Personal Branding Portraits with Sioban

Sioban works in the apparel industry and was in the midst of a career shift, so she reached out to me to see if she could get some personal branding portraits she could use for business as well as home.

The Consultation

Since Sioban was coming up to the studio from the Boston area, it didn’t make sense to make a 3 hour drive for the consultation. Normally, I like to sit with a potential client face to face and talk about how they want to be photographed. In this case, it made sense to use Zoom. We could still have our meeting “face to face” and get a feel for how the process would go. As we spoke during our consultation, we decided she didn’t want to have the normal, standard corporate headshots. She wanted something that more represented who she is, what her personality is like, while maintaining a professional feel. It was the perfect mix of personal branding and luxe portraits.

The Shoot

On the day of the shoot, Sioban arrived with several outfits and plenty of ideas. After spending a few minutes talking, I introduced her to Kelly Glover, a local makeup artist, and got her started with hair and makeup. This part of the process generally takes about an hour, so during that time we talked, laughed, had some coffee, and kept brainstorming what we’d like to shoot. I setup some backdrops and prepped some lighting so we could get started right away.

I always start with a bit of natural light to get everyone warmed up and so Sioban could get used to how I direct my posing. After that, it was about 4 hours of non-stop shooting, changing outfits, getting makeup touchups, and laughing. By the end of the day, we were both pretty exhausted, but flying high because it was so much fun.