Personal Branding Photography in San Diego Built Around Your Business
A great personal branding photograph should tell me something about you before I read a word of your website. Not just what you look like, but what you do, who you serve, how you work and what it might feel like to hire you. Ideally it should not say, “I stood next to a beige wall for 45 minutes because LinkedIn made me.”
I create personal branding photography in San Diego for entrepreneurs, founders, executives, consultants, coaches, speakers, creatives and business owners who have outgrown the standard corporate headshot. The goal is a strategic, varied image library that can move from polished and authoritative to warm, candid, editorial, playful, weird-in-a-good-way or unexpected—without looking like six different people invented your brand.
What does a personal branding photoshoot include?
Every business needs something different. A branding session might include professional headshots, environmental portraits, lifestyle photography, images of you actually working, behind-the-scenes moments, detail photographs, website banners, horizontal and vertical compositions, social media content, speaking and thought-leadership imagery, and photographs for press, podcasts, launches, newsletters and marketing campaigns. We plan for how the photographs will actually be used—not simply what will look pretty on shoot day and then live quietly in Dropbox for the rest of eternity.
Planning the shoot: wardrobe, locations and visual strategy
The work begins before I pick up the camera. We look at your business, audience, website, offers, personality and where your brand is going next. From there, I help think through wardrobe, color, locations, backgrounds, props, shot variety and the stories your photographs need to tell. Bring layers, accessories, meaningful objects and the actual tools of your work when they make sense. Small changes can turn one shoot into several distinct visual stories while keeping the entire library cohesive. No, you do not need to bring 47 outfits. Please don’t.
Where should you take personal branding photos in San Diego?
Not wherever happens to be Instagrammable. The location should support the story. Depending on your brand, we might photograph in a studio, your office or workspace, your home, an architectural interior, a hotel, an urban setting, along the coast or across several locations. I photograph clients throughout San Diego County, including La Jolla, Del Mar, Encinitas and Carlsbad, and I also work regularly in Los Angeles and beyond. Pretty is nice. Pretty and relevant is considerably more useful.
“I hate having my picture taken.” Good. You don’t have to know how.
Most of the people I photograph are not models, and knowing how to pose is not your job. After 21 years photographing people, I can usually see the tiny things you can’t see from inside your own body: what your hands are doing, when your shoulders have crept upward, whether an expression feels forced, when a pose has become too posed, and when we have the real thing. I’ll direct you when you need direction and give you room when you don’t. I will also tell you when something looks weird. This is a service.
The objective isn’t to manufacture some terrifyingly “camera-ready” version of you. It’s to make you look like yourself on a very good day—the version of yourself who slept eight hours, drinks enough water and apparently has her life together.
Why one professional headshot isn’t enough anymore
A single headshot can’t do the job of an entire visual brand. Your LinkedIn profile needs something different from your About page. A podcast host may ask for a horizontal press image. Instagram needs vertical content. Your homepage may need negative space for copy. A speaking page calls for authority; a personal post may need warmth. Launches, newsletters, press features and sales pages create still more needs. I shoot with those uses in mind so you leave with options—not 75 versions of essentially the same photograph where your chin has moved approximately three millimeters.
Personal branding photography for the business you’re becoming
Some clients come to me because their photographs are simply outdated. Others are launching something new, stepping into a more visible role, speaking more, raising their rates, changing industries or realizing that the business they’ve built now looks considerably more sophisticated than the photographs representing it. Sometimes the headshot is five years old. Sometimes the headshot has bangs you no longer wish to discuss.
That’s the interesting part of personal branding to me: we’re not only documenting where your business has been. We’re creating the visual language for where it’s going next. After more than two decades doing this, I still think figuring out what that should look like is the fun part. Taking a technically beautiful photograph is important. Making photographs that could only really belong to your business is the much more intresting problem.
