What are your aims?
The first thing to do when planning a photo shoot is think about what you want the shoot to achieve, apart from giving you a chance to win a BHA award? Obviously you will want to have pictures to put on the walls as well as get them published in the local papers and hair press magazines. But there are other important considerations too. Photo shoots can be great for motivating the salon. A successful photo shoot can really boost morale and help you attract the best staff. Rewarding the best team members with the opportunity to become involved with the shoot can be used as an incentive for all your salon staff. So start off with a clear idea of what you want to get out of a photo session in terms of the tangible benefits it can bring to your business.
Planning a Shoot
Everything should begin with the concept. You may have already chosen the external team you are going to work with. By all means, bring in the photographer and other people at the early stages, but the concept should always come first. You need to think about a theme for the shoot and the best way to do this is to look at pictures in magazines and pull out tear sheets of favourite images so that you can create a story board that illustrates the key ingredients for your shoot. You can use this to share ideas with other members of the team so that you all know and understand what you are aiming for. Consistency is important. Winning awards collections always have a theme that runs through all eight shots, plus magazines much prefer to receive images that can be grouped together as a collection.
Choosing the right Team
The two main considerations here are who do you want to work with and how much can you afford? Price is always going to be a big factor, because everyone will have a budget in mind for their photographic shoot. The most important thing here is to spend your money wisely. There is no point in you forking out lots of money on a photographer, studio and makeup artist only to economise on the models and end up with a set of pictures that nobody wishes to publish because the models aren't right. If you are going to do a shoot properly you have to keep everything in balance and there is really no point in trying to cut corners and hope everything will work out for the best. I would say that allowing yourself a choice of good models is probably the most important thing. The rest of the team are important too, but just don't limit your choice of models. In other words, be prepared to pay for professional models that have the necessary experience to work in front of the camera.