted to convey.
Hekie has a studio. Initially, this was a converted garage. She now has a home studio with backdrops and lighting. But she also has a kitchen area for lifestyle images. So she does 98% of her shoots in the studio. But some clients want shots at their location. Heike uses both natural and artificial light in the studio. She likes the natural light look, but can use artificial light to help with that.
Heike says clients need shots with appropriate space so that clients can repurpose them, with different messaging.
Heike says she doesn’t show clients images during the shoot. She finds some clients can start to tear themselves apart during the shoot, which destroys the later images and mood of the studio. She does shots for about 90 minutes and encourages clients to bring lots of different outfits. Heike also thinks this means clients buy more images as they have a greater variety of images. She says a range of looks is good. From very formal to more casual. So it gives the impression on social media that people are getting to know them. She also says it's important that the clothes are right for the client and they don’t bring clothes they would never usually wear.
Marcus asks Heike where she gets clients. She says she has been discussing this with other photographers. She says the Google profile (Google Business) is working well. She says posting here can help you get found on the Google search.Marcus' questions of this exist in the UK (Note from Sam, yes, it does, and we have discussed it several times before on the podcast). Heike has said that using this has increased the number of leads she gets from the Google search. She also uses Instagram. She says the people who are on LinkedIn during the day or are still scrolling Instagram at night.
Heike is also an educator. She started partly as other photographers were asking her for help. So she started to help people. As she helped photographers, she found that she had some things that were different from other brand photographyeducators. She said photographers were wanting things like poses, but she says it needs to start much deeper than this. She says the images need purpose, not poses. Heike gives a specific example of a client. She got them to think aboutwhere she wanted to be in 5 years and asked her to walk into the shoot, as that person. This helped people see her in this new way.

Heike is running several courses at the moment. She has a free giveaway specifically for Shoot to the Top Listeners. This download is to help your clients work out where they want to be in a year or five years. It helps clients think this through and then translate this into what photography they need. She also runs the course from headshot to personal branding. Marcushas taken this course.