How to feel ready for your branding photoshoot…
…Without feeling like a potato, wanting to hide in a cupboard or have a nervy b.
You’ve booked the shoot. You’ve actually done the hard bit.
You respected yourself and your business enough to decide to invest in professional imagery and you know how much of an impact that is going to make to your clients first impression of you and it’s going to make your website do so much more of the heavy lifting for you.
But I get it. It’s a scary thing having your photo taken. There’s this desire to feel perfect, look good, get the right angle, suck in the squishiness and pump up the muscles. There’s a need in us to have perfect hair, poreless skin and teeth that don’t quite meet Rylan’s standard but we don’t want to live up to the British stereotypes. And we’ve grown up in a world that if you don’t look like Kendall, Rosie or whichever Victoria secret model that’s the flavour of the month then we aren’t good enough. It’s a world where woman only exist to look good and be accessories on the arms of the powerful. Or if we are all about our looks then we can’t possibly have a brain.
I mean women can’t win. That’s the first acknowledgement here. And I can base that in fact for you.
In the renaissance era (you’ll have seen the paintings) women were depicted as goddesses with curves, big hips, soft bellies and large boobs. Fast forward to the 1950s and Marilyn Monroe was the ultimate hourglass that was desired most. Following Marilyn we go twiggy. No curves, no shape, just thin, long features and we circled back to the Kardashian’s with hips and butts that boosted a whole plastic surgery economy.
It is not possible for one woman to be all of those things. And if you were one of those things, you’d be in fashion for a minute before everyone found something new.
So when fashion is so fickle, why are we trying to be like anyone else? Why can’t we just be us?
What if we flipped the script and starting celebrating what our bodies - and our brains - can do? We can start up a business, we can dance, we can support a friend, we can take care of a child, we can rescue an animal, we can make some serious money, we can fly to all the corners of the globe. We are amazing. We are capable and most of all we deserve to be loved. Mostly by ourselves.
The energy that we spend hating ourselves reduces the ability for us to go out and get what we want. And for what? To please a faceless patriarchy?
Now this call to arms feels good. It tells a few hard truths and it is very oo rah rah but realistically you’re not going to wake up tomorrow, look in the mirror and mouth ‘hey sexy’ at yourself.
But what if self adoration wasn’t the goal? What if you could look in the mirror in the morning and go, I like the way my hair is falling today. Or I can’t believe these legs ran that far for me yesterday. Something small. Something that’s not seeped in sugary, hyperbolic love but just acceptance that this is my face. That’s a nose. It helps me breathe. Which keeps me alive.
So here’s a couple of exercises to try before you get on your photoshoot if you’re really struggling with how you feel about yourself:
Look in the mirror every day.
Really look. See what colour your eyes are, notice how your hair falls, count any freckles - start getting really used to what your face actually looks like. Not a photograph. Not something edited or filtered. Just look at your face. Now be aware that if you’re looking at yourself under some dodgy bathroom neon light then it might really effect the way you feel about yourself. My suggestion is you take the mirror to a window and look at yourself in truly natural light. Everyone is going to look shadowy under spotlights so be kind to yourself and use the natural light to help you get used to this. Because when you get your photos back your face will be in almost all of them. So you need to get used to seeing what it actually looks like.Mess around with a mate and a camera phone.
Get your friend to take some pictures of you. Again hang out by the window (good light is magic). Pull some funny faces, get weird. You don’t need to use them or even keep them. You just need to get used to seeing some photos of yourself so it’s not a surprise to you when you get your pro ones back.Take a selfie every day.
Therapists would call this ‘exposure therapy’. But if you are really really nervous about hating your pro photos then this is a good, tiny little thing you can do each day to prep. The first week you’ll hate them. You’ll think it’s stupid and a massive waste of time. Then by the second week you’ll start to not be too fussed. It’s just something you do. It’s just your face. Then by the third week you wont be scared of your own face at all. That’s you. In your messy bun or dressed up for an event, or in your favourite pjs. That’s you. And that’s ok.
Now your body confidence is a long journey and one that isn’t going to happen overnight. It’s going to take you a lot of time and discipline to train your negative self talk to stop tearing chunks out of your own self esteem and that’s some work that you have to do without me.
But whilst you can kick start those steps and do all the right things there are some other mindset shifts that you can employ to help you out.
Try journalling on, or thinking about:
What are your photos are for and who is going to be looking at them?
Where you are going to use the photos? In what context are you going to see them. For example, your face isn’t going to be huge filling the whole screen of your computer. It will probably be on a phone screen or as part of an ‘about me’ page.
How much easier marketing is going to be when you have your own personal stock image library? No more flicking through your camera roll desperately looking for something suitable to use. You can log straight onto your online gallery and use one of your own images.
Please note that although I am all about authenticity and realness, I’m not against a blow dry or some great make up. Me and concealer are in a long term relationship and I still advocate that nothing feels better than clean hair and a blow dry. Once I heard the term ‘everything shower’ I realised that that was my form of self care.
Think about your clothes
I do recommend pulling out some outfits or working with a stylist (I can recommend some!) to make sure you really feel good and prepped for the shoot. I have seen clients hide behind baggy jumpers and then the second they popped their event outfit on the stepped into a new confident body.
Really do think about what is going to make you step into your best energy. Usually I recommend for clients to start in something cosy or something they would co-work in to make them feel more comfortable. But if you know that that isn’t your vibe and you want to start in full blown glam because that’s how you feel your absolute best then lets start there. This session is entirely guided by you.
HARD TRUTH: You will not like every photo you receive in your gallery.
On first look you probably won’t like any at all. If you are not used to it it is a huge thing to receive a whole webpage of just you. I’ve got a whole extra guide of advice on how to look at your own gallery but for now just know you don’t have to love every single photo in your gallery. Having 5-10 favourites is an absolute win.
I still get photo galleries back and I know there are photos in there that I will never publish (and I get naked and jump in lakes in front of photographers all the bloody time). If a photographer loves that photo they took of me and I see it, I’m not too fussed either. I just scroll past and carry on with my day. The secret to that level of self acceptance is literally to just have your photo taken all the time. You get so used to seeing your face that it doesn’t even register anymore. And you start to look for other things in the photograph.
When I look at photos of me I see the joy, the creativity, the laughter, the smiles, the movement. I think about the storytelling of the image and I think about it’s purpose. Is it to make clients get me? Or is it a piece of art I want to hang in my house? I also think about how I felt on the shoot. On some shoots I was with people I really enjoyed hanging out with and I had a great time, despite being in a lake so cold it was hard to breathe. On others I had no connection with the person taking my photo at all, I was uncomfortable and despite objectively I can look at the photos and see there is absolutely nothing wrong with them. I don’t look at them and have never shared them.
Make sure you really connect with your photographer
One of the biggest parts of truly enjoying your photoshoot is having a connection with your photographer. Photoshoots are fun. It’s like having a school trip out of your business and skipping on your maths lesson for the day. And I am your ultimate hype girl. One of my clients literally counted how many times I said ‘what a vibe’ on our shoot because I was getting so excited about how well the shoot was going. (Yes I embody a labrador puppy when shooting because I am a little bundle of excitable energy. Makes for great company!)
With my clients I put so much care and attention into making them feel comfortable that I’ll often not take a single photograph for the first half an hour of our session together. We’ll start with coffee and a chat. Then the camera will go on the table, then we’ll do more chatting. Then eventually we’ll rip the plaster off and take the first photo. And I’ll watch you completely tense up. That’s so normal. We’ll spend time together messing around, moving, playing, chatting, drinking more coffee (or if fizz is what is takes I wont protest!). Then I’ll watch you change. You’ll start to get into it. You’ll start to play. Have creative ideas - really start having fun. That’s when the magic happens.
Most of the best photos are taken in the last 10 minutes of a session. And that is all completely normal. I’m here to help you on the ride.
These photos are of me by the way!
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