How to Use Behind the Scenes Content to Amplify a Commercial Shoot
Behind the scenes content is the most underused asset in commercial photography. Most photographers treat it as a personal social media strategy — something they capture for their own feed to show potential clients what it looks like to work with them. That is a legitimate use of behind the scenes content. But it is a fraction of what it can do when it is integrated deliberately into a commercial campaign from the start.
On the Rivian project at the end of 2024, behind the scenes content was not an afterthought or a personal marketing exercise. It was a planned component of the campaign, captured specifically to serve the social distribution of a brand campaign, and released in a sequence that extended the campaign's reach over weeks rather than days. Read the full case study here. What follows is a framework for using behind the scenes content to amplify any commercial shoot — not just the professional deliverables, but the organic reach of the entire campaign.
Behind the Scenes Is Not a Bonus — It Is a Distribution Channel
The first shift in thinking required to use behind the scenes content strategically is to stop treating it as a bonus and start treating it as a distribution channel. A bonus is something you add if you have time and energy left after the real work is done. A distribution channel is something you plan for, resource appropriately, and build your content strategy around.
When behind the scenes content is treated as a distribution channel, the questions you ask about it change. Not "what interesting moments can I capture for my personal social?" but "what content, captured during this production, would perform best on social platforms and drive the most traffic back to the main campaign?" Those are different questions, and they produce different content.
On the Rivian project, the behind the scenes content was planned as a social distribution channel from the start. I knew before the trip began that I would need multiple pieces of UGC-style content to release over the weeks following the campaign launch. That knowledge shaped what I captured throughout the week — not just the professional photography, but the raw, authentic moments that would perform on Instagram and TikTok in ways that polished campaign imagery never does.
Plan the Behind the Scenes Story Alongside the Campaign Story
Commercial photography campaigns have a story — the narrative the brand wants to tell about their product, their values, or their audience. Behind the scenes content has a parallel story — the narrative of how the campaign was made, who made it, what happened along the way. When those two stories are planned in parallel rather than one after the other, the behind the scenes content is more coherent and more compelling.
The behind the scenes story of the Rivian project had a natural arc. The pre-dawn departure. The unexpected software update that capped the vehicle at 25 mph. The slow crawl back to the hotel in the dark. The call to support at 7am. The recovery and the re-planned morning. The arrival at the Groveland Outpost. Each of those moments was a chapter in the behind the scenes story, and planning to document them — rather than capturing them opportunistically when I happened to remember to pull out the phone — produced a more complete and more compelling behind the scenes narrative.
That narrative gave the audience something to follow across multiple pieces of content over multiple weeks. Not a gallery of production photos, but an unfolding story about a real person doing a real thing in a real place, with real obstacles and real moments of discovery. That is the kind of content that generates return visits — audiences coming back to see what happened next — rather than single-view engagement that fades the moment the algorithm moves on.
Capture Behind the Scenes From a Character-Based Perspective
The most engaging behind the scenes content is not about the production — it is about the person doing the production. The professional photography shows the polished result. The behind the scenes content should show the human being making that result happen — the decisions, the frustrations, the moments of discovery, the specific experiences that made the production meaningful rather than just technically successful.
Character-based behind the scenes content works because it gives the audience a person to follow rather than a product to observe. Audiences are built around people, not around brands or products. When behind the scenes content centers a specific person's experience — first-person narration, real reactions, genuine moments rather than performed ones — it builds an audience relationship that the brand campaign alone cannot build.
On the Rivian project, the most engaging behind the scenes clips were not the ones that showed the professional camera setup or the scenic locations. They were the clips that showed the specific, human moments — the 3am departure, the moment the software update kicked in and changed the plan, the process of figuring out the Groveland Outpost chargers for the first time. Those moments were interesting because they showed a real person navigating a real situation, not because they were particularly beautiful or dramatic.
Use Imperfection as Evidence, Not as a Problem to Fix
Professional photographers are trained to fix imperfections. The slightly off exposure, the unwanted element in the background, the moment that almost captured the decisive moment but not quite. In professional deliverables, fixing those imperfections is part of the job.
In behind the scenes content, those same imperfections are evidence of authenticity. The overexposed shot when the camera swings toward the sun. The moment of lost focus during a moving scene. The ambient noise from the road or the wind or the conversation happening in the background. These details signal to audiences that what they are seeing is real rather than produced, which is exactly the signal that makes behind the scenes content more engaging than polished campaign imagery.
Training yourself to leave those imperfections in — to resist the instinct to fix and polish — is one of the most practically useful things you can learn for behind the scenes content production. The imperfect clip that feels real will consistently outperform the polished clip that feels produced. The audience's trust is the most valuable thing you can earn with behind the scenes content, and imperfection is one of the clearest signals of trustworthiness in this format.
Sequence the Behind the Scenes Release for Maximum Longevity
A week of production on location generates enough behind the scenes material for weeks of social content. The mistake most photographers make is releasing all of it at once — a single production-diary post or a gallery of behind the scenes images — and then going silent as the algorithm moves on. That approach generates a brief spike of engagement and then nothing, because there is no next chapter for the audience to return for.
Sequencing the behind the scenes release treats the production diary as a serialized story rather than a single episode. One clip from the first day of the trip. One clip from the moment the unexpected thing happened. One clip from the arrival at the destination. Each clip is a standalone piece of content that generates its own distribution, and each one creates a reason for the audience to return for the next one.
On the Rivian project, the behind the scenes clips were released over the weeks following the main campaign launch, not alongside it. The main campaign launched with the professional photography and the written article. The behind the scenes content extended the campaign's active social presence well beyond the launch window, keeping the brand visible in feeds during a period when a single-format campaign would have already faded. Each clip drove traffic back to the article and the main campaign, which meant the behind the scenes content was doing double duty — generating its own engagement and amplifying the reach of the primary deliverables.
Integrate Behind the Scenes Into Your Client Deliverables
Most photographers keep behind the scenes content separate from their client deliverables. The professional work goes to the client. The behind the scenes content goes on the photographer's personal social. Those are treated as separate tracks with separate audiences and separate purposes.
Integrating behind the scenes content into the client deliverable set changes the value proposition significantly. Instead of delivering a photography package, you are delivering a campaign package — professional imagery plus a social content library that extends the campaign's distribution over weeks rather than days. That expanded deliverable is worth more to the client, justifies a higher rate, and produces better campaign outcomes that the client will attribute to the value of working with you.
On the Rivian project, the behind the scenes UGC clips were part of the campaign deliverables, not a personal marketing exercise. They were captured with the campaign's distribution strategy in mind, released on behalf of the campaign rather than the photographer, and credited to the overall campaign result. That integration made the project a more complete campaign than the brief had originally specified, and it made the final result — over a million views — a campaign achievement rather than a personal social media win.
Build Behind the Scenes Capture Into Your Pre-Shoot Planning
The most reliable way to consistently produce strong behind the scenes content is to plan it the same way you plan the professional photography. What are the key moments in the production that are most likely to generate compelling behind the scenes content? Where in the schedule are those moments most likely to occur? What equipment — usually just an iPhone, but the question is still worth asking — do you need to have accessible at those moments?
Building those questions into your pre-shoot planning process makes behind the scenes capture automatic rather than opportunistic. On the Rivian project, I knew before the trip started that the departure, the arrival at the Groveland Outpost, and the infrastructure moments along the route were the highest-priority behind the scenes moments. I kept my phone accessible at those moments specifically because I had planned to capture them, not because I happened to remember to pull it out.
That intentionality is the difference between a behind the scenes library that tells a coherent story and a behind the scenes library that is a collection of whatever you happened to capture when you remembered to. Both take roughly the same amount of time and equipment. The intentional version produces content that performs significantly better, because it was captured with the campaign's distribution needs in mind rather than captured opportunistically and then retrofitted to those needs after the fact.
Measure Behind the Scenes Performance Separately From Campaign Performance
To understand whether your behind the scenes content strategy is working, you need to measure its performance separately from the overall campaign performance. Which clips generated the most engagement? Which ones drove the most traffic back to the main campaign content? Which distribution windows produced the biggest spikes in the campaign's overall reach?
Those measurements tell you what kind of behind the scenes content performs best for your specific audience, which formats and subjects generate the most engagement, and which release timing produces the best campaign amplification. That data is the raw material for improving your behind the scenes strategy on the next project — building on what worked and adjusting what did not.
On the Rivian project, the behind the scenes clips that performed best were the ones that showed specific, human moments rather than production logistics. Audiences engaged with the genuine reactions and the real obstacles more than with the technical behind-the-scenes of how the professional photography was made. That finding shaped how I approach behind the scenes content on every subsequent project — more character, less production detail, more honesty, less polish.
The Client Conversation About Behind the Scenes Content
Most clients do not know to ask for behind the scenes content as part of a commercial photography brief. They know they want social media assets, but they think of those as a separate production from the professional photography — something to be shot by a social media coordinator or a second camera on set. Introducing behind the scenes content as a deliverable that you produce as part of your standard workflow, at no additional production cost, changes how they think about the value of working with you.
The conversation is straightforward: "As part of the production week, I capture behind-the-scenes content that performs well on Instagram and TikTok — raw, authentic clips that give your audience a genuine look at how the campaign was made. I release these in a staggered sequence over the weeks following the main campaign launch, which extends the campaign's active social presence significantly beyond the launch day. This is part of my standard production process and does not require additional time or budget." That description makes the value concrete, explains the mechanism, and removes any ambiguity about what it costs. Almost every client, when the value is explained this way, wants it.
The clients who get excited about behind the scenes content are often the most valuable long-term relationships, because they are the ones who understand how modern campaigns work — the importance of authenticity, the value of sustained social presence, the difference between a launch and a campaign. Working with clients who share that understanding makes every project better and produces the kind of results — campaign longevity, organic sharing, genuine audience engagement — that generate the case studies worth building a business around. Introduce behind the scenes content to every new client. The ones who respond well are telling you they understand what good campaigns require. Those are the relationships worth investing in for the long term. The ones who do not engage are telling you something equally useful about fit.
For a complete picture of how behind the scenes content integrated into the Rivian campaign to generate over a million views, read the full case study here.
- On your last commercial shoot, did you capture any behind the scenes content? Was it planned or opportunistic? How did it perform compared to the professional deliverables?
- What would your pre-shoot planning look like if you built behind the scenes capture into it as deliberately as you build the professional photography shot list?
- Have you ever integrated behind the scenes content into a client deliverable rather than keeping it for your personal social? What was the client's reaction?
- What specific moments in your next production are most likely to generate compelling behind the scenes content? Are you planning to be in position to capture them?
Dalton Johnson is a professional adventure and editorial photographer with over a decade of experience creating images on all seven continents. His client work includes Patagonia, GoPro, Arc'teryx, Four Seasons, Nike, Rivian, Big Agnes, Ford Bronco, and 160+ other brands. He runs Dalton Johnson Media as a full-service studio, from pre-production through post and distribution.