Five things you can strengthen with a photography audit

Is your firm photography pulling its weight?

Many AEC firms struggle to leverage the full potential of their project and people photography to tell powerful and purposeful brand stories. Enter the photo audit—a focused and formal opportunity outside the rush and stress of individual photoshoots to explore what you're trying to say and achieve with your photography.

What is a photography audit?

A comprehensive photography audit provides marketing and firm leaders a forum to assess their existing assets for consistency, authenticity, engagement, and alignment with brand values. The scope and scale can vary, but we recommend building an agenda to explore everything from the ins and outs of photoshoot execution to usage and performance across all your marketing touchpoints.

When you shift your approach to photography from documentation to storytelling, better images are just the beginning. Read on for five things you can strengthen with a photo audit—beyond the photos themselves.

Your collaboration

Engage your technical teams, clarify roles, and create buy-in.

Inviting design leaders to participate in a photo audit allows you to align your internal stakeholders around a shared process that eliminates pain points, achieves storytelling goals, and elevates final image quality. The result is a process co-created with firm goals and resources in mind—not individual agendas.

Ask:

• Where are we wasting time and duplicating efforts?

• Where do we each add the most value?

• What does successful photography look like at our firm?

• What defines a good photographer partner?

Your production process

Remove stress, create new tools, and identify pain points.

Discussing and defining clear roles and responsibilities for each phase of photoshoot production—pre, during, and post—ensures every detail and participant is as prepared as possible to go with the flow on the big day.

Ask:

• What are the steps required to execute a successful shoot from start to finish?

• Who is responsible for completing each step? Who else needs to be involved?

• What tools are we currently using, and how are they serving us?

• What tools or resources are missing that would make things easier, faster, clearer?

Your social media engagement

Shape strategy, repeat results, and build resources.

Assessing image quality on the macro scale allows you to zoom out and explore what you’re trying to achieve and say with your project photography. Pairing this discussion with social stats and trends that show how your audience is responding helps you zero in on what works—and do more of it.

Ask:

• What trends are we seeing in social imagery that we should be aware of?

• Which of our posts are performing best, and what do those images have in common?

• Which of our posts stand out the most visually to you, and why?

• What's missing from our feed, and why is it important to our brand and storytelling strategy?

Your website

Elevate engagement, infuse culture, and promote process.

Ditch the stock photos for images and stories that are uniquely you. Looking beyond the project work to assess what current imagery says about your people, process, and brand is just as important. Every website would benefit from quality and curated candids that demonstrate culture and drive connection. What do you need and how do you get it?

Ask:

• What do our headshots say about us? What do we want them to say?

• How current are our collaboration and process photography?

• Where would our site benefit from additional people shots? Where, how, and when can we capture them?

Your brand

Refine visual voice, create consistency, and amplify core values.

Applying a brand lens to your photography planning helps your mission and values shine through. How are you demonstrating innovation? Inclusion? Sustainability? Approachability? Get creative and be purposeful for a photo library that reflects your firm’s unique vision and voice.

Ask:

• What are our core values, and how do we reflect them in our imagery?

• How can our mission influence photography planning to ensure each project reflects forward momentum?

• What is NOT a reflection of our brand that we want to avoid in our imagery?

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Does your visual voice need a boost? Building brand in meaningful, measurable ways is our specialty. Connect with Dragonfly today to learn more about how we can help plan, conduct, and leverage a collaborative photography audit that levels up your production skills and asset library.