Shooting sponsored content is never easy for us. We only work with brands we love and promote products we truly like, but we know a lot of bloggers don’t and so sponsored content gets a bad rap. We always want to make sure to shoot our sponsored content in a way that doesn’t scream “ad”, creates a beautiful photo that the brand will like, and still stays true to our style. So much pressure! What we’ve been doing lately is taking our sponsored product to a location that’s special to us so that we feel less awkward while shooting. In this case, we took the product to our favorite beach. We set up our tripod and were struggling to get the right angle for the shot we were envisioning. Sometimes the tripod just can’t get an angle that a human can! We stood there debating if we should try a different pose, when all of a sudden I saw how beautiful the light from the sunset was looking in my phone viewfinder (my phone acts as a remote for the tripod and so I can see what the image looks like before we shoot). I told Bassam, “put your passport in front of the map for a second” and shot the photo.
As we were doing that, a young girl approached us. She said she was an amateur photographer and asked if we’d like her to shoot us. We quickly jumped on the offer especially since we didn’t have high hopes for the one I had just quickly shot. She was super sweet and took tons of photos for us. Some she directed and others she went with our vision. She even shot the photo we were hoping to take with the tripod but couldn’t get angled correctly! Here it is:
She did a fantastic job and we used so many of the photos in our blog post for the brand. When it came time to chose which one to post on Instagram, we both chose the tripod one. Even though it wasn’t perfect, we just loved that light shining in and the serendipity of how the shot came about. We often tend to chose the shot that we have a connection to rather than the technically perfect photo. We hope you can see that authenticity in our feed.
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This is such a cute story! I love that a little girl ended up taking your photos. And she did great! I always love seeing your content on Instagram especially because you’re so relatable and honest. Keep it up! 😊
Aw Melissa! You just totally made my day. Thank you so much for your sweet comment and your support of this new series! My second favorite thing about Instagram, after the creative aspect, is connecting with amazing people like you!
Aw, thanks, Lena! 😊