Getting good lifestyle photography can be a huge challenge. If you’ve got an in-house team you’re limited by your physical location. Does that mean urban or rural? What if there’s snow and you’re trying to shoot a summer collection? Your location may even limit the talent you’re able to source (both technical and models).
Outsourcing can be a challenge too. Not only can it be super expensive depending on who you go with, it can be hard to find someone with just the right style. There are nuances to every photographer’s wheelhouse — whether it’s technical ability, editing aesthetic, or even things like communication and project management.
Through trial and error I was able to strike a balance between talent and affordability that aligned with the Range brand book perfectly. Here’s how I did it:
Create a spreadsheet
Before you go out looking for photographers you’ll need a place to keep track of everything. I’m a spreadsheets guy so I whipped up a Notion table with the following columns:
- Name — their real name. You’ll need this for your cold email later.
- Email — sometimes this is in their Instagram bio and other times you have to do some digging.
- Website — should be in their bio if they have a site at all (not all will).
- Instagram — easily reference their feed when you need a reminder.
- Country — if you only want to ship to certain countries you’ll need this.
- Source — Instagram, Unsplash, personal relationship, wherever you go to look.
- Status — waiting, responded, holding, committed, over budget, never responded, etc.
- Cost — everyone’s pricing structure is a little bit different.
- Notes — any other relevant things regarding the person or deal.
To save you a little bit of time, hit the button below to get my photographer Notion template. I’ve got all these columns already setup for you along with a few photographers that I got responses from (to give you a head start):
Photographer Outreach Notion Template
Find photographers
The obvious first move when trying to find photographers is Instagram. Go to the search bar and work one-by-one down this list of hashtags:
- #productphotography
- #productphotographer
- #studioproductphotography
- #lifestyleproductphotography
- #lifestyleproductphotographer
- #flatlay
You could scroll forever in each of these. I made a point to spend at least 15 mins in each hashtag — which is a long time in scroll time. I found it easiest to command+click posts that I liked as I scrolled and then worked back through the tabs to add them to my list.
Also, once you populate the Notion table a bit, I would recommend grouping by status. Makes things easier to read.
Cold Email
Such a dirty word, isn’t it? Listen, you are the client here. Any of the photographers you find are going to be stoked to get an email from a prospective new client. Don’t feel weird about it.
The goal with the cold email is to gauge responsiveness and to get clear pricing up front. Here’s a simple email template that I used:
Hey [name],
My name is Tim Aton, the COO of a brand called Range Leather. (link to your site)
I’m reaching out as we’re looking to get some lifestyle product photography going for 2022. What is your pricing structure for photo and video?
Looking forward to hearing from you,
-Tim
Quick, simple, easy to understand and respond to. Each time I sent one of these I went back to the photographer list and flipped the status to “waiting.” For me, there was about a 50% response rate to the initial email — meaning half the photographers I found were actually responsive.
From here the process is pretty straightforward. Work with the photographer(s) to get your shoot done.
The Results
I was able to find a photographer with the talent level we needed at a price we could more than afford. She also made the client experience great for us.
