AUTHENTICITY VS. AESTHETIC IN PHOTOGRAPHY BRANDING

What does it mean to be authentic? Does being authentic mean getting rid of your aesthetic? 

Or not being aesthetic at all?

Let's break it down. 

Authenticity means being yourself. We know that. But being yourself is definitely easier said than done. 

Are you silly irl? Are you lowkey and observant irl? If that’s you who are, be that online too. People are getting sick of the same old same old. The people doing tiktok dances they dont want to do are the same people who cant grow their brand. People can tell you are being fake. People want to watch people be people. Ever heard of people watching? That’s what authenticity is all about. Don’t pretend you like seeing fake ads on the TikTok shop every 5 videos ok?? WE CAN TELL ITS FAKE. 

What does being “aesthetic” mean? 

Aesthetics are about consistency. What are you communicating? What is your brand? What makes you instantly recognizable? 

I’m going to let you in on a little secret… Aesthetics are not facetuning your body to perfection or having only one or two colors on your Instagram feed.

 Fakeness isnt aesthetic. We can always see the facetune, we can always see when you archive a post. We can tell when your LinkedIn headshot was made with AI. 

…sorry, friends and family. I would rather see YOU. 

Lets talk about the differences and why one might matter more than the other:

 The Core Difference Between Authenticity and Aesthetics

Authenticity

• Behind-the-scenes honesty, real emotion, real stories

• Less curated, more human

• Connection over perfection

Aesthetic

• Your visual identity: colors, editing, posing, styling

• Curated, intentional, branded

• What makes your photography instantly recognizable

This section explains WHY both matter, but why they are fundamentally different tools.

Modern, 21st century clients crave BOTH of these attributes in a photography brand. 

Of course photography is about aesthetics. Photos need to look good to feel good. Clients also need to trust that you can make them look good. Showing up looking good is important. If you cant make yourself or your brand look good, how can they trust you to make them look good?

Social media definitely shifted the expectations on this. I think it used to be more about looking perfect. But people are over that. Perfection no longer feels good or even feels real.  

When you go to a photographer’s page with tons of models… Do you trust that they can take you and make you look like those models? Depends on the photographer’s authenticity. Are they photographing real people? Or are they just photographing models pretending that those models are real paying clients?

Don’t get me wrong.. To build a portfolio, you will need to work with models from time to time. But your clients can tell that the model knows what they are doing or when you dont… 

SOOoooOoO… How do we make authenticity and aesthetics work together? They are not enemies, but they can actually make each other stronger. Aesthetic grabs attention, authenticity makes people stay. People fall in love with how your work looks, but they book you because of how your work feels.

Clients want to trust you. They want to see real people, real moments, real emotions. They want to believe, “If she can make them look amazing and comfortable, she can do that for me too.”

Here are examples of content you can push out to tie in both concepts:

• BTS stories. Show how you pose people!

• Before and after edits. People love seeing the magic of your art

• You in your real workspace. 

• Unfiltered client reactions.

• Self Portraits that arent facetuned to high heaven. 

• Day in the life

• Your story. 

This is what I aim for with Shay K Photography and with Shay K Edit. I want you guys to know exaclty who is walking into your wedding day and who is teaching you these concepts. You can gather info from AI but human input is the most valuable. HUMANS are the most valuable. Be human. 

Amen. 

AI helped me brainstorm topic ideas and showed me what the definitions of authenticity and aesthetics actually mean. It gave me ideas for content and how to make the paper flow better, but I scrapped a lot of the ideas.