How to Brief a Photographer for a Lookbook
If you're hiring a lookbook photographer in Brisbane, the brief you send matters more than almost anything else you'll do before the shoot. I've had briefs that were forty slides long and briefs that were three lines in an email, and the length was never what made them good. The good ones answered a handful of questions clearly, and left room for the rest.
Here is what I'd ask for, if I were writing the brief myself.
Start with the clothes, not the mood
Mood boards are useful, but a lookbook exists to sell a collection, and the garments come first. Send a list of every piece, how many looks you want, and which pieces matter most commercially. If the linen shirt is the one that has to sell, I need to know before we're losing light on the last look of the day.
Tell me where the pictures will live
A lookbook for a website grid, an Instagram carousel, a printed booklet and a wholesale line sheet are four different jobs. Crops change, the space for type changes, and the balance between full-length and detail frames changes. If the images will run portrait on a phone, I'll shoot with that in mind from the first frame rather than trying to rescue it later.
Pick three references, and say why
One mood board with sixty images tells me very little. Three images with a sentence each tells me a great deal: this one for the colour, this one for the way the model is standing, this one because it feels unhurried. I'd rather understand what you like than try to copy a picture someone else already made.
Be honest about the brand's temperament
Some labels want polish. Others want the crease left in. Neither is wrong, but the difference changes how I light, how I direct and how much I let the day breathe. A few words on how the brand speaks, and how it would never speak, do more than any adjective list.
Talk about format early
If you want the collection on film, say so at the start. It changes the pace, the number of frames, the turnaround and the budget. It also changes the look in ways I think suit most clothing beautifully: honest colour, a bit of grain, fabric that reads as fabric. But it should be a choice, not a surprise.
Leave the logistics in plain sight
Date, location, call times, who is styling, who is doing hair and make-up, who signs off on the day. Usage and licensing, too, before rather than after. None of this is glamorous, and all of it is what makes a shoot day feel calm.
And then, trust the room
The best briefs I've received ended with something like: here's what we need, the rest is yours. That isn't abdication. It's the space where the pictures you didn't know you wanted tend to turn up, usually late in the afternoon, when everyone has stopped trying quite so hard.