Brand Photographer Video, 3 Easy Wins

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9% to 58%watched to the end
6owners mentioned the video
3shoots booked

Seventy-one percent of viewers had left by the twelfth second. Calla read the number twice, then closed her laptop.

Her three minute intro video had taken a whole weekend to make. Most people never saw her say what she did.

Calla is a brand photographer in Fresno, California.

This brand photographer video example follows how she moved her intro out of her home studio and into a client’s taqueria.

Three months later, more than half of viewers watched to the end.

Six owners mentioned the video when they got in touch, and three booked shoots.

The problem

Calla photographs family restaurants, print shops, pharmacies and small offices.

On shoot days, she’s quick, funny and easy to be around.

Her video showed none of that. She’d filmed it sitting at her desk, with a plant and a bookshelf behind her.

The analytics showed exactly where it went wrong.

The first forty seconds

The first forty seconds were a slow pan across her camera gear, with soft music. Her face didn’t appear until second thirty-eight.

That’s where most viewers left.

She’d added the pan because she’d seen it in videos by photographers she admired. Those videos were made for other photographers.

The long middle

The middle was Calla talking about her love of light, her training and the cameras she used. It was sincere and well lit.

No owner learned what a shoot would be like, or whether her shop would need to close.

The last minute

The ending finally showed client photos and her website. Only about one viewer in ten got that far.

The best part of the video was hidden at the end.

She’d spent the most time editing the opening and the least on the ending. The chart showed her that she’d had it backwards.

The solution

Calla didn’t need a bigger camera or a better edit.

She needed to show owners what their shoot day would look like, in the first seconds.

She made three changes.

One real shop

She asked a happy client, the owner of a family taqueria, if she could film there for twenty minutes.

The owner said yes and offered her lunch.

The new video opened on the taqueria’s front door and Calla’s hello.

One owner’s line

She asked the owner one question on camera, how the shoot had felt. He laughed and said they hadn’t closed for a minute.

That line went into the middle of the video, where it answered the worry owners had most.

One minute

She cut the video to 58 seconds, in four short beats. Hello at the door, what she photographs, how the day feels and one next step.

The gear, the training and the music were gone.

She kept one short line about her experience, near the end, for owners who wanted it.

The process that worked

Calla followed the four beats from a guide to filming an intro in a real shop and kept the tools simple.

A phone stand

She filmed her lines on her phone, standing on a small stand beside the counter.

Each line was a separate short clip, so she could redo one without starting over.

She filmed the extra clips by hand, like tortillas on the griddle and a cook laughing at the pass.

A clip-on microphone

The kitchen was loud, so she clipped a small microphone to her collar. The owner paused the music for ten minutes while she filmed.

On the playback, her voice was clear over the sizzle, which she decided to keep.

The whole filming session took twenty-two minutes. The editing took one afternoon at her kitchen table.

Automatic captions

She added captions in her editing app and checked every word. The app had written the taqueria’s name wrong twice.

She also fixed a menu item it had turned into something rude.

She uploaded the video to YouTube and checked the retention chart, using the YouTube help page on audience retention to read it.

The brand photographer video, three months on

The new video kept 58 percent of viewers to the end, compared with about 9 percent for the old one.

She placed it on her home page, her services page and her Google profile. She also linked it in her first reply to every new inquiry.

Six owners mentioned it in their first message, and three booked.

What we learned from here

A brand photographer video works best when owners see a real shoot in the first few seconds.

Gear and training can wait, or skip the video entirely.

Calla’s old video was honest and carefully made. It just answered questions owners weren’t asking.

When she filmed in a real shop, the video answered the one they were.

Part	Kept them watching	Lost them by second twelve
Opening	The taqueria’s door and her hello	A slow pan across camera gear
Setting	A busy, working kitchen	A desk and a bookshelf
Middle	The owner saying they didn’t close	Her love of light
Length	58 seconds	3 minutes 5 seconds
Captions	Checked word by word	None