Some branding sessions are about creating a new headshot.
Others are about building an entire visual world around a business.
My first official Content Day with Perla Wallpaper School was very much the latter.
Before Perla welcomed its first class of students, we spent a day at the Schoolhouse creating the beginning of a visual library that could tell the story of the school, its founder, and the beautiful place where it all happens.
And when your classroom happens to sit on the grounds of historic Poplar Grove Plantation in Louisiana, there is a lot of story to tell.
Building a Brand Library — Not Just Taking Pictures
For this project, I joined forces with seasoned content creator Benton Jones, who brought his video expertise—and, importantly, a drone.
Our goal was bigger than producing a collection of pretty photographs.
We wanted to begin establishing a library of photography and video footage that Lauren could pull from as Perla Wallpaper School grew: website imagery, social media content, marketing materials, press opportunities, reels, educational content and all the places we hadn't even thought of yet.
That meant photographing Lauren, of course, but it also meant documenting the Schoolhouse itself.
The exterior. The property. The rooms. The wallpaper. The details. The landscape surrounding it.
Benton's aerial footage gave us another piece of that puzzle, establishing a sense of place in a way that ground-level imagery simply can't. Together, the photography and video begin to answer an important branding question:
What does it feel like to be here?
Because that's ultimately what strong commercial imagery should do.
It shouldn't simply show people what your business looks like. It should help them understand what it feels like to experience it.
Branding Photography That Actually Looks Like the Brand
Lauren gave us an unfair advantage here.
Perla Wallpaper School is incredibly visual.
Beautiful wallpaper installations meet historic architecture, antique furniture, old Louisiana character and a founder with a very distinct personal style. There was absolutely no reason to strip all of that away and photograph her against a generic backdrop.
Instead, we used it.
One of my favorite portraits from the day places Lauren directly in front of the sweeping mural that has become such an important visual element of the Schoolhouse. In another, she's seated within the finished room while content is being created around her. We moved outside for portraits incorporating the architecture of the house and photographed quieter moments that feel less like traditional corporate headshots and more like editorial portraits.
That's where I think branding photography gets interesting.
A professional portrait can tell me what you look like.
A thoughtfully created brand photograph can tell me who you are, what you've built and what kind of experience you're inviting people into.
Those are very different things.
One Business Needs More Than One Kind of Image
This is also why I approach commercial branding work differently from a traditional portrait session.
A business needs variety.
Lauren needs a polished portrait for a press feature or speaker bio. She also needs environmental portraits for her website. She needs horizontal images with negative space where text can be placed. She needs photographs that establish the location. She needs details that can support a longer story. She needs behind-the-scenes imagery. And she needs vertical content designed for the way businesses communicate on social media now.
The image of Benton working while Lauren sits in the finished mural room may actually be one of my favorites from the entire day because it shows something the polished portraits don't:
the business in motion.
We're not pretending a brand exists. We're documenting the work of building one.
And that's a story worth photographing.
Creating Content With a Longer Life
The biggest mistake I see in thinking about branding photography is treating it as a handful of photographs needed right now.
A strong commercial content library should have a much longer life.
Instead of asking, "What do we need to post next week?" we approached Perla's Content Day by asking what kinds of visual assets this business might repeatedly need as the school launches, teaches classes, works with industry partners and manufacturers, earns media attention and continues to grow.
That changes what you photograph.
Suddenly the wide exterior matters.
The detail photograph matters.
The portrait with room for copy matters.
The behind-the-scenes frame matters.
The drone footage matters.
And the beautifully lit hero portrait absolutely matters.
Together, those individual pieces start becoming something much more valuable than a gallery of good photographs.
They become a visual vocabulary for the brand.
Commercial Branding Photography in Baton Rouge + Louisiana
This project is exactly the direction I want to continue growing with A Creative Photo.
I love photographing people, but I especially love the challenge of photographing people in context—founders, creatives, professionals and businesses in the environments that help tell their stories.
For Louisiana businesses, that might mean a traditional corporate environment. It might mean an artist's studio, a restaurant kitchen, a historic property, a retail space, an architecture or design project, or—as it did here—a wallpaper school tucked into an extraordinary Louisiana setting.
Your location, your work, your people and even the little details you've stopped noticing because you see them every day can all become part of the story.
The objective isn't content for content's sake.
It's creating a thoughtful library of professional commercial photography that looks unmistakably like your business.
And this was only the beginning for Perla. Once the students arrived and the Schoolhouse became an actual classroom, there was an entirely new part of the story waiting to be documented.
