The Identity Lab
Personal Brand Photography for Speakers, Entrepreneurs & Experts.
Bringing your story and the foundation of your brand to life with photos that create connection, showcase empathy, and build authority in your industry.
Watch this quick 5 minute video to learn more about my process
Chat with me beforehand to make sure we’re the right fit for each other and you feel confident to move forward.
Book a Consult
Create a mood board that resembles the photos you’re envisioning. Unsure? That’s where I come in next!
Mood board
Meet 1-1 to discuss your mood board, plan outfits, locations, and shot ideas.
Planning Session
Your Identity Lab Photo session takes place! I got you covered with the tools to have a safe, seamless, and fun day.
Session Day!
Receive 70+ photos, depicting a wide variety of emotions and stories that elevate your personal brand.
Get your photos!
The Details
A 1-1 personal branding experience for speakers, Entrepreneurs & Experts.
A photo session is an identity lab, where you not only get to express who you are today, but also experiment and play with who you could be tomorrow.
Here are some things we’ll do together to make that happen:
A personalized prep process that’s a collaboration between you and me. Together, we’ll figure out how to help you show up in your brand to build that deep connection and trust with your audience
The process includes creating a mood board, an in-depth planning session, a shot list that we’ll use as a common reference, and other conversations as necessary
The session itself will be about 4 hours long, with makeup at the beginning, and enough time to take breaks, hydrate and try different things. Along with me, I’ll have my client advocate, a trained Somatic coach, to help you stay in your body and express authentic emotion
At the end of it all, you’ll receive 70+ photos, depicting a wide variety of emotions and stories, for use in all kinds of situations: headshots, profile photos, blog, newsletter, socials, announcements and so on.
Hear what my clients are saying about their photoshoot experiences
Commonly Asked Questions
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Your personal brand is the relationship that you create with your ideal clients/audience out there. I completely understand the urge to focus on the work and ideas. After all, that is your expertise! As a photographer, I want my clients to be the focus (literally and figuratively), not me. I get it.
But over time, I’ve had to learn that my clients want to work with me not only for the work that I do, but for the way I show up for them as a human. My personality and values are a key part of their choice to work with me. It’s the same for you.
It’s not all about you, but you are the face of your brand and work.
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No you don’t (!) You don’t NEED any particular thing to build your brand or business. I have friends who have built successful businesses even without a website or social media. It happens!
But here are a few facts I wanted to share with you.
A. Images are by far the most efficient way to get a message across. The human brain processes an image 60,000 times faster than words.
B. There are plenty of media you can use to communicate your ideas: writing, video, audio. All of them take attention. Time and attention are scarce resources for people nowadays. A photo makes the least demands on your audience’s time and attention.
C. Notice how many photos you see everyday that convey a message. Social media, news, websites, billboards, ads. A photo can create an indelible first impression that’s very hard to change.
Now you get to decide, do YOU need photos for your personal brand?
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Here’s an equation: Brand photography = Portrait Photography + Brand Storytelling
(Yes, I used to be an engineer. Yes, I still love math).
More seriously though, a brand photo shoot is more than just getting gorgeous portraits, though you’ll get those! It’s about creating photos with a specific intention.
You need photos that connect with your specific audience, convey your personality, expertise and authority. All of that requires a thoughtful process that requires you and your photographer to work together to figure out exactly what you want to convey, and how you want to show up.
Different genres of photography require different skillsets. Make sure you choose a photographer who can not only take amazing photos, but also has the additional brand storytelling skills to create photos that enhance your brand.
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Think of all of the different ways you could use your photos. Your LinkedIn headshot and banner, profile pictures on other platforms, your blog, newsletter, social media posts, event announcements, speaker media kit. All of these platforms have different formats and needs.
Even when it comes to headshots, professional speakers like to provide event planners with a few different options for headshots, allowing the event planner to choose one according to the theme of the event. It helps you look even more thoughtful and professional as a speaker.
Here’s an in-depth case study on how you can use your personal branding photos.
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Some people will tell you to do a brand photo session every few months or couple of years. Others will tell you to do one whenever you go through a major life or professional transition. Those are all good answers to this question.
For speakers, you definitely want to update your photos if you’re launching a new speech. For authors, it might be a good idea if you’re launching a new book.
Putting all of those aside, I have a simple test for you. Search for yourself on Google and go to the Images tab. Do the pictures you see there feel like you? If not, it’s time to update your photos!
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We are used to the idea of our photos being something different than regular life. We all have a favorite pose for our photos or a favorite expression. Think of the face, angle you hold your phone when you take a selfie. My guess is that it’ll be fairly consistent.
Being in a professional photo shoot, however, can feel extremely vulnerable. You have someone else taking pictures of you, and you have to trust that they’re showing you at your best. It’s natural in that case to want to perform … to get out of our body and into our head, wondering constantly if we’re doing well enough. When we get out of our body, it disconnects us from genuine emotion, which is often why your photos might not look like you.
My entire experience is focused on helping you feel relaxed and in your body, providing a supportive and joyful space for you to feel comfortable expressing yourself. When you feel relaxed and good about yourself, it shows in the photos.
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Ever since the first person drew a cave painting, artists have been posing the human body. However, most artistic poses have historically served a specific purpose: to make young, conventionally attractive bodies look appealing to older men (yes, I know that’s a hot take, but I said what I said).
Is that what your brand is about? Most likely not. So why do we need to be worried about contorting our bodies into a narrow set of predefined poses?
Instead, my approach is for us to work together and identify what you actually want to convey to YOUR audience, the story that you want to tell. And then, we use your face and your body to express the emotional arc of the story in a way that feels natural to you. My job is to start with what you already do and help tweak it for the camera.
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Of course you can! You can book a photo session whenever it feels right for you.
But here’s something to think about. For some people, weight gain happens because of temporary factors, an illness, medication changes or life events. If that’s the case, then that weight can be fairly easy to lose.
But some weight gain is just a natural part of life, that happens with aging and other body changes. That can be permanent and harder to accept.
Your branding photos are for your audience to get to know you better. They’re already here for you … as you currently are. While you may want to, you don’t need to change your body to show up in your brand.
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As a speaker, you want your photos to align with your speech. As part of the process, we’ll create a shot list. Using poses, outfits, props, location, lighting and every other tool in our toolbox, we want to create photos that show different points along the arc of your speech, conveying the emotional journey.
This results in a set of photos you can use to support that specific speech.
Besides that, there are other ways to structure your session as a story arc, to ensure that we capture a wide range of emotions and formats. Here’s a resource I’ve created to help with that.
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Here’s the fun part about being a speaker, or having your own personal brand in general. You get to be different!
Speakers need to be memorable on stage. You want your audience to remember your message, and you want event planners to keep hiring you. This means you have to think about what you do on stage as a performance. That includes what you wear.
Clothes are an important way we express our values. In your personal brand, you get to use your style as your own unique signature that conveys your personality and values. And as for being ‘professional’? If it makes you get into your professional zone, it’s all good.
Have more questions?
Ready?
Looking for stage photos?
Join me for The Icon Experience - a LIVE simulated speaker event designed to get you the best ‘action’ shots on stage (perfect lighting, the best angles, all the images you wish you could get from your real speaking gigs) so you can can book more speaking gigs and take your speaker brand to the next level.
This is a live event! Click the button below to learn more about the dates and locations of the next Icon Experience and sign-up for ones in your area.
What People Are Saying About My Work!
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Meghna Majmudar
“ The process made me come back to myself. I operate in a way where I lose myself to my work and the people I’m working with. Going through the process itself changed what I was looking for, because there’s a lot of digestion that happens during the process.”
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Marcia Dawood
“I’ve done vision boards before for future plans, but I had never done something like this for myself or my brand. The exercise made me think about things I would never have otherwise.”
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Kat O'Sullivan
“My personality, my style – it has to be authentic because I want to attract like-minded people who value who I am and how I go about what I do. It’s very personal and vulnerable. That’s a keyword: vulnerable. You can hide in a business. You cannot hide in a personal brand. Focusing on my personal brand has helped me really show up.”
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Jackie Jackson
“I would say really anybody should do this if they want to have an experience of learning a lot more about themselves and how beautiful they are, just as they are.”