I’ve photographed Kate a few times over the years, from personal branding photographs for her marketing strategy business through to this latest studio session.

Kate was one of seven people I photographed during a day I’d set aside for experimenting with new lighting, posing and studio setups, while also working alongside another photographer who wanted to develop her portfolio and try some new techniques.

For Kate, we created a new set of clean white backdrop headshots as well as something a little different using a new posing setup I’d recently built for the studio.

Headshots and something a little different

We started with simple professional headshots against white, giving Kate clean, versatile images she can use across LinkedIn, professional profiles, websites and her own marketing.

Then we changed things up.

I’d recently built a new white posing box for the studio and wanted to see how much variety I could create with it. We paired it with a neutral backdrop and matched her outfits to the grey of the backdrop, experimenting with the posing box to see how best to use it for these types of images.

Sitting, standing, leaning, full-length and tighter portraits all from one very simple setup.

Creating variety without overcomplicating it

Kate works in marketing as well as running her own marketing strategy business, so having photographs that aren’t tied to one particular role or business makes them much more useful.

And this shoot is a good example of how much we can create without needing five outfits, three locations and an enormous shot list.

Sometimes you need a full personal branding shoot.

Sometimes you need a really good headshot and a collection of professional portraits that give you a few more options than the standard shoulders-up photograph.

This time, we made both.