Whether you are a business owner, blogger, entrepreneur, artist or consultant, a Personal Branding photography session is a great way to give your brand a visual boost. A Personal Branding shoot is a bespoke photo session that shows your unique style and tells a story, which helps creating a strong brand and to grow your business.

In these times, it’s so important to stand out in the crowd and to be able to grab potential client’s attention quickly. A Personal Branding photo session can definitely help with that, as these photos can instantly help people feel a stronger connection with you.

To help you prepare for a Personal Branding session, I’ve compiled a list with some tips on what to do to make the most of the session. As your photographer, we’ll be working closely together to make sure we get at set of photos that are truly representative of your brand.

After your initial enquiry

After you email or call me with your enquiry, I will send you a questionnaire to find out a bit more about you, your business and your brand values. It’s important that you answer these questions as thorough as possible, as it will help us getting a set of photos that aligns with your brand.

After this, we schedule in a phone or video call to discuss the details, and work out a plan for the shoot, including location (one or more).

Get inspired!

It’s great to discuss ideas, but having a vision of what you want your photos to look like is super-useful too. Together we’ll create a mood board with photos we think would work for your brand, as well as ideas for colour palettes, textures and backdrops. I usually use Pinterest for this as it’s really user-friendly.

List the types of photos you want

To make sure we cover the types of photos you need, write a list of the various types of photos you want. This could be both detailed things like ‘sitting in sofa with laptop’ or ‘detail shot of me chopping an orange’ as well as general ideas like ‘close up of me smiling’, or ‘landscape photos with lots of white space’ (useful if you want to put text on top of a photo!). If you're not sure what you need, I'm more than happy to help!

Work out the location

Where your branding session will take place depends on you and your business – it could be in your home, a studio, work place, a park, a nice café, or along some streets with nice buildings as a backdrop. Often the shoot can take place in more than one location if it's within the same area. We’ll discuss this in our initial chat as well.

Outfits & personal style

What you wear should be representative to you – stay away from trends (unless they are really your style!), but do wear what you feel both comfortable and fabulous in. If you buy a new outfit for the session, make sure you try it on a few times beforehand to make sure you really like it and that it suits you. This is applicable for hair and make-up too – stay away from make-up you normally wouldn’t wear, and don’t try any completely new hair styles.

A few other tips for choosing outfit:

  • Select colours that fits your brand – for example if your brand values are ‘fun’, ‘energetic’ and ‘lively’, choose colours that represents this.
  • Don’t be scared of patterns -patterns can look great, just not too tiny or detailed.
  • Try to stay away from solid black or bright white, as it can stick out quite a bit in the photos.
  • Make sure your clothes are ironed as wrinkly clothes will show in the photos.
  • Have fun with accessories – a nice belt, some fun ear-rings can make your photos fun and interesting (if you’re an accessory kind of person!)

Prepare two or three outfits, preferably a bit different – for example one dress, one dressy top and trousers, and one more casual top.

I’d love to help you with your choice, and am happy to look at your suggestions (or give suggestions) before the session.

Props

Depending on what you do and what you want to showcase, props can definitely add value to your photos. If you work with something physical, this would be fairly straight forward (ie. Pens & sketch books for an artist; a chopping board/knives/vegetables for a chef or health coach). But even if you only use your laptop in your work, there’s always something you can include to make the photos interesting:

  • Laptops, notebooks, pens and other stationary
  • Food, coffee cups, biscuits
  • Flowers & other pretty items

Preparing for the day

  • Try to get a good night sleep!
  • Stay hydrated
  • Have your outfits/make-up/props ready
  • Relax and enjoy the session – it’s going to be a fun experience and worth getting excited about!

Don’t feel worried – my job as a photographer is to be there to guide you and help you feel relaxed throughout the shoot.

Are you ready to book your Personal Branding session? Or do you have more questions? Get in touch on info@carinthakrar.com – I’d love to hear from you!