In today’s world, it is easier than ever to start a business. Explore Instagram on any given day and you will inevitably see an ad for some new online retailer. It begs the question: How, in such a saturated online marketplace, can a fledgling brand separate itself from the pack and survive? There is no one answer to such a complex question, but for many consumer brands the key is brand storytelling.

Any writer worth their salt knows that a good story is comprised of three primary components: Character, Setting, and Plot. The same can be said of visual storytelling, regardless of the medium. As a commercial photographer, my goal is to tell a brand’s story as succinctly as possible, sometimes in as little as a single image. To do this effectively, I lean on those same three story motifs and lots and lots of planning and preparation. Let’s dive in.