How far can an ordinary person's business go?

"Beauty" is something that most people want to pursue. When we go out to play, we also want to take some beautiful and good-looking photos. Therefore, the "accompanying photo shoot tool" has gradually emerged. Compared with the previous "appointment photo shoot", how is "accompanying photo shoot" different? For ordinary people, how far can the "accompanying photo shoot" business go?

In the face value economy, "accompanying photographers" have emerged in big cities. From appointment photography to accompanying photography, it is time for ordinary people to show off their beautiful lives. Accompanying photography originated from people's pursuit of a beautiful and exquisite life. It is also a product of people's social performances, and it also fills the emotional gap of modern urban people who crave companionship. In the future, accompanying photography can not only specialize in developing a personal brand of accompanying photography, but also transform into a creative model such as appointment photography, and can also be combined with tourism group services or develop into a platform.

At the same time, the entry threshold for accompanying shoots is relatively low, and the competition is becoming increasingly fierce. To stand out, one must first look at professional foundation, second look at personal charm, and third look at word-of-mouth communication. However, accompanying shoots also have certain safety risks. Cultural industry commentators believe that it is necessary to remind young practitioners to be careful.

In the past, a blogger taught you “n universal photo poses”, and now there are tools to “accompany you in taking photos” - you can both play with me and take photos.

Visit stores, check in, accompany tours and take photos, go out happily with the sisters of Sheniu, all the negatives are given away and the retouched photos are included... It is simply a good helper for ordinary people to show their own lives.

With an average price of just a few dozen per hour, you can get a "one-stop service" of taking nine photos for your circle of friends. It's so exciting to accompany them in taking photos!

How is "accompanying photo shooting" different from the previous "appointment photo shooting"? Is it accidental or inevitable that "accompanying photo shooting" has suddenly become popular and attracted many people to join? How long will "accompanying photo shooting" be popular?

1. From appointment to accompanying

In this era when everyone loves taking photos and showing off themselves, most people may still only know "making an appointment for a photo shoot" but not "accompanying someone for a photo shoot". So what is the difference between "making an appointment for a photo shoot" and "accompanying someone for a photo shoot"?

"Photo shooting" is a way for models and photographers to help each other and use remuneration to attract high-quality photographers or models to cooperate. Later, it developed into a photo-taking model in which ordinary people cooperate with photographers.

Simply put, the ultimate goal of a photo shoot is to create a film. To this end, the photographer can provide simple makeup design, clothing matching ideas, and style background selection, etc. It values ​​the communication and trust between the photographer and the model, and usually has relatively high requirements for one or both of the photographer and the model.

As for the payers of the photo shoot, it is assumed that "whoever takes the film pays". The charges for photo shoots vary. Currently, many ordinary people look for photographers to take photos. Photographers usually set prices based on their own technical experience. The prices range from a few hundred to a few thousand yuan on the market. Generally speaking, the prices are high.

And "accompanying photo shooting" is more like a "tool" business.

Undoubtedly, both photographers and models want to produce photos, but both sides have lowered the threshold for producing photos. Most photographers are photography enthusiasts, and most models are ordinary people. They don’t have such high requirements for the professionalism and sophistication of photos. The common purpose is to produce nine pictures for the circle of friends that closely follow the aesthetic trend and can provide exquisite and interesting records of life.

For those who travel with their besties or boyfriends, a companion photo agent can to some extent solve the concerns that their friends have poor photography skills or are embarrassed to let their friends act as photography agents.

In addition, the "accompany" in "accompanying" actually mainly refers to companionship, playing together, traveling together, etc., which also provides people with social anxiety who "have no one to play with" with a new way to expand weak social interactions and seek companionship.

Therefore, accompanying others to take photos is also a social game for mutual benefit and win-win between ordinary people.

For photographers, accompanying is a good opportunity to develop a hobby of photography, hone shooting skills, and earn pocket money by taking orders in their spare time. This service is currently mainly aimed at ordinary girls. Considering the personal safety of both parties, the two parties who accompany are basically young girls.

In summary, the main selling points are two aspects: in terms of photography, the photographer needs to guide the poses, have certain photo editing skills, and both parties should have a basic consensus on aesthetics, and the photo editing should conform to the aesthetic trend. In terms of socializing, the photographer needs to be easy to get along with and good at socializing, so that the communication between the two parties is not awkward. At the same time, praising people a lot is a plus point, which can increase the model's confidence. All these are helpful to capture the beauty of ordinary people in a casual and relaxed atmosphere, and therefore attract more ordinary girls.

For the person being photographed, accompanying photo shoot is a more down-to-earth "portrait service" aimed at ordinary girls who love beauty. The corresponding price is also more affordable, in line with the payment expectations of this target group. It is generally charged by duration. The market often distinguishes between mobile phone shooting and camera shooting. The price per hour is basically within 100 yuan. The affordable price combined with the attractive service attracts them to make multiple purchases.

2. Accompanying the shooting: Sudden fame or early warning signs

So, how did the change from appointment photography to accompanying photography come about? How did the “rising star” of accompanying photography rise to prominence?

There is no doubt that this is an era of images and an era of appearance.

Intangible assets such as appearance are sought after by more people, and even form an aesthetic wonder of "appearance is justice". The popularity of the appearance economy is also inseparable from the efforts of Generation Z and the new middle class, who pursue novel experiences and pursue a more beautiful and refined daily life.

Photos are an important medium for people to record their daily exquisite lives. In the face of the appearance economy, people's demand for taking photos is even stronger.

In addition to services such as photography, follow-up photography and photo shoots, there are also many practical/universal photography tutorials that are popular on the Internet and keep up with the trend, providing convenience for ordinary people to learn how to take photos and record their lives.

It can be seen that the rise of accompanying photo shooting has also greatly benefited from people's eager pursuit of beauty under the appearance economy. In addition, accompanying photo shooting has also demonstrated its own development advantages in social performances, travel check-ins, companionship economy and social compensation.

1. Social performance needs

It is a common performance for individuals to beautify their social image by showing beautiful photos on social media. In "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life", Erving Goffman compared people's daily social interactions to performances. When individuals appear in front of others, they always try to control others' impressions of the current situation, and construct a sacred and perfect personal image in various ways to perfect the idealized impression.

Compared with previous photo shoots, follow-up shoots and scheduled shoots, although the photos taken by accompanying shoots may not be exquisite and beautiful enough, as a tool for social beautification, accompanying shoots actually meet the needs of more ordinary people - they are full of life atmosphere, appear natural and not deliberate, and can meet aesthetic requirements, helping people to complete appropriate daily social performances.

2. Tourism check-in boost

The "2022 China Millennial Youth Consumer Behavior Research and Analysis Report" produced by iMedia Consulting pointed out that nearly half of millennials prefer to socialize through travel.

Taking photos and checking in has become a popular consumption trend during travel. The rise of accompanying photo shoots is also due to this consumption habit of people. Some accompanying photo shoots even automatically come with the nature of local guides and tour guides, helping tourists plan local travel and the best filming locations.

3. Accompanying economic needs

In recent years, there are more and more single people. According to the "White Paper on Contemporary Non-Marriage in China 2021" jointly produced by Baihe Jiayuan Group and iResearch Consulting, the total number of single people in China is about 300 million. For this group of people, the "one-person economy" and "companion economy" have emerged.

In 2020, the "2020 Photo Consumer Demand Report" produced by Tencent Marketing Insights also pointed out that the 18-44-year-old female group is the target group for photo shoots, about 238 million people. It can be seen that women prefer to take photos to record their beauty and are important consumers of photography services.

Although single, it is human nature to desire love and companionship. Photo-shooting is actually a process of playing and shopping together, which caters to the needs of single people looking for "play partners". Therefore, some photo-shooting posts often have slogans such as "providing convenience for sisters who want to take photos when they go out alone, only taking photos for girls".

4. Seek social compensation

Accompanying the photographer is also a form of weak social compensation. Although the photographer is not professional enough, he is good at socializing and is especially friendly to models who are not good at socializing. Both parties are young women of similar age. Using the social photographer to lead the socially anxious model can help both parties to develop topics based on their interest circles and find a comfortable boundary for socializing. It is also more conducive to letting the model relax naturally and present a better shooting state.

3. How far can ordinary people’s business go?

Admittedly, the emergence of accompanying photographers has its rationality.

As an extended form of weak social interaction, photo-accompanying creates more opportunities for people in the city to establish connections, fills the emotional gap of people's desire for companionship, and helps discover the shining points and uniqueness of ordinary people. Through services such as compliments, ordinary people can gain more happiness, self-respect and self-confidence.

As a form of companionship economy, photo-taking also has a promising potential market to be developed. Guojin Securities has predicted that by around 2025, China's companionship economy market is expected to reach 50 billion yuan.

At present, the penetration rate of accompanying photo shoots is relatively high in big cities. First, big cities have many scenic spots and abundant places to visit. Second, big cities are home to more young consumer groups who advocate personalized aesthetics. They have a certain consumption capacity and are willing to pay for trendy photo shoots.

As for the future development of the accompanying shoot, there are four main paths:

The first is to focus on accompanying photography and develop a personal brand for accompanying photography.

Based on the customer orders for photo shoots, photographers can continuously accumulate experience, embark on the path of self-media creation, and attract traffic and monetize through the creation of personal brands.

The accompanying photography service that relies on social media has good publicity channels and display space, and is also conducive to the formation of a personal accompanying photography brand.

Just like some photography bloggers who previously did scheduled photo shoots, they also built their personal brands by honing their skills and establishing their own unique style. For example, Yi Juan Guyue, the internet celebrity photographer who took photos of Yang Chaoyue, attracted the public's love and imitation through his healing style and unique use of light.

The second is to transform the accompanying photo shoot into creative models such as scheduled photo shoots.

Accompanying photo shoots is like the preliminary form of photo shoots. After accumulating experience and skills from multiple accompanying photo shoots, some models and photographers will still embark on the path of creative professional photography development.

Third, the combination of accompanying photography and group travel services is more closely integrated.

The most closely related to accompanying photography is actually "accompanying travel". Based on the observation of accompanying photography, local governments can pay more attention to the development of personalized accompanying photography services when providing tourism services, so that local guides can not only plan travel routes, but also accompany tourists to play and take photos, thus realizing a one-stop travel service and meeting people's various travel needs.

The fourth is to promote the construction of a platform for accompanying filming.

Compared with the previous platform-based order-taking model for game companion services, it can be estimated that companion photography also has this development potential. Currently, the scattered companion photography orders on platforms such as Xiaohongshu are sometimes transferred to platforms such as Xianyu to ensure the safety of transaction funds.

The construction of a photography companion platform can integrate the supply and demand resources in the market, promote the standardized development of photography companion orders, and connect photographers and models through the platform to make transactions more secure.

However, there are some hidden concerns in the development of accompanying photo-shooting.

On the one hand, the competition threshold for accompanying photo shoots has been lower than that for appointment photo shoots and photo shoots, thus attracting many people to join in and the competition has become increasingly fierce . For example, some professional photographers have also started to put up signs in their spare time to take orders for accompanying photo shoots.

In addition to competing in shooting technology, some people continue to launch low-priced shooting orders to try to win by price, offering a low price of 30 yuan per hour.

At the same time, the instability of accompanying photography is also relatively high. For most people, it is not a long-term career choice, but rather a channel for ordinary people to earn pocket money as a part-time worker. There is no dedicated trading platform, and most people rely on sporadic orders on social media.

In order to stand out from the fierce competition, escort photography, as a branch of the companionship economy, can also seek development experience from other types of companionship services.

Many emerging professions such as shopping companions, play companions, and chat and exam companions are young people. Although the threshold seems to be very low, to really do well, it actually requires the accumulation of multiple abilities:

First, they need to have a professional foundation. People who pay for "accompanying" services often value the experience or professional ability of the service provider. For example, a photo shoot often requires the photographer to have a basic understanding of photography skills, while a shopping companion needs professional ideas such as clothing matching and makeup, and can recommend suitable image transformations based on the body shape and skin color of different customers.

The second is to value personal charm. The comfort of getting along is one of the important factors for people to seek companionship services. Therefore, for users, finding someone who gets along well with them can improve people's sense of gain and satisfaction with this service. For example, companions are often responsible for helping the elderly who have difficulty walking or whose children are not around and are not familiar with the medical process. This requires them to have considerable patience and affinity in addition to experience, so as to provide customers with a better experience.

The third is to focus on word-of-mouth communication. The "accompanying" service is actually a service that provides customers with a better experience. Therefore, the customer's praise rate and repurchase rate will greatly affect the subsequent development of this service. Some service providers who cannot provide a high-quality experience will be eliminated.

On the other hand, there are great security risks in the transaction of accompanying photo shoot.

Currently, the development of accompanying photo shoots mostly relies on individual business, using social media traffic to direct transactions to platforms such as WeChat, and ensuring smooth transactions by paying deposits in advance. This relies even more on mutual trust and self-awareness between photographers and models.

In order to ensure their own safety, photographers and models usually require the other party to be female. Most of the people who operate and enjoy this service are young girls, and many of them are even college students. The transaction of accompanying shooting can easily be exploited by criminals, so the safety awareness of the accompanying shooting people should be strengthened.

In summary, although companion photography is aimed at ordinary people who like to record their lives, it is still a relatively niche service. It is mainly aimed at young women in big cities and is mostly run by small individual workshops. It is suitable for ordinary people who want to do part-time jobs and take orders as they come. It is a development branch of the rise of companionship services, but there is still a long way to go before it can develop into a platform and industrialization.

Reference articles:

• "I spent 240 yuan to experience Xiaohongshu's "photo-taking" service for a day. I will never be the victim of my hippocampus again."
• "Photography Industry Development Report: Demand is increasing in the era of appearance, and the talent gap in the future will be nearly one million"
• "Internet + companionship model, a panacea for urban loneliness among modern youth"
• "Analysis of the Business Logic of the Appearance Economy under the Perspective of "Internet +""

Author: Zhixi Editor: Shiguang Editor: Peninsula

Source public account: Cultural Industry Review (ID: whcypl), China’s top new media for cultural industry.