Rhonda Maughan is a personal life coach, so for her branding shoot we created a mixture of professional portraits and more relaxed lifestyle imagery.

We photographed across several locations in Hamilton CBD before heading back to my studio, giving Rhonda plenty of variety within one shoot.

The finished gallery includes everything from clean headshots and direct-to-camera portraits through to working images, café photographs and more relaxed moments where she isn’t looking at the camera at all.

Creating lifestyle branding images

We started on location, using a couple of different Hamilton café settings and the surrounding areas to create the lifestyle portion of Rhonda’s gallery.

Rather than simply sitting at a table and smiling at the camera, we created lots of different variations. Rhonda worked on her ipad, walked through the spaces, sat with a coffee and interacted naturally with the environment around her.

I also photographed plenty of smaller details and tighter crops alongside the portraits.

These are often some of the most useful images in a branding gallery because not every photograph needs to be a traditional portrait.

Different locations, outfits and looks

Moving through different locations and outfit changes gave us plenty of variety throughout the shoot.

Some photographs feel more polished and professional, while others are much more relaxed. We also created a mixture of wider environmental images, seated portraits, standing photographs and closer crops.

Even within the same location, changing the angle or moving to another part of the space can make the photographs feel completely different.

It means we can create a much larger collection without needing twelve locations and a small convoy of vehicles to get between them.

Finishing with studio headshots

We finished Rhonda’s shoot back at my Hamilton studio with a clean white backdrop.

After creating so much lifestyle imagery on location, the studio gave us another completely different set of photographs. These included simple professional portraits and headshots with fewer distractions in the frame.

I really like combining the two approaches for personal branding sessions. The lifestyle images give us environment, movement and context, while the studio photographs bring everything right back to the person.

A branding gallery with plenty to choose from

The end result for Rhonda was a varied collection of professional imagery rather than one particular style of headshot repeated over and over.

That’s one of the reasons a personal branding shoot can be so useful for someone who is the face of their business.

We can still create the polished portrait you need, but we have much more room to photograph personality, movement, working images and all those useful in-between frames as well.