Why Pinterest is a hidden gem for portrait photographers

My friend Willow is an intensely talented musician and a gem of a human, so I was excited when she asked me to take portraits for her new website and upcoming album release. We went to my favorite place to swim in the Twin Cities, Hidden Falls in St. Paul, to catch the evening light.

This shoot is a good example of why I love using Pinterest as a collaborative vision board. After talking through some ideas, Willow and I both added pictures to this Pinterest board in the weeks leading up to the shoot. Scrolling down takes you backwards chronologically to where we started: vibrant, textural nature imagery, then building from there.

Looking at the finished portraits of Willow alongside our vision board helps me see how much that process influenced the final result. I had all these intangibles swirling around in my head: the mood and lyrics of her music, feelings we wanted to convey, who Willow is as a person and an artist. Piece by piece we found imagery that resonated with flavors in that idea soup until it cohered into an aesthetic roadmap. 

SO THERE, people who make fun of Pinterest for being frivolous! Visual bookmarking is actually so handy! 

On that note, does anyone else feel like Pinterest’s feminine vibe is a big part of why people are so quick to make fun of it?  It’s a solid tool for creative professionals, especially because of the browser button that lets you quickly pin images from any website. I’m curious how much Pinterest intentionally maintains a feminine brand image and to the extent that it does, whether a more neutral visual bookmarking platform would be used differently.