The Image Bank Is Always Empty Exactly When You Need It
Thursday afternoon. A post needs to go out tomorrow morning, and the image folder holds a three-year-old group shot in which half the people have already moved on. The rest are either vertical when you need horizontal, or too dark to use anywhere.
Then someone pulls out a phone. That picture goes out, because the schedule doesn't bend.
This isn't anyone's mistake. It happens to almost every company I've worked with — including the ones with their own marketing team and a perfectly sensible plan. The images just run out.
Why the image bank runs dry
Three reasons keep repeating.
Images get ordered when there's an emergency. A new website, a trade fair, a recruitment campaign. The shoot serves that one need and serves it well. Six months later the need is different, and the images no longer fit.
One shoot produces material for one channel. Website material is horizontal and calm. Instagram wants vertical and movement. LinkedIn wants people. A job ad wants something where work looks like work. The same shoot day can produce all of it — but only if it was planned that way.
Nobody owns the image bank. It isn't on anyone's task list. So it doesn't get updated until someone notices there's nothing usable in it — and then you're back in that Thursday afternoon.
I've built two services to solve this. One fills an empty image bank. The other keeps it full.
Company Content Day — sorted in one go
One shoot day, deliberately broad in what it produces.
During the day we shoot staff portraits, expert portraits, work-in-progress images, premises, details and references. Plus short video clips for social. Everything is planned together in advance: where the images will be used, who's involved, and where we shoot.
Delivery is ready to use. Retouched images, in the right formats, ready to drop wherever they belong.
A Content Day fits when there's no image bank at all, or when it's so old it's no longer any use. It's a starting point — not an end product.
From 1,490 € + VAT.
For the marketing lead: one day typically produces material for several channels at once, and the formats are agreed beforehand. If you know you need vertical images for Instagram and horizontal for the website hero, that goes into the shoot plan rather than into cropping afterwards.
Monthly Content Partner — an image bank that doesn't run dry
A Content Day solves the present moment. But if you publish regularly, the problem comes back. Maybe not next month, but within six months it will.
Monthly Content Partner means 2–3 shoots a month and continuous content planning. No separate ordering every time, no quote requests, no starting the calendar negotiation from scratch again and again. We agree what's needed, and the material arrives.
Images and video clips are delivered ready for your own use. Managing your social channels is not part of the service — I don't publish on your behalf and I don't write the copy. I make the images and the videos. I say this plainly, because it's better you know now than a month from now.
From 2,690 €/month + VAT. The agreement runs until further notice, with a two-month minimum. If it doesn't work, we stop.
For the managing director: the monthly cost is predictable. Scheduling, planning and delivery don't require project management from you. Two months is short enough to try and long enough to see whether it works.
Which one
It depends on how often you publish.
If there's no image bank, start with a Content Day. It's a smaller decision, and afterwards you know what you get.
If you publish weekly, calculate the price per shoot rather than per month. A Content Day is 1,490 € per shoot day. Under Monthly Partner a single shoot lands at roughly 900–1,350 €, depending on whether there are two or three shoots that month.
Let's be direct: Monthly Partner is not a cheaper way to buy the same number of images. Over a year it costs several times what a few separate shoot days would. It's a way to buy considerably more images at a lower unit price — and to stop having to remember to order them at all.
If you publish a couple of times a year, a Content Day is enough. There's no sense buying a continuous service for a need that isn't there.
How it works
Discovery. A half-hour conversation about what you have, what you need and who you're talking to. Free, no obligation.
Planning. The shoot plan: what gets photographed, where, who's involved, where the images go.
The shoot. At your premises or an agreed location.
Post-production and delivery. Ready-to-use images in the right formats.
I work in Oulu and Northern Finland, and further afield when needed.
Book a discovery call
If you recognised that Thursday afternoon, let's put half an hour in the calendar. We'll go through what you have and what makes sense next. No quote until we know what we're talking about.
More about the services: Corporate photography