Your home staging portfolio will be greatly improved if you remember to shoot several vignettes along the way. Think of a vignette as a detail or “still life.” It should have an attractive composition.
This really doesn’t require extra work on your part.
You are undoubtedly creating vignettes while you’re staging the home anyways, as seen in this excellent example by Staging Diva Grad Imogen Brown of Home Staging Brisbane.
Vignettes tell a story, they set a mood. They are everywhere in a staged home.
Imogen has this beautiful detail shot, or vignette, as part of her home staging portfolio. She can use it in social media posts (which is where it first caught my eye on Facebook). She can use it on her website or in a newsletter.
But it’s part of a dining room she was staging as you can see from the second photo.
In other words, both views become excellent additions to her home staging portfolio.
They can be used in different ways and in different stories about her work.
So next time you’re shooting photos for your home staging portfolio, don’t forget to capture these little gems along the way as vignettes.
While you’re at it, pay attention to creating an interesting and attractive composition when you’re shooting or cropping your vignette. It will make it that much stronger, and we want visual impact in every part of our home staging portfolio.
If you want to learn more about the rules of composition, look at photography, design and art books. However, if you’re creative you likely have talent in this regard.
Don’t get so caught up in “rules” and forget to trust your creative instincts.
I discuss vignettes and how they fit into your overall home staging portfolio in the Staging Diva Ultimate Portfolio Guide: Winning Clients With The Perfect Home Staging Portfolio.
A common, and very weak, rationalization for using stock images in a home staging portfolio is the need for vignettes.
I hope I’ve convinced you that vignettes are easy to come by when you look at your home staging projects with that eye. All you need to do is zoom in close on the arm of a chair with a throw nicely arranged and a portion of a painting in the background. Or focus on a table scape as Imogen did here.
Many thanks to Imogen Brown of Home Staging Brisbane for her permission to use these photos and share her work so that it can educate others.
What are your thoughts? Please share in the comments below whether you’ve shot your own vignettes for your home staging portfolio, or any questions you have about this that I can tackle in a future article.
Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Home Staging and Voice of Possibility Group Inc.
The Staging Diva Ultimate Portfolio Guide: Winning Clients With The Perfect Home Staging Portfolio by home staging expert Debra Gould will give you the steps to creating the right home staging portfolio to build your business. It includes worksheets and examples to help you write about your services, tips for getting a great logo and head shot and a step-by-step guide to shooting, selecting and editing the photos that will become part of your home staging portfolio.