Why Hiring A Personal Branding Photographer Will Help You Reach That Next Level

Investing in yourself and spending money on anything in your business can be really scary! It can bring up a bunch of limiting beliefs and fears, especially when you’re still working on your money mindset and on building your self-worth.

Hiring a personal branding photographer feels no different. It can be a bit scary, especially if you don’t know what to expect. When you hire a photographer to take your brand photos, you also hire them to gain clarity on your brand and craft a brand that is unique to you.

Plus, having on-brand, professional photos for your website and for your content just makes you look that much more professional. For sure, looks aren’t everything, but it sure helps to make a bomb first impression.

Get real clear on your brand

In order for your photographer to represent you authentically, and really bring out the elements of your brand that make you unique, you need to do a deep dive into your branding strategy together.

Now if you haven’t created your brand strategy yet, that’s okay. Your photographer can help you figure out the basic elements. But you might want to get on crafting your detailed brand strategy because that’s what will truly make you stand out. Your brand strategy is like your DNA and it includes all the elements that you need to craft a unique message, using your story and experiences to create a relatable brand.

But that’s a topic for another blogpost, where we’ll dive deeper into the steps that to take for you to create your brand strategy.

For now, let’s get into the three basic questions that you need to think about with your photographer in order to create personal branding photos that are authentic to you, and that’ll help show up with more confidence and consistency.

Simon Sinek uses these questions in his Golden Circle Theory, and they are super helpful! Here we go...

Your WHAT

The very first question you want to answer (and probably the easiest one to answer if you already have a somewhat established business) is ‘What do I offer?’.

If you don’t have an offer created yet, you might want to ask yourself ‘What do I enjoy talking about?’ and ‘What questions do people usually come to me with?’.

You also want to get really clear what problem you are solving for your clients, and what your solution is (aka your offer).

Your HOW

The next part is figuring out your HOW. You want to think about how you are solving your clients’ problem, meaning what does your solution entail. Do you have a signature framework or a specific journey that you walk your clients through?

Get crystal clear on the steps that you offer, that will take your clients from point A (their problem) to point B (their desired outcome).

You also want to think about how your offer and framework are different from someone else’s in your industry. What do you bring to the table that is unique to you and that helps your clients get to their desired outcome faster, or that adds more depth to your offer.

This could mean bringing (or learning) some of your skills that aren’t necessarily linked to your industry per se into your framework. Do you offer business coaching, but you’re also a very spiritual person? How can you integrate spirituality and the practices that you do into your program? What can add more value to your offer than ‘just’ your business knowledge?

We want to find these elements because you can then include them into your visuals, aka your photos, to make them authentic to you and your offer, and to showcase how you do things differently.

Having clarity on your HOW is also a great incentive to share more things about your life and yourself, which will, in turn, help your audience connect to you on a deeper level, which will build their trust in you.

Your WHY

Finally, and possibly the most important questions to ask yourself is WHY. Why did you start your business? What are your personal aspirations and goals?

When it comes to your business, how is your work to higher service of this world? Think about this for a second… what does you work add to your clients’ lives, how does it impact then and how does that in turn impact their clients? Write out a vision of this ripple effect that your work has.

This is the energy that you want to bring to your photoshoot.

Additionally, think about what makes you unique as a person

Whether that be your pet, your coffee addiction, your love for travel, a weird habit of yours… anything goes! Get creative with this and think about which of these you’d like to include in your photos to make them more fun and unique.

The goal is to make your photos authentic and to represent you, so if you always work with your cat on your lap, that might be a great shot to take (plus it makes you relatable and gives you things to talk about, like that one time your cat stepped on your keyboard and erased the entire post you just wrote…).

Having these small personal elements in your photos will allow you to use them in your daily business activities and beyond, like posting relatable content so that your community can get to know you better.

As I mentioned earlier, building these relationships is important to build trust, which is the only way someone is going to decide to buy from you (they won’t give your their hard-earned cash if they don’t trust you).

Shoot photos that represent YOU

Plan the session

Now that you have a clear idea of your brand, it’s time for you and your photographer to sit down and plan the nitty-gritty of your session.

Location

The first thing to think about is the location. It’s important to choose a location that reflects your brand because that’ll make the entire process go smoothly.

The first question you wanna ask yourself is, is it more authentic to you to be indoors or outdoors? Or maybe you want to do a mix of both.

Next, you want to think about the actual background. Is your brand more ‘light&airy’, in which case you want to choose a location (indoor or outdoor) that has a lot of light and has white walls and light colours, or if your brand is more on the ‘dark&moody’ side, your background should obviously be darker.

Whether you choose to shoot indoors or outdoors, in nature or in a city, you really want to make sure that the location already matches your brand vibes. This will make it way easier to keep your photos “on-brand”.

Outfits

The next thing you want to think about is to plan your outfits for the day of your branding shoot. When it comes to outfits, my personal go-to is always something that looks good but is also comfortable. You know your personal style better than anyone, but here are a few tips that may help you decide what to wear to feel and look your best in your photos.

Wearing solid colours usually looks better in photos. You could also think about what colours would look best in the background that you chose. You could choose to match your background and go for a more monochrome look, or you might decide to go the opposite way and choose a colour opposite to your background to really make you stand out.

Whatever outfit you choose, make sure your clothes are somewhat new and dry cleaned or ironed the day before your shoot. It’ll look the best in your photos and it’ll make your life so much easier! In my experience, when your clothes are more worn out, it really shows in photos, and the same goes for wrinkles in your clothing.

Finally, if you want to go all out and be really on-brand, you could choose to wear some of your brand colours. This can help blend your new photos in with your previous content, and it’s really fun too!

Props

Last but not least, you want to think about props. Props are a great way to add more personality into your photos, and make what you do, and how you do it a bit more obvious.

Like I mentioned earlier, choose props that you would use on a daily anyways and that show your personality. Props can be a great way to show your audience a more personal side of you, and show them how your process might be different from someone else’s.

And, if you feel uncomfortable during your session, props can help you relax because they give you something to hold in your hands and allow you to focus on something else.

Shoot Day

Yaay, it’s finally time to bring your vision to life!! All this hard work you’ve been putting in is finally coming together!

You might feel a bit nervous before your shoot, and that’s totally normal! Try your best to relax and enjoy the experience, because that’s how you’ll get the best, most authentic shots.

If you need some more tips to feel more comfortable in front of the camera, head over to this post.

All in all, go with the flow, breathe, put on some good music, dance if you feel like it and trust your photographer.

Start using your photos

Once you come home from your shoot, your hard work is done. Now it’s time to wait for your photographer to deliver those first few previews, and then your final gallery.

To make your life easier (and to combat the overwhelm that can come with receiving hundreds of images), I’ve put together a list of places where you can start using your personal branding images right away.

Check out this other relevant post 11 locations to use your personal branding photos right off the bat

So a brand shoot really helps you…

Get clarity on your brand, and have a fresh set of eyes on your brand that can help bring more clarity and intention to your business.

A personal branding shoot will also help you to create images that represent you and that’ll help you create deeper connections with your community (that go beyond just business).

Plus, the biggest advantage of doing a personal branding session is getting months’ worth of content in just a few hours. This means that you can plan your content way ahead of time and give yourself more space to focus on the needle movers in your business (like working with clients or creating new offers).

And finally, having on-brand, professional photos for your website and for your content just makes you look that much more professional. For sure, looks aren’t everything, but it sure helps to make a bomb first impression when there is so much “competition” out there.

READY TO CREATE SOME EPIC PHOTOS FOR YOUR BRAND?

If you’re tired of constantly creating new content, making it look professional yet related to your brand and who you are… I feel you! I completely understand how hard it is to be a solopreneur, having to do everything yourself.

So I wanna help! I’d love to help you create three months’ worth of content in just one short photoshoot. These photos can also be used on your website and in your marketing, allowing you to streamline some of your tasks and freeing up more time to do the things that truly matter (or to take a well-deserved day off!).

Find out more