How to brief a commercial photographer: shot lists, usage rights and what to send before the shoot

When a commercial shoot disappoints, the photographer usually gets the blame. More often the brief is at fault: it said “product photos for the website” and meant forty SKUs from three angles on pure white, a hero image for a hoarding, and square crops for Instagram, due on Friday.

None of that is hard to shoot. All of it is hard to guess. A good brief fits on one page and answers six things.

1. What the images are for

Start with where the pictures will end up, because that decides how they are shot:

• A hoarding or a stall wall needs high resolution and room around the subject for the design to breathe.
• Instagram and paid social want square and 4:5 crops, and often vertical 9:16 for Stories and Reels. A horizontal frame cropped to vertical loses most of itself.
• A marketplace listing has strict rules — pure white, the product filling the frame — which we cover in marketplace image rules.
• An annual report or brochure is printed, so the files must hold up at print resolution.

List every placement. A photographer who knows the image will be cropped four ways shoots it with space to crop four ways.

2. The shot list, with counts

“Photos of the plant” cannot be priced or scheduled. “Twelve frames: the exterior at dusk, the production line from the gantry, six machines in close-up, three operators at work, the control room” can.

Counts matter because they decide the day. Forty products from three angles is 120 frames; a simple packaged product might take a few minutes a frame, a piece of jewellery far longer. The shot list is how both sides know, before the day, whether it fits in a day.

For a building, add the time each view should be shot — an exterior photographed at the hour it looks best is a different picture from the same view at noon. That is the heart of architectural photography in Bhubaneswar and it has to be planned, not hoped for.

3. Deliverables

Say exactly what should land in your inbox:

• Formats — high-resolution TIFF for print, web-optimised JPEG for everything else.
• Crops — which ratios, already made, per image.
• Naming — to your SKU codes or departments, not camera file numbers.
• Retouching — cleanup and colour correction, or more? Agree the level in advance, and agree that people are not reshaped.
• The count of finished images, separate from the number of frames shot.

4. Usage rights — the question most briefs miss

Who can use the photographs, where, and for how long? It is the question that causes the most disputes, and it is almost never in the brief.

Ask for the answer in writing before the shoot. Photographers license images in different ways: some grant broad use in perpetuity, others license by medium, territory or period — a year of web use, say, with paid advertising or print charged separately. Neither is wrong; discovering which one you have after the campaign has gone out is.

What you want settled:

• Paid advertising — can the images be used in ads, not only on your own channels?
• Duration — for a fixed term, or in perpetuity?
• Media — web, social, print, outdoor, packaging?
• Exclusivity — can the photographer license the same images to anyone else?

5. People and places

• A written release from anyone recognisable in an image that will advertise something — employees included. Using someone’s likeness to sell a product without their consent is a risk no brand needs to take.
• Permission for locations you do not own — a hotel lobby, a client’s site, a public monument with its own rules.
• Wardrobe, props and grooming — who supplies what, and what must not appear (competitor products, old logos).

For people on a corporate team page, consistency matters more than drama: the same light and background across every face. That is the whole craft of corporate headshots in Bhubaneswar.

6. Logistics

Date and hours; the address and a named contact on site; access, parking and power; how long products or people are available; and one person with the authority to approve frames on the day. With tethered shooting, that person sees every frame on a monitor as it is taken — which only works if they are in the room and allowed to decide.

A one-page brief you can copy

For: [placements — website, marketplace, hoarding, report] Shot list: [each view or product, with counts and time of day] Deliverables: [formats, crops, naming, retouching level, final count] Usage: [paid ads? media? duration? exclusivity?] People and places: [who appears, releases needed, locations and permissions] Logistics: [date, hours, address, contact, power, who approves on set]

Where we fit

As a commercial photographer in Bhubaneswar, we agree the shot list in writing and deliver every image with commercial usage rights in writing. For catalogue work our product photographer in Bhubaneswar shoots tethered to marketplace spec, and our advertising photography in Odisha is shot to the crops each placement needs. For conferences, see the conference shot list.