Using Photography Can Improve Your Brand Image with Tanya Goodall Smith

In this episode, host Eric Dickmann interviews Tanya Goodall Smith of Workstory Brand Photography. After a decade-long career as a graphic designer and art director, Tanya walked away from it all to pursue her lifelong love of photography.

She spent the last 15 years perfecting her digital photography skills and style through workshops, college courses, and hours of experience. Now she’s back to her creative agency roots, offering an alternative to generic stock photography. Tanya’s experience is broad and her ability to create imagery appropriate for any brand is considered her strong point.

In this episode, we discuss the importance of photography and the impact that good photos can have on your business and personal brands.

Eric Dickmann can be found on Twitter @EDickmann and LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/edickmann and my website https://ericdickmann.com

Tanya Smith can be found online at https://workstoryphotography.com/ on Facebook @Workstoryphotography, and Youtube @Workstoryphotography

Episode Summary: The episode summary can be found at https://fiveechelon.com/using-brand-photography-to-improve-your-image-s2ep30/

If you'd like to contact us with feedback or guest inquiries, please visit:
https://fiveechelon.com/podcast

For more information about Virtual CMO strategic marketing consulting services, visit The Five Echelon Group at https://fiveechelon.com
 
Episode #30

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Transcript

Eric Dickmann: [00:00:00]  Welcome to season two of The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm your host, Eric Dickmann, founder of The Five Echelon Group. 

Our goal is to share strategies, tools, and tactics with fellow marketing professionals that you can use to impact the trajectory of your company's marketing programs. We have candid conversations about what works, and what doesn't, with marketing tactics, customer experience, design and automation tools. Our goal is to provide value each week with a roster of thoughtful and informative guests engaged in a lively conversation. 

This week, I'm excited to welcome Tanya Goodall Smith to the show. After a decade long career as a graphic designer and art director, Tonya walked away from it all to pursue her lifelong love of photography. She spent the last 15 years perfecting her digital photography skills and style through workshops, college courses and hours of experience. 

Now she's back to her creative agency roots, offering an alternative to generic stock photography, Tanya's experience is broad and her ability to create imagery appropriate for any brand is considered her strong point.  As a lover of photography myself, I really enjoyed this conversation with Tanya.  

Tanya you're welcome to the virtual CMO podcast. So glad you could join us today.

Tanya Smith: [00:01:30] Thanks. I'm glad to be here.

Eric Dickmann: [00:01:32] So we were talking a little bit before we got on the air about photography, and I told you that I had a love for it as well. Tell me a little bit about how you got started in photography.

Tanya Smith: [00:01:40] Yeah. So my first experience was in high school back in the day. Shooting on black and white film, we rolled it all and developed it ourselves. And I worked in the yearbook and that kind of gave me an interesting graphic design, which is what I studied in school and worked for. 20 years as a graphic designer. And the last , about 10 years really got serious about photography and started offering it to my design clients, to use in their websites and their marketing and that kind of thing.

Eric Dickmann: [00:02:12] I love digital photography. It makes life so much easier, but there was something about working with the film and the prints and all those smelly chemicals that you had in the dark room. There was something much more satisfying. I think when you finally got that perfect print out of a dark room, wasn't there?

Tanya Smith: [00:02:28] Yeah, I don't really miss it. I much prefer digital. It's so much faster to learn. And like you said, you don't have to deal with those chemicals and stuff, but I did like the solitude of. being in the dark room and. yeah, the magic of the, your print appearing and stuff. That was pretty cool.

Eric Dickmann: [00:02:45] We all walk around today with cameras in our pockets so in a way, everybody's a photographer. But I have a number of friends who were very artistically inclined. And one of the things that I really noticed about their personalities is that they just seem to see art in everything.In every day objects in everyday settings. Whereas I often find myself having to get everything just right in the frame and whatnot, and it just doesn't come as naturally. Do you see that too, in your own work that you stare through that lens and things just come to life?

Tanya Smith: [00:03:19] Oh, for sure. Yeah. And my design background too.  I'm creating a design really with your photo in the composition and that kind of thing. Colors. yeah, for sure. I definitely had a natural talent for it, but have also learned my skills along the way to make it better. And for sure. I definitely see. Art everywhere I go. I also see really bad design and photography everywhere I go.

Eric Dickmann: [00:03:45] I believe it.

So, you know, we're a business marketing podcast, focused on the small and midsize businesses.  When you look around at business photography in general, what makes a good business photo?

Tanya Smith: [00:03:59] Yeah, so I have a few kind of criteria for how I create number one. We want to have really great lighting. I see. photography means the study of. Or painting with light, really? So if you've not used a professional, that's making sure you're lit. it can be, bad quality or unflattering. then also the pose and body language. I see inappropriate inappropriately used a lot in ads. I can tell, if someone hasn't hired a photographer that has studied body language and facial expression, a lot of times I see billboards with just,  all the doctors lined up with their arms crossed. that's the default pose. And I'm like, maybe you could have gotten a little more creative. What is that communicating? oftentimes it looks severe or, to authoritative, whereas people want to look approachable and friendly. And we want to pay attention to the pose, the facial expressions, that kind of thing. and then also,  what's going on in the background of your photo? What story is that telling, paying attention to that kind of thing can really make an image powerful or make it, not as effective. yeah. And then, if you really want to get into like color theory and psychology of. color and that kind of thing. I've got all of those in my tool belt as well.

Eric Dickmann: [00:05:18] Just to pick up on the comment that you made about, the doctor or the lawyer, posing with his arms crossed, I think about holiday gatherings and taking pictures of the grandparents and the parents and there was such a stiffness there such a reluctance to pose for a picture. And then you've got millennials and gen Z's and everyone else who can't stop taking pictures of themselves, you know, we've, we've really gone from this reluctance to just enough already. And do you think it's helping people just be more comfortable in front of the camera?

Tanya Smith: [00:05:50] Maybe I do find that, people seem to be more comfortable taking a selfie versus Oh, there's a professional here. There's lights. Like we paid a lot of money for this. I don't know. People still tend to get a little. camera shy. So I have a lot of tricks that I'll use to help people relax. but I do think the younger generation for sure. Is more comfortable being an images. I guess it's just maybe a generational thing for sure.

Eric Dickmann: [00:06:18] But there's that control factor as well, right? When their lights and a professional photographer, it's no longer in your control. You can't have 50 retakes to get the one where you think your hair looks perfect. 

Tanya Smith: [00:06:28] I make sure we're gonna get a great image, but I think also the pressure of wow, this is going to go in and ad, or it's going to be on a billboard or. It's good. It's representing my business. Maybe there's some extra pressure there versus Oh, I'm just gonna stick this on my Instagram. and I think just, people in general who are  confident I tend to be more. Relaxed in front of the camera where, a lot of us have reservations about how we look that can, we can get to think too much about it, worry too much about how we look. And I always try to coach my clients a little bit about, what's the message you're wanting to send here. And, what's the purpose for these photographs. Usually it's to help people, right? People want to grow their business in a, first, especially service based businesses. That's mostly who I work with. they offer a service that helps people. And so I remind them. we're taking these pictures so that you can offer your service to more people, help more people. it doesn't really matter. How you look in these pictures. I'm going to make you look good, but you can relax a little bit and know that, it'll be fine.

Eric Dickmann: [00:07:30] I love that. I'd love to delve into a little bit more about business photography and the multiple elements where businesses use photography. So the number one thing I think about right away is a website. A website is your brand's persona. It describes sort of the vibe of your brand. The feel, it conveys a lot of emotion. what do you think makes the difference between a website that effectively uses photography and one that does not.

Tanya Smith: [00:08:02] So number one, just having photos, right? I go to so many websites where, especially for service based businesses. There's no pictures. I'm like who is offering the service to me. I want to see your face. I want to see your office, where am I going to be going to, if I decide to book with you. so number one, having. And then, you want to make sure they're of good quality, especially if you have a higher end service that, costs. if someone's gonna be coming in to spend $5,000 on their kids' braces or whatever, we want to see, is it clean there? is it nicely decorated? Is there a comfortable place for me to say, I'm waiting, that kind of thing. we, humans tend to judge, based. like in a split second, we judge, by when we look at pictures, right? If I go to your website. number one, there's no pictures. I'm like, what are you hiding from me in this kind of like a trust factor there? Number two, if there are pictures and they're not high quality, we might be like, this other place looks nicer. I'm going to go there. so I think just, having the pictures, having them be good quality, showing that, your personality of your people can really be helpful as well. and making sure they, aren't just stiffed. The stiff headshots, maybe you show some action shots or, show, Pictures of your staff doing something fun or however you want to be perceived. obviously if you're, maybe a plastic surgeon or something you don't want to show you. With balloons there's I don't know.  we would do a strategy session with each client to  decide what those photos should be, but showing a little bit of your personality can really go a long way.

Eric Dickmann: [00:09:35] The example used was funny. I've worked with some medical practices before and they were into aesthetics and I looked at the website this is all about you. This isn't about your customer. This isn't about making them feel good about the services that they'll be receiving or how they'll feel at the end of this process. It's all just a bunch of very stiff pictures of you and a sterile looking office. So creating that warmth and inviting atmosphere you're right. People want to see that, especially if they're window shopping, 

Tanya Smith: [00:10:04] Yeah. Maybe showing some patients in there or having patient testimonials with some great photos or videos of, your clients, can really go a long way in that situation.

Eric Dickmann: [00:10:16] What about the combination of photography and video? how do you keep some consistency in the overall look and feel of what you're doing with your imagery when you're flipping between those mediums?

Tanya Smith: [00:10:30] Sure. Yeah. number one, hiring someone who does both could really help in consistency, but also having some style guides in place, maybe you have. you always use the same color backdrop, or you always infuse, a little bit of the color from your brand in them making sure the lighting style is consistent. that kind of thing.

Eric Dickmann: [00:10:52] You talked a little bit about businesses helping the customers understand who they are, who their employees are. So I think we're all used to  annual reports with the black and white pictures of senior managers in a tie. in front of a fuzzy, gray backdrop or something like that. Aren't we past that?  there are some businesses that have gone as far as, their staff is represented by emojis.  Because business has relaxed a bit, do you think it's good to show people in a more relaxed way versus the stiff kind of suit and tie

Tanya Smith: [00:11:27] yeah. So will the name of my business is actually called the work story photography. So we love to show your story So I would prefer to see images, of your executives, like at their desk or, out in the field. Basically, depending on who you are. but I love to see some of the environment that you're in, and cause there's the things we see around you help tell your story. do you have, just looking at the background of your. Video right now. Like I. I'm so intrigued by the little things on your shelves and stuff. I want to hear the story about that. And that tells me some things about you that I'm, I'm making assumptions, it looks like. You like things to be clean and neat and organized, and you've got some funky, cool things you've collected and an American flag. you're, I'm assuming you're an American, all of those things are telling me a little bit about you just by looking at the what's behind you in the picture. yeah, I would love to see more of that and less of the stiff. studio headshots.

Eric Dickmann: [00:12:28] There's been so much of that, right? It's so commonplace, especially if you get to like fortune 500 or something, there seems to be a standard. Almost the people expect there, but smaller businesses seem to have a little bit more flexibility to play around with their brand and. And be a little bit more playful, I guess is just a way to put it. 

Yeah,  What's wrong with stock photography?

Tanya Smith: [00:12:48] So stock photography has its place, right? As a graphic designer, I've purchased thousands of stock photos. In my career, but, one example is I worked with, I worked at a dental practice marketing firm. We worked with about a hundred different dentists and we use the same photos for all of them. So eventually you start to just look the same as everyone else. And that's like the antithesis of branding. you want your brand to be unique. So I always say to service providers. if you use your face, no one else can copy that. Because it's you. So that's one of the best things you can do, to avoiding the stock photography, just put your face and your staff out there. so yeah, you can tend to start to look cookie cutter. Also in my career, I've, spent a whole day trying to find the right stock photo for a specific ad or something. And I thought, why don't we just do a photo shoot? It would have taken less time there. Just take a picture of what we wanted. even though stock photos can be cheaper, sometimes they're not, stock photos at Getty images, or, can be $400 or more, depending on how you're going to use them. sometimes it can actually be more economical to plan out a shoot with all the images you're anticipating using on your website. Your social media, any print ads, and then you just have them to use for all year.

Eric Dickmann: [00:14:07] I know that some of the less expensive stock photography providers. Get heavily used and you start to see those pictures over and over again on the web. But some of that stuff, as you mentioned from Getty and whatnot, can be really expensive. Now, when you get into a business and you take pictures, do you ever get pushback from, leaders or employees that said, no, I don't want my picture used for advertising or on the web. Do you find that there's much reluctance?

Tanya Smith: [00:14:32] I haven't really had much, most of the time I think the employees just figure, this is part of my. job, my boss says we have to do this. sometimes they're reluctant about, how they look and I just try to be really understanding and okay, we're gonna make sure your hair looks good and that kind of thing. But. For the most part I've most people are, pretty gung ho and excited and, they want there. Their job too. Continue on. So if this is part of the marketing, we have to do it. I have had some, me, I tend to work with dentists a lot. So I use that example. I've had sometimes we'll have patients come in while we're doing a photo shoot and we'll ask them for sure. Hey, we're doing photos today. Would you be willing to be in them? And sometimes they will say no, and we just respect that and don't include them in the photos. 

Eric Dickmann: [00:15:20] I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about social media because where I look at a business's website. Obviously it changes, but it's fairly static, day to day, but social media, you could be putting up new content once, twice, multiple times a day, and you have to keep it fresh and you're not going to hire a professional photographer every time you want to get an image for your Instagram post or whatnot. So how can you pull that, same sort of brand that same look and feel through when you might be relying on other people to copy maybe some established guidelines that you've set as the professional. As they go on with their day to day.

Tanya Smith: [00:15:59] Yeah. So one thing I do offer my clients is like a quarterly photo shoot. So we might shoot, a bunch of content anticipating what's coming up and then they have those to use. And then also, like you said, just having some guidelines about, we want to make sure. our photos are light and airy, or maybe they're a little more dark and moody or, we want to make sure there's no clutter in the background. just maybe having some rules about what you post. And how they fit in with the rest of your images. cut. Like I mentioned before, color can be a strong, an easy thing to use to tie everything together. Maybe you just have a little pop of your brand color. Somewhere in your photos. For me, I try to always wear a pink scarf or pink earrings are like pink and black are my brand colors. So that's an easy way to, people recognize me by that. so that's a little trick for personal brands, especially can just. Always wear it. The color of your brand and it'll always work. 

Eric Dickmann: [00:16:59] I've been surprised how many people I've had on this podcast that really follow a strong personal brand. They wear their purple, they were the agreed or your case, the pink, and which I think is great. I need to get better at that myself. 

wouldn't it be great to be a coffee shop? It seems like there are an infinite number of ways that you can take a picture of a cup of coffee and it still looks interesting. if you sell gravel, it's a little harder to figure out ways to create, some emotion or whatnot in your photography. And maybe for some of those businesses, social media or an Instagram, isn't even an ideal channel for them to use. But I love the thought that you have just around color, because there are many things that you can do just by using color within your photography.

 When you take a picture, especially if you're looking at something that may be posted online, do you think about how text may fit in here? Do you leave like dark areas of the photos so that you can say, this would be a great place to insert some text.

Tanya Smith: [00:17:52] Yes, that's absolutely a consideration. And when I'm consulting with my clients while we're planning there, shoot, that's one thing I asked them, how are you going to use these images? Are they going to be, do they need to be long and skinny for a banner ad? Or do you need text on the side? For an ad or, so I wanna make sure I'm providing that as we're shooting. And I've actually had a lot of people come and hire me after they hired like a regular portrait photographer and say, my pictures were pretty, but they didn't work for my ads because we needed space for text or, they needed to be a certain style or whatever, and they didn't. No, we didn't really think about that. Until after the photo shoot. and those are all things I've got on my radar because of my design background.

Eric Dickmann: [00:18:33] I don't know why all these social media companies are so mean to all of us who use their platforms and they can't just standardize on the size.

Everyone is just a little bit different, whether it's your banners or your profile photo or the feed photos everything is a little bit different platform to platform. And you can get away with a few common sizes, but they're still never going to be 

Tanya Smith: [00:18:53] Yeah. It's, it's so annoying. So yeah, as a photographer, I tend to shoot wider, like a fine art photographer would crop everything perfectly. but for graphics, I tend to shoot a little wide cause I know whatever graphic designer are you going to use is going to want to be able to crop in to whatever size that they need. So I'll tend to shoot wide. For that reason.

Eric Dickmann: [00:19:15] I've got a closet filled with DSLRs and cameras. Cause I love to use that stuff, but good grief. The phones are good nowadays. Aren't they? I mean, they can really take some pretty incredible pictures and it's, you've got that wonderful power in your pocket, all the time. Do you find yourself using it more and more just for occasional shots as you're meandering about town or whatnot?

Tanya Smith: [00:19:37] Oh, yeah, I've got three kids and I rarely bring my camera with me. Anywhere, if we're going, I just take my phone. For, yeah, for my personal use. And even sometimes for my business, behind the scenes photos, I'll give my phone to my assistant just to be like, take some pictures with my phone while I'm shooting. so yeah, I don't know if. If I was doing, Like I do some large scale graphics images for people. I don't know that I had how a phone picture would hold up for that kind of thing. But for social media, If have a good eye for composition and stuff, you can absolutely use your phone.

Eric Dickmann: [00:20:11] We'll be right back after this brief message. Marketing is the engine that drives demand, but too often it takes a back seat to other priorities. Awareness, fails to materialize demand drops in sales falter. Don't wait until it's too late to build your brand awareness and demand generation programs. If your company is struggling with their marketing strategy, we want to help let's schedule a call to talk about your unique situation and what options might be available to get your marketing program back on track.

To learn more text C M O to (407) 374-3670 that's C M O two four zero seven. Three seven four three six seven zero. And we'll reply with further details. We hope to hear from you soon. 

we talked about business. We started talking about social media. And now I want to talk a little bit more about personal branding. So one of the things that I've heard a lot from business leaders that I've interacted with is that they're finding it increasingly important to establish their own personal brand in addition to the company brand. Maybe they're not doing anything, even outside that company, they're not trying to do a side hustle or something, but having that personal brand whether it's on LinkedIn or Twitter or whatnot, that really shows off your personal brand. And then if you're blogging or doing anything else or maybe doing some YouTube videos, what advice do you give people in terms of the photographic elements for setting up a personal brand?

Tanya Smith: [00:21:43] Yeah. For sure you want to have a good headshot, right? that's a good place to start. if anything, have a really nice photo of your face. And in your profile picture. Make sure it's your face. I've seen a lot of people put their dog. Or their kids or. a full body picture of them on the Lake or something for their profile and we can't see your face.

So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. make your profile picture just your face so that we can recognize you. if you look at, our most famous personal brands like Oprah and, Those types of people there. We recognize their face because we see it all over the place. So get a good headshot. and then, yeah, just having, if you have. The budget. And you're really serious about building your personal brand, hire a personal branding photographer, and they'll help you strategize what kind of photos you should take for the story that you want to tell. And you can use those everywhere, and if you're getting a. Some publications, editorial, what, what do you call them? Like interviews for magazines or, even if you're going to be on TV or in podcasts, you want to have some compelling images. To share your Mo more likely to get that kind of press. If you've got great photos already. and then yeah, on your social media. And then just thinking about what kind of message you want to be putting out there about yourself and make sure your photos are matching that message and helping you in telling that story. And like you said, even if you have a regular job, having that personal brand can help you get more opportunities in the future, or. make yourself more valuable to your employer as an authority in your field.

Eric Dickmann: [00:23:23] So you mentioned before that you'd like to wear pink is an identifiable characteristic of your personal brand. But if you are somebody who's working on establishing that personal brand, maybe you are the CEO of a company or the doctor in your practice . Do you think it's important that they use that same headshot everywhere? whether they have something like a color or whatnot that helps identify, but just so people recognize that face everywhere.

Tanya Smith: [00:23:49] Yeah. your face is the most recognizable thing about you, right? Whether no matter what you wear. and yeah, I would recommend, I have one mentor. She recommends. You have you get your. headshot updated once a year and use that picture everywhere. For a year or, at least six months, I would say don't be switching it out all the time. Cause you want people to recognize you and you want people to recognize you as you are. So if you have cut your hair drastically or you gained or lost weight or. your hair is a different color or something like that. You want to make sure people are gonna recognize you in person. Based on your photo online.

Eric Dickmann: [00:24:28] Who's gaining weight during COVID.

Tanya Smith: [00:24:30] I did. I'll tell you 

that right now. 

Eric Dickmann: [00:24:32] it too. That makes two of us. as we're getting to the end here, I wonder, could you just share with the audience, what is one simple tip that they could take away from today about how to improve their own photography skills?

Tanya Smith: [00:24:48] Okay. as I mentioned before, look for the light, right? If it's a dark room, go find a window or go outside or, get yourself a little, or a large ring light, something that's going to add some light, to your images. Cause that's really gonna improve the quality from what I've seen, if you just. Play with the light a little bit. see how it looks. the great thing is with your phone. You can take lots of pictures, adjust the light a little bit, turned to a different angle and see how it looks. and yeah, just focus on that for sure.

Eric Dickmann: [00:25:21] Yeah, lighting is so key. And I see so many people with these blowout pictures where they're looking right into the light and everything's washed out because it's too bright or the opposite. It's too dark. And they have these terrible shadows and it just looks like lighting is everything when it comes to photography. 

Tanya, tell people how they can get a hold of you and, what kind of services that you could offer the audience.

Tanya Smith: [00:25:44] Yeah, so I'm located in Spokane Washington. So if you're around that area, Eastern Washington, Northern Idaho, and you're looking for a photographer, you can find me at workstoryphotography.com. And then I also have an educational course for photographers who want to learn my unique business model for working with businesses. And that's at workstoryeducation.com. and yeah, we're having a great time in that group. I'm teaching some photographers who are pivoting away from like wedding photography, and wanting to offer. This because it's a year round thing you can offer to people. 

Eric Dickmann: [00:26:19] Good photography is so important, whether it's your personal brand or your business. And I really love the fact that you've wrapped a business around this whole idea of creating a story, because I think telling a story is key for anyone so that they can really understand who you are. This has been a great conversation, love talking photography with somebody who loves it. Like I do. Thanks so much for taking the time to be on the show today. And I'll have all of those things linked up in the show notes.

Tanya Smith: [00:26:44] Perfect. Thank you. It was a pleasure.

Eric Dickmann: [00:26:46]  that wraps up another episode of The Virtual CMO podcast. As a reminder, if you'd like to learn more about Virtual CMO, strategic marketing consulting services, or anything else discussed here today, please visit us at fiveechelon.com. There's a link in the show notes. If you'd like to send us comments, feedback, guest inquiries, and your five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts are always appreciated.

If you'd like to reach me. I'm @ EDickmann. That's E D I C K M A N N on Twitter. If you'd like to connect on LinkedIn, please let me know. You heard about me through The Virtual CMO podcast. I look forward to talking with you again next week and sharing some new marketing insights on The Virtual CMO.