Personal branding

The reason a set of images runs out after three months is almost never how anyone looks and almost always the shape. There are three handsome landscape frames and nothing vertical for a story, or nothing with room on the left for a headline, or not one frame in which you are actually doing something rather than looking at the camera. So this is deliberately shot in every aspect ratio rather than only in the most flattering one.

The two and a half hours cover three situations: a straight portrait, you at work, and you in conversation with somebody. Those are the three registers a website, a profile, a talk announcement and a newsletter all draw on, and they do not appear by themselves if you stand someone against a wall for an hour. Sixty edited photographs, vertical, horizontal and square, gallery within a week — a supply that lasts twelve to eighteen months.

The briefing on visual language and intended use is half the job. Come to it knowing where the images will end up — your website and its image slots, your profiles, your slide deck — and with one or two examples of photographs you like, or pointedly do not. The three situations need places where you genuinely work: the office, the workshop, the training room. If the place is not yours, check with the owner beforehand that photography is fine. Plan two or three outfits that suit your work, and have the tools you actually use within reach.

Because the images work for your business, this is a commercial commission, and the intended use is written into the confirmation. Think beyond the website: a newsletter, a podcast cover, a book, a press kit or paid advertising should be named if they are foreseeable. We reply with a fixed price; a longer session for a fourth situation changes it and is priced beforehand. Whoever appears with you in the conversation frames also has to agree to publication, so the easiest choice is a colleague or client who is happy to do so from the start.