Why All Fashion Photographers Should Use Pinterest

I’ll admit, it took me a very long time to get amongst the Pinterest users. I used to hear about it from a few of my photography pals at college but I still didn’t get it.. why was Pinterest so great? 

One day I was trying to sort through all the inspiration images I had saved on my desktop I noticed that as saving these to my computer was a time wasting method because I was never able to find them when I wanted them. 

Around this time was when I activated my Pinterest account and decided to have a poke around and see if this website was really as good as it’s hype. I had a need of putting my inspiration images online so I could link my editorial team to all the images and I figured I’d try to use Pinterest. So I made a folder, labeled it Beach Side Editorial and uploaded all the photos from my desktop that were relevant into this folder. Suddenly I could delete all those images from my desktop and I to love keep my computer and hard drives clean, so this was a big win for me. I decided to make another 10 folders and upload all those images under the banner of the pending shoot. 

My organisation addiction was kicking in and I suddenly had everything I was shooting for the next 3 months in online folders ready to link to my teams and clients and my computer didn’t have hundreds of photos saved everywhere. Sometimes I would see an image and it would give me a great idea for a shoot, so instead of saving it and not thinking about it for another 8 months I would give it it’s own Pinterest board and if I saw something else that would work well with it, I would pin it straight away and then continue with what I was doing. Soon the folder was thriving and I’m ready to pitch this idea. All my ideas became well rounded with storylines and perfect hair and makeup references. 

If I had a folder with a few images in it and wanted to dedicate some time to conceptualising this shoot I would simply search ‘rustic editorial shoot’ and pin anything that could serve as references for the shoot. 

This became my main way of conceptualising my ideas and keeping them organised. I had a new, quick idea for a musician that was coming to town so I threw it up onto Pinterest and sent them the link, next minute we’re shooting the day they arrive. It’s the best way to share ideas if you do a lot of collaboration photography and have a lot of people involved in making the images. You can even add other team members to your Pinterest board and have them pin their ideas without having lots of emails back and forth. 

Pinterest is the best way to organise your shoots online with easy access for your clients and teams. It can help you separate your concepts and build them up to be a lot stronger. It’s also a great way to share your own work. I have a folder with some of my best images and that makes them shareable for other photographers looking for inspiration. If you don’t already have an account or have an old one like I used to, shake off the dusk and give it another go! It’s completely free so why not.


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