Capture The Essence In Your Pictures And The Atention Of Your Audience

What does it mean to capture the essence? How do you capture the essence of a brand, person, place, moment or event?

By Zara Bogaski | 8/4/2022

When communicating with an audience, we all know that we have to distinguish ourselves from the crowd in order to capture their attention. Even if you're just using your mobile phone camera, one way we can distinguish ourselves is by showing the unique qualities that make up the essence of the person, place, or brand that we want to portray.

What is essence?

Essence is defined by the core nature and most important qualities of a person, thing, or place that make them be what they fundamentally are, and that give them their distinguishable identity.

Essence originated with the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato with the concept of “the what it is”, what makes something distinguishable and recognizable. Since the ancient Roman philosophers didn’t have a word to translate that concept, they coined the Latin word “essentia”, from which the word “essence” comes from.

Difference between brand identity and essence

Brand identity and brand essence are not the same thing. While essence is the core nature and collection of distinguishable characteristics, brand identity are the physical attributes that represent the company.

Brand identity uses elements such as logo, design elements such as colors, typography, document formatting, photography style, graphics, infographics, videos, interactive elements, web design, voice, and vocabulary. Brand identity serves the purpose of providing credibility, it provides a template that supports values and mission, it generates visibility with new customers with regular exposure, it maintains regular customers by helping them connect and helping with future purchases, it makes the brand memorable, builds trust, it supports the demographic it targets, and it promotes launches.

Richard Flewitt said it well in his 2015 LinkedIn article “Brand Essence vs. Brand Identity”: 

“ The essence ‘is’ and the identity is ‘created’ ”

The audience remembers the essence more. For this reason, you must build your brand in a way that represents its essence rather than just a product. With brand essence you not only want to focus on the qualities and what makes your brand unique, but also on the benefits and emotions they provide.

Observe, Take Stock, and Include their Essence

Knowing what makes essence, the next step is to know your subject. Scout out the place, and observe all the distinguishable characteristics we want to portray. We then can compose our pictures in such a way that those elements we observed are included, capturing the clues that convey essence, putting focus on them, and at the same time trying to eliminate distractions.

Iconic portrait photographer Richard Avedon said in a 1999 interview by Charlie Rose:

“Paying attention, intense attention, is what the work is about,

and feeling what comes in…”

Capture the essence of a person

If you are able to talk with the person you are photographing to get know them. Pay attention to the type of energy they project, their clothes, style, demeanor, gestures, and how they are perceived.

Focus on the eyes for that powerful portrait. They are the most visually expressive tool we have to show our essence. And make sure it’s not a generic expression.  

Decide if you need to frame close-up to focus on the face. Or if you want to capture the person in their environment for context, working with their tools of the trade, or capture a moment in an event they are in. Decide if it's going to be a posed picture or a candid picture. Ask yourself which will best capture what you want to show?

You could even make a self-portrait with the help of a tripod for your mobile phone and the timer feature in the camera app.

Capture the essence of a place

Before taking your pictures, you want to scout and observe the place you will photograph. Ask yourself what elements of the scene will bring back memories? What makes the place special? What about the place will make you want to be there? Is it the landscape, the architecture, the ambience, the lifestyle? What ambience, mood, and energy does the place have? What emotion does the place evoke?

In commercial work, is there a desirable lifestyle you want to show? Is there something they can do there? For example, if it’s a restaurant, what kind of dishes do they offer, what is the décor, or who is the star chef that is making the dishes, or the people that make the place?

Capture the essence of a product or brand

Like the essence of a person or a place, make sure you highlight what makes the subject distinguishable. Aside from physical characteristics, do you need to close in to highlight those qualities? Or do you need to pull out and include the surrounding to show the ambience, the lifestyle and the feeling it can create?

Say you are selling a utility bike with snazzy colors. You then want to show pictures of someone like the target audience using and posing with that bicycle showing the lifestyle they can have and the kind of clothing they would be wearing, etc. 

Capture the essence of a moment or an event

When capturing an event ask yourself if you need to include the surroundings for context. Or are there enough elements if your close-up frame to show the moment? Do you need to highlight the hospitality? What will provoke the "wish you were there" feeling?

The essence of a picture helps you to connect

A picture itself cannot move you unless it connects with you. As humans that we are, we are drawn to uniqueness and originality. It’s not so much about being perfect, it’s about portraying the essence of the subject to make that emotional connection. By visually connecting, and combining it with text, that text can be remembered 65% more than without the picture (John Medina, Brain Rules, 2008).

You don't absolutely need a fancy camera, a trick shot, a fancy composition, or even 10,000 hours’ worth of experience to start communicating visually. Those things definitely do help to elevate your visual communication. However, you can start with your mobile phone camera and the knowledge of how to clearly communicate. You can learn and perfect with time. Capturing the essence will be one of the most important ways to communicate and connect.

To make sure you capture the essence ask yourself: What is the essence of your subject? Do the pictures talk to us and say plenty? Are they clear in the visual message? What can I eliminate to simplify and focus?

If you want more tips & tricks about visuals and DIY smartphone photography for social media, I invite you to follow me for the next tips.

Additional Resources

• Definition of Essence: yourdictionary.com, Britannica.com,
• Origin of Essence: Wikipedia.com, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essence#:~:text=Essence%20(Latin%3A%20essentia)%20is,which%20it%20loses%20its%20identity
• Roman stoic philosopher Seneca on “essentia”: Seneca, approximately 63AD to 65AD, Moral Letters to Lucilius Letter 58, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_58
• Essence vs. Brand definition: Richard Flewitt, 2015, Brand Essence vs. Brand Identity, LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/brand-essence-vs-identity-richard-flewitt/
• Paying attention: Charlie Rose, 1999, Interview of photographer Richard Avedon by Charlie Rose, https://charlierose.com/videos/1342
• Essence of destinations: Michelle Chaplow, 2013, TEDxMarbella: Importance of photography in capturing the essence of destinations, YouTube, https://youtu.be/8lg3uSpSYGM
• Visual Memory: John Medina, 2008, Brain Rules, https://brainrules.net/vision/

Images

• Marble bust of Aristotle: Marble, Roman copy after a Greek bronze original by Lysippos from 330 BC; the alabaster mantle is a modern addition. Public Domain -- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aristotle_Altemps_Inv8575.jpg
• Stone bust of Plato: Copy of the portrait made by Silanion ca. 370 BC for the Academia in Athens. Public Domain -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato#/media/File:Plato_Silanion_Musei_Capitolini_MC1377.jpg
• Marble bust of Seneca: Seneca side of a double bust of Seneca/Socrates in Antikensammlung Berlin, Author Calidius. Public Domain -- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duble_herma_of_Socrates_and_Seneca_Antikensammlung_Berlin_07.jpg
• Latin translation and Greek Plato scripts side by side: Page of antique book with side by side columns of Latin translation of Greek philosopher Plato’s “Theaetetus” on the subject of knowledge. Public Domain -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Theaetetus_stephanus_page142.jpg