Feel Inspired
How should I show up to my personal branding session? In short, as yourself! But what does that mean for my brand? Let’s dive a little into this question and explore how you figure out what it means to be yourself and brand your business so it is aligned with your values both personal and business.
In my branding questionnaire I send you a whole list of questions to answer about yourself and your business. This helps me to understand both, it also gives me a direction to ask questions to figure out how we are going to photograph you in your brand.
One question I ask is about your personality. Why do I want to know this? Well this helps me to understand what types of images you may want. Knowing your are the more outgoing or reserved side gives me a good idea how you should be showing up in your brand. You’re not going to be comfortable jumping around and dancing shots if your personality is more along the lines of quiet movements. I personally will never have images of me dancing or jumping around, it is not in my character to be that way and I won’t falsely represent my brand as being playful like that.
Accurately representing your brand is key! When your potential clients/customers see your images you want them to connect with who you have shown up to be. You want your images on your website to create a mood and create certain feelings in the viewers. Another question I ask in my questionnaire is “How do you want your audience to feel and think when they see your brand?”
Think about that for a second.... “How do you want your audience to feel and think when they see your brand?”
Now does your website convey those feelings and thoughts? Or have you missed the mark a little and need images that do actually capture those thoughts and feelings?
For my client James Divine he was struggling with this very question. He wanted his clients to come to his website feeling inspired, intrigued, curious and mostly unafraid. Unafraid of having their palms read, unafraid of what may be discovered during their session together. He wanted to convey a safe, welcome and joyous space. But his website wasn’t these things. It was darker and serious, more along the lines of traditional mystical imagery, which he likes but this isn't what his brand is.
James Divine needed images that personified him and his brand. His brand is empowerment, love, integrity and joyous. He wanted to change from serious dark images on his website to brighter, joyful and colorful images. We needed to capture what it was actually like to work with and be around James Divine!
While I was photographing the palm reading part of our session located in his house in Seattle, WA. The space was safe, positive, caring and fun energy was so infectious. He invited his neighbor to be his "client" for the session and he did an actual reading on her. So what you see is their real interactions and true energy of the session. For this part I gave very little instructions and just let him do his reading and move around the session and photograph the real moments. I was in awe of his presence during the sessions, I wish I had been the client working with him and getting my palms read by him!
Once we were done with the lifestyle palm reading part of the session, we moved onto the posed intentional headshot type images. Our intention with these images was to really capture his personality, his smiles, looks and laughs. These images will be used all throughout his branding, updating his "About Me" headshots and put all throughout his website to show smiling and welcoming images of himself. And possibly even an author photo. I have to say I've got my fingers crossed on this one, photographing author headshots for their books, it is on my Photography Bucket List.
The energy and smiles are infectious when going through his images, they make me happy just looking through them. How do you feel when you look through James Divine Palm Reader's photos? Did we hit the mark of conveying feelings of inspiration, intrigued, curious and being unafraid of getting your own palm read? Do these images display empowerment, love, integrity and joy? I believe they do! We showed his extrovert personality with his laughs and smiles all throughout his session. James showed up to his branding session as himself, the self you will see when you are with James Divine getting your palm read or watching his "Meet-a-Mystic" lives on Instagram.
Are you needing an update of images? Do you need your images to accurately represent your brand personality and values? Do you need some guidance and help with this? Send me an email and let's start talking about your business and personal branding photography needs! I'm ready to help you with your photography.