Show your people in your photos...
If you work with clients in a room…
…then your image portfolio needs to reflect this aspect of your business.
The vast majority of a branded lifestyle portrait session is a 1:1 endeavor.
Photographer and subject.
And, this dynamic is a wonderful opportunity to create a plethora of promotional portraits that can be used throughout their entire online presence.
But, in most cases, that’s not enough.
When you leverage promotional images such as headshots and direct address portraits that simply feature you, sure, your audience will get a flavor of your personality and lifestyle.
That’s definitely important.
But, you also need to show them what it would look like if THEY were in the room with you, as well.
This helps familiarize themselves with what you look like when you’re working with people like them.
When you make it about them, that draws them in closer to learn more about how you can help solve their problem.
During a recent lifestyle portrait session with my colleague, Lou, we addressed this need at the beginning of his session.
Amongst many things that Lou does to serve, he is an expert connector and wrote an upcoming book on how to have more successful conversations in all areas of life.
While Lou and I have worked together several times over the past couple years, we have only focused on him during those past sessions.
We wanted to YES AND those types of photos during this spin on the Ferris Wheel.
During our strategy call, we made sure to add candid lifestyle portraits of him conducting a conversation with clients to the shot sheet so he had additional visual assets to help promote his business, as well as his Speak Easy book launch.
While borrowing a client’s space to use as the location backdrop, Lou kindly asked a couple staff members to sit and chat with him for 5 minutes as I stalked their conversation with my camera:
These types of photos invite people to envision what it would be like to sit there and learn from you…
especially when you anonymize the folks sitting in the space with you. This is why you see their bodies and backs of heads and not their faces.
This key ingredient helps foster creative flexibility in terms of storytelling opportunities as you’re not tying these photos to one specific person by showing their face.
If you coach or consult in person with clients, be sure to add this to your to-do list for your next branded lifestyle portrait session.
These types of visuals offer a very important layer to your visual storytelling efforts.
For more visual storytelling strategies and insights for experts, I’ll talk your eyes off through my blog. Sign up to receive them directly in your inbox, and if you have any questions, set up a time to chat with me and then I’ll talk your ears off, too :)