Who are your best friends? If you’re like most of us, you can count them on one hand and have fingers left over.

One thing we can say about those friends is that they are always there when we need them. They are the rocks we cling to in dark times. We know what to expect from them and they do not disappoint.

A good brand should be like a good friend. To emphasize that, the story you tell through your creative should be consistent and dependable. That doesn’t mean you can’t shake it up every once in a while, but you should keep your brand and your core exactly as your customers expect. The Internet is filled with examples of companies that changed the expression of their brands in a more radical way that didn’t necessarily reflect the changes in their business and customers reacted in a negative way. The creative above took the form of redesigned Google retargeting ads. These ads could appear anywhere that the Google network had space. The goal was to draw people back to the site after they visited and left without acting. It was essential that the brand expression in these ads – color, message, composition – be consistent with the experience the user had on the site or it was only visual noise. The same goes for your social media and advertising – not just visuals but the tone and messaging as well.

What type of friend is your brand?

It’s important to know something about light when you photograph a home.

There’s more to it than simply having light. The color, mood, and texture of the light all go into making a great image and drawing the viewer in.

Light plays differently from the inside to the outside of your subject – in this case, a house – and sometimes you need to focus on the light in order to tell a better story.

Warm light is inviting while cool light can be relaxing. Combine the two, as I did in this image, and you can envision a warm hearth on a fall evening and roasting smores over a backyard fire pit. Travelers in winter seek out a roaring fire to escape the cold and the warm yellow light that splashes onto this house and pours out of the window calls to visitors to come inside and sit awhile.

It all starts with light. That’s how we tell this story.